Town Property Taxes in Onondaga County

Here is a closer look a sampling of town taxes in Onondaga County. I have updated a couple of the examples from my previous post to get a better sampling of similar properties across Onondaga County. These properties had an market value or assessment value around $244,000 in 2017. In 2024, the average market value of these same properties has increased to an average of $348,000. Yet depending on where you live, your town taxes may have deceased slightly or increase by almost 30%.

How can this vary so much? New York State has a property tax cap of 2% so seeing an increase of around 14% in 8 years would be expected. But many municipalities override this 2% tax cap. Why is it that some municipalities can stay within the tax cap or even remain below it and others can’t?

Local governments provide similar services like fire, highway, court, clerk, codes and assessment. Each town provides some differences in the services they offer to residents. Some include trash services, police, ambulance services and others do not. Local governments provide similar services but for varying populations. This creates a system of where some residents are paying more and others less for similar services.

Seeing property taxes vary from $868 to over $3,000 dollars would impact who could afford to live where especially as costs continue to rise. So how can we distribute costs more evenly. The total tax levy from Onondaga County in 2024 was approximately $146 million dollars. Looking at county taxes in the towns the average tax bill is $1,272 from these properties only vary a couple hundred dollars vs thousands depending on what town you live in. Adding up the total tax levy collected by the 19 towns in Onondaga county it is over $157 million dollars. 19 towns are collecting more in tax dollars than our county collects. Onondaga county offsets their budget with sales tax in their budget but still this is illuminating.

How can we create a better system than this? One suggestion was proposed back in 2017 when Onondaga county did a study on local government modernization. This report mentions how local governments spend more than $100 million on redundant services and how we could save millions. This amount has mostly likely increased on what local governments spend 8 years later and how much we could save.

One thing is for sure we need to look at the county as a whole and figure out what is working and what we need to change because the increases town property taxes is not sustainable.

More maps are on there way. Next up will be showing school taxes across Onondaga County and the last set will show totals.

Elaine Denton
State & Local Action Team (SLAT)