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Week of Dec. 21, 2022 Home of The Mossow Family
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Gold thumb
WORK BUY SELL TRADE GET IT DONE
Girl Scout plants garden for Clay food pantry
By Ashley M. Casey Associate Editor
Most gardeners aspire to have a green thumb, but Cassidy Holz can say hers is gold. The Onondaga Community College student and Baker High School grad capped off her Girl Scout career earlier this year by earning the Gold Award, the highest honor a Girl Scout can achieve. Senior and Ambassador level Girl Scouts (in grades 9-12) who want to earn their Gold Award must complete a “Take Action Project” that improves their community in a measurable, sustainable way. For her project, Holz installed a garden to support the food pantry at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Clay. “There’s a lot of people who are going hungry and I know a lot of people who are in that situation use food pantries,” Holz said. “Food pantries don’t get the greatest quality food for vegetables — it’s all canned stuff.” A local VFW post connected Holz to the Cpl. Kyle R. Schneider Foundation for her project. Lorie and Rick Schneider founded the organization in memory of their son, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2011 while serving in the Marines. Holz dubbed her project the Cpl. Kyle R. Schneider Memorial Garden. She built two 18-by-4 raised beds. The partnership between B’ville Girl Scouts and local veterans organizations is not a new one. In 2020, Alicia Baldwin’s Gold Award project was the renovation of VFW
By Ashley M. Casey Associate Editor
Courtesy of Cassidy Holz
Cassidy Holz, of Baldwinsville, installed a vegetable garden in memory of Cpl. Kyle R. Schneider for the Immanuel Lutheran Church food pantry in Clay. Post 153’s Veterans Food Pantry. According to Feeding America, 1 in 9 working-age veterans and nearly 1 in 4 activeduty servicemembers struggle with food insecurity. The hunger problem is exacerbated by many of the other difficulties facing veterans: disability, mental health issues, unemployment and discrimination. While 1.2 million veterans use SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits, many activeduty military families do not qualify for food
assistance. Military spouses have a high unemployment rate and housing near military bases can be expensive. Among Holz’s bounty from the Cpl. Kyle R. Schneider Memorial Garden were tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, onions, celery, eggplant, okra and basil. She conveniently dropped off her harvests at Immanuel Lutheran as the veggies came in. “The younger Girl Scouts in my service Garden l Page 2
Salina drops full-value property assessments By Ashley M. Casey Associate Editor
To paraphrase the beginning of “Romeo and Juliet” by William Shakespeare, picture “two households, both alike in market value, in fair Onondaga County, where we lay our scene.” As in Shakespeare’s tragedy, there has been strife among neighbors — caused not by a family feud, but by New York State’s patchwork of property assessment rates. Take Clay and Salina, for example. A PostStandard investigation found similarly priced homes in both towns had wildly different school and county tax bills despite both being in the Liverpool Central School District. Clay calculates taxes using an equalization rate, a ratio of a municipality’s total assessed value divided by its total market value. Until recently, Salina’s assessments matched the market value. The Salina Town Board voted Dec. 12 to end full-value assessments. New York State recommends that municipalities assess property at the market value but allows municipalities to set their own assessment rates. Until recently, only six of Onondaga County’s 19 towns followed the state’s recommendation, but in recent months three towns in the northern suburbs — Salina, Lysander and Van Buren — have opted to use equalization rates to calculate a property’s assessment. Now, only three towns in Onondaga County still assess properties at market value: DeWitt, Manlius and Tully. As housing prices have skyrocketed, residents of towns who used full-value assessments suffered some serious sticker shock when receiving their 2022 assessments. Equalization rates softened the blow for many homeowners but the assessment hikes exposed the disparities in tax bills caused by New York State’s laissez-faire assessment practices. “Equalization rates wouldn’t be necessary if all municipalities assessed property at 100% of market value,” reads the NYS Department
Cicero rejects Metro North PUD proposal
of Taxation and Finance’s explainer on equalization rates. According to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a nonprofit whose goals include promoting “efficient and equitable tax systems,” each state has a unique set of regulations for property assessment. Maryland and Montana handle assessments across their states rather than leaving it up to municipalities. States such as Rhode Island and Nebraska have different assessment classifications based on whether property is residential, commercial, agricultural or industrial. New York does not differentiate. “We passed a resolution five months ago pretty much telling the state the way assessments are done in New York is crazy and the state needs to do something to fix it,” Salina Supervisor Nick Paro told the Star-Review. “When there’s taxing entities [like school districts] that cross town lines, that causes inequities.” Until the state agrees to overhaul the system, it’s up to towns to walk the line between balancing their budgets and keeping homeowners from being overwhelmed by mounting property taxes. Assessments for 2023 will be released in the spring, and Paro said he does not foresee a huge change for land in Salina next year. “We’re a pretty much built-out town. We’re not going to see large residential tracts being built,” he said. “We’re going to see a lot of redevelopment projects, but not new development.” With Micron expected to draw 125,000 or more people to Onondaga County over the next 20 years, the region will need plenty of housing. As a “community between two cities” — Syracuse to the south and the 60,000resident town of Clay to the north — Paro said Salina is an attractive prospect for firsttime homebuyers. “Salina has some of the most affordable housing in Central New York,” Paro said. “I
Equalization rates
Here is a breakdown of the 2022 equalization rate for each town in Onondaga County. The rate is calculated by dividing a municipality’s total assessed value by its total market value. A rate of 100 means property is assessed at 100% market value — in other words, if you bought or sold your home for $200,000 then your town bases your taxes on an assessment of $200,000. • Camillus: 97 • Cicero: 86 • Clay: 3.34 • Elbridge: 85 • Fabius: 78 • Geddes: 70 • LaFayette: 75 • Marcellus: 94 • Onondaga: 78 • Otisco: 1.7 • Pompey: 78 • Skaneateles: 75 • Spafford: 65 Note: DeWitt, Lysander, Manlius, Salina, Tully and Van Buren all had a rate of 100 for 2022. Lysander, Salina and Van Buren have opted to use equalization rates beginning in 2023. Learn more about equalization rates from the NYS Department of Tax and Finance: tax.ny.gov/pit/ property/learn/eqrates.htm/. Data: NYS Office of Real Property Tax Services, orps1.orpts.ny.gov/cfapps/ MuniPro hope people are going to be looking at Salina and be able to enjoy some of the amenities that are just around the corner. I think Salina’s positioned to have a bright future with Micron coming.”
Lincoln Avenue residents received a Christmas gift from the town of Cicero last week: The Cicero Town Board voted unanimously Dec. 14 to deny Gabelry Development’s request for a zone change to build a cluster of multi-family homes and senior housing in their neighborhood. Gabelry Development, LLC, had sought a change from Regional Commercial to Planned Unit Development (PUD) for the two parcels at 8010 and 8016 Brewerton Road next to the EchoPark Automotive dealership. The Apex at Metro North was being marketed as an “unparalleled luxury living experience” with as many as 300 residential units made up of townhomes, garden-style apartments and flats with ground floor garages. At a public hearing in October, Lincoln Avenue residents voiced their opposition to the project, citing concerns about traffic, privacy and sidewalk maintenance. In July, the Cicero Planning Board referred the matter to the town board with a number of comments and concerns. While the area’s existing traffic infrastructure and utilities could support the 278 apartment units with mitigation measures in place, the planning board concluded that “the layout of the multi-family portion of the project does not create and sustain a desirable and stable environment.” The planning board found the amount of impervious area in the site plan “excessive” and negatively impacting aesthetics, snow removal, landscaping and green space. “In particular, the Flats units are considered to create development that is too intense and not consistent with other development in the Town of Cicero,” the planning board’s findings read. The planning board suggested using the northeast corner of the site to “reduce the intensity of the development,” increase green space and landscaping, and allow for adequate parking for residents. Per town code, the planning board recommends a minimum of two parking spaces per multi-family unit of up to two bedrooms, three parking spaces for units with three or more bedrooms, and 1.5 parking spaces for senior units. Gabelry’s application includes parking spaces inside garages that are only accessible if vehicles in the surface parking spaces outside are moved. Town code “requires parking spaces to be directly accessible from an interior driveway.” Councilor Jon Karp read the town board’s findings — six pages in total — at the Dec. 14 town board meeting. The town board’s report included many of the planning board’s concerns and expanded on the potential traffic implications of the proposal. Karp said a traffic study found no significant county-wide or inter-county traffic implications but the project would negatively impact local traffic. He said the Route 11 corridor between Lincoln Avenue and Caughdenoy Road is a “high-accident location” that ranks above the statewide average for similar facilities. Allowing the Metro North PUD would add more trips at peak traffic hours and cause a downgrade in services at existing signalized intersections. The proposal also does not include the impact of Micron’s coming development. “We do not believe the negative traffic impact due to increased accidents can be mitigated,” Karp said. “The potential disruptions to residents living near the project cannot be mitigated and therefore we find the proposed project impact to be unacceptable to our residents.” The town board concluded that the site is “better suited for commercial purposes,” which is the parcels’ existing classification.
Volume 130, Number 51 The Star-Review is published weekly by Eagle News. Office of Publication: 2501 James St., Suite 100, Syracuse, NY 13206. Periodical Postage Paid at Syracuse, NY 13220, USPS 316060. POSTMASTER: Send change of address to Star-Review, 2501 James St., Suite 100, Syracuse, NY 13206.
business news: Laboratory Alliance names new CEO.
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Sports news: C-NS, Liverpool wrestlers sweet league foes.
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business ��������������������� 3 Calendar �������������������� 2 Editorial ��������������������� 4 Obituaries ������������������ 9
deaths ������������������������� 9 PennySaver ���������������� 6 Sports ������������������ 10-11