Payments in Lieu of Taxes

A hospital and a college are Elmira's two largest property owners. Together they hold over $88 million in assessed value. They use city roads, fire protection and water every day. In property taxes they pay almost nothing. There is a tool the city can use.

What Is a PILOT?
A PILOT, or Payment in Lieu of Taxes, is a deal between a city and a tax-exempt organization. It is not a tax. It is a payment the organization agrees to make.
The simple version: State law says hospitals, colleges, churches and most nonprofits do not pay property tax. Elmira cannot change that law. It cannot send Arnot Health a tax bill. The exemption is written into state law, and no city can override it.

What the city can do is ask. A PILOT is a separate deal, worked out between the city and the institution. In it, the institution agrees to put something toward city services. That might be cash. It might be services the city would otherwise have to buy. It might be tied to a specific program. The institution keeps its exemption. The city gets money it would never otherwise see.

Other cities have done this. Cornell University pays Ithaca $4 million a year under a voluntary agreement signed in 2023. Yale pays New Haven over $23 million. In Baltimore, Johns Hopkins and other nonprofits pay under a PILOT that rises from $6M to $12M a year by 2030.

Elmira collects PILOTs too. There is a federal payment-in-lieu line, plus tax-abatement deals routed through the county IDA and housing programs. Together they came to about $569,000 in the 2026 adopted budget. From its largest tax-exempt anchors, though, it gets very little. Elmira College pays $5,000 a year, unchanged since 1994. Arnot Health pays $17,357, or about 1.1% of the city tax its exempt property would otherwise carry.
Elmira College holds the property value of 741 typical Elmira homes. It pays what less than two of them pay. The college owns $34.8 million of assessed property in the city, all of it exempt from city, county and school taxes. The median Elmira home is assessed at $47,000, and its owner pays about $3,064 a year in combined property taxes. The college pays $5,000. The City Chamberlain's office says that figure has not changed since the 1994 agreement. It is small enough that the city does not book it with the PILOTs at all. It sits under "Other General Department Income," account 412890, in the adopted budget.

If Elmira College paid 1% of the value of its property each year, that would be $348,000.

We have not obtained the executed 1994 agreement itself; a records request is open.
$339.6M Fully exempt assessed value
656 parcels in Elmira — zero property tax
38.9% Share of the city's total assessed value
that generates no tax revenue
$5,000/yr Elmira College's PILOT, unchanged since 1994
on $34.8M of exempt property — less than 2 median homes pay

Why the city raises tax rates instead

When the city needs more money, the easiest move is to raise the rate on the property that already pays. The money arrives fast and it is predictable. Nobody has to face a reassessment fight or sit through a PILOT negotiation. The bill lands on the same parcels every time, mostly working-class homeowners and small landlords. Exempt institutions do not feel it, and neither do owners whose assessments have sat still for years.

A PILOT with Arnot Health is the harder road. It would take years of negotiation and steady political will, and whatever Arnot agreed to pay would likely fall well short of a full tax bill. But look at the alternative. Raising rates on a shrinking taxable base is a spiral, and it ends somewhere the city cannot go.

What the Exemptions Shelter
The table lists Elmira's major fully exempt institutions and their 2025 assessed values. Next to each is the tax bill that value would carry if it were taxable. Read those as illustrations. None of these owners is required to pay them, and a few make voluntary payments well below the figure shown.
About the rate: Every city parcel carries four charges. The City of Elmira takes $29.98 per $1,000 of assessed value (2025). Chemung County takes $8.06, the Community College $1.53, and the Elmira City School District $25.61. Add them up and it is $65.19 per $1,000 of assessed value. That is the rate used below. These are printed line items off a real 2025 city tax bill, not an estimate. Parcels in the library and sewer districts pay $1.62 more. We use the lower figure so nothing here is overstated. Every value comes from the 2025 assessment roll.

Note the basis. $65.19 is per $1,000 of assessed value. Measured against market value instead, the same taxes come to $39.64 per $1,000. One tax bill, two different yardsticks. Never swap one rate for the other.

Correction, 5 August 2026. This page used to use $53.50 combined and $18.49 for the city. Both were miscalculated. Both were also applied to assessed values, when they were closer to full-value rates. That understated every theoretical bill below by about 18%. Fixing it makes the institutions' payments a smaller share of what they would owe, not a larger one. Arnot's $17,357 is 0.5%, not 0.6%. The college's $5,000 is 0.22%, not 0.3%. Full correction notice →
Institution Category Assessed Value Theoretical City Bill
($29.98/$1,000 assessed)		 Theoretical Combined Bill
($65.19/$1,000 assessed)		 Notes

* State-owned parcels, such as the prison, are a different case. New York pays cities Aid and Incentives for Municipalities (AIM) money, which partly makes up for state property being exempt. AIM is not a PILOT, and the amounts have little to do with what the property would owe in tax. † Apartment complexes held through the county's Industrial Development Agency (IDA), the agency that hands out tax breaks to development projects, usually come with a PILOT built into the deal. Amounts vary. These are a different animal from the voluntary PILOTs on this page. They are negotiated tax breaks, not contributions from exempt institutions, and they cost the city money instead of bringing it in. We take them apart deal by deal in the IDA section. Municipal utility parcels, meaning the Water Board, are left out of the PILOT discussion by convention. The Water Board is a city-owned business with its own fair-return question. See The Water Board.

Arnot Health System in Focus
Arnot Health is the largest tax-exempt property owner in Elmira outside government and the prison. It is also a regional health system with about $900M in revenue, and it uses city streets, water and fire protection every day.
Arnot Health runs two hospitals in the City of Elmira: Arnot Ogden Medical Center at 600 Roe Ave and St. Joseph's Hospital at 555 St. Joseph's Blvd. It also runs Ira Davenport Memorial Hospital in Bath, and many outpatient and specialty clinics across the Southern Tier. The system's main operating entity, Arnot Ogden Medical Center, reported about $457 million in revenue on its most recent Form 990 filing (FY2024). The same filing shows CEO pay above $1 million. Its exemption rests on nonprofit status under state law RPTL §420-a and IRS 501(c)(3).
~$54.4M Arnot system exempt assessed value
18 wholly exempt parcels in the City of Elmira
~$1.63M Theoretical annual city tax bill
at $29.98 per $1,000 assessed — never collected
~$3.55M Theoretical combined tax bill
city + county + college + school, per $1,000 assessed
$17,357 Current annual PILOT payment
1.1% of the city bill; 0.5% of the combined one

Where the $17,357 comes from: account 410810 of the city's 2026 adopted budget worksheet, which itemises Arnot Ogden 1 OG at $16,016.14 and Arnot Ogden 2 OG at $1,341.19. Two things we do not know and will not guess at. First, which parcels or agreement these payments come from. Nothing matching "Arnot" appears in the county IDA's project data, so they are not IDA deals. Second, whether Arnot pays anything to the county or the school district. The city's budget is the only book we can see. A records request is open.

The "community benefit" requirement

The Affordable Care Act and IRS rules require nonprofit hospitals to do two things. Every three years they must run a Community Health Needs Assessment, or CHNA. They must also publish a community benefit report listing what they give the public in return for their tax exemption. Arnot Health's report is public. It is the hospital's own case for why its exemption is earned.

Those benefits usually include charity care, meaning treatment given to uninsured or underinsured patients that nobody pays for. They also include Medicaid shortfalls, medical training, and community health programs. Cities and hospitals argue about one question. Are these things the hospital would not otherwise do? Or are they the cost of running a hospital, which a for-profit would carry too?

In a PILOT negotiation, Arnot would likely point to that spending and call it payment enough. The city has three answers. Much of the spending is reimbursed by Medicaid and Medicare. It serves the whole region, not just Elmira taxpayers. And it does nothing about the roads, sewers, water and fire service Elmira pays for.

PILOT scenarios for Arnot

$101K/yr 10% of theoretical city bill
Minimal — covers barely more than city administrative overhead
$252K/yr 25% of theoretical city bill
Modest — comparable to a small capital project funded annually
$503K/yr 50% of theoretical city bill
Meaningful — ~5% of Arnot's theoretical full tax liability recurring annually
Revenue Scenarios — All Non-Governmental Exemptions
Suppose Elmira got PILOT agreements from all of its major exempt institutions outside government and the prison. That means health care, education and civic groups. Here is what the city alone would collect at three payment rates.
$220K/yr 10% PILOT — all non-governmental exemptions
Arnot + College + LECOM + Clemens
$550K/yr 25% PILOT — all non-governmental exemptions
$1.10M/yr 50% PILOT — all non-governmental exemptions
For context: Elmira's city budget runs about $40M to $47M a year (2025–2026). A 25% PILOT on all non-governmental exempt property would add roughly $550,000 a year. That does not transform a budget, but it is not nothing. At 50% it reaches $1.1M a year. That is about what a 2-point rise in the city tax rate would raise, without touching a single homeowner's bill. And a PILOT arrives every year. A one-time grant does not.

These figures cover the city levy only. A PILOT that also covered the school and county shares would be much larger. It would also mean bringing the school district and the county government to the same table.
How Other Cities Have Done This
College and hospital towns across the country have PILOT agreements with their large nonprofits. Some are token gestures. Some bring in real money every year.
The common thread: ask when they need something. The best PILOT deals get made when the institution wants a zoning variance, an expansion permit, a city-owned lot, or tax-exempt bonds through the IDA. In each case the city holds a card the institution needs, and the PILOT rides along with the deal. Cities that wait for an institution to volunteer usually get nothing. Cities that raise the PILOT question in every approval build up small payments that add up.

Elmira is not New Haven. Arnot Health is not Yale, and Elmira does not bargain from the same position. But the shape of it is the same, only smaller. The city issues the zoning decisions, building permits and utility connections the health system needs to run and to grow. The question is whether the city brings up a PILOT while it still has them.

What It Would Take
Elmira will get a PILOT program by negotiating, not by waiting for a new law. Here is what each opening looks like in practice.
No state law requires nonprofits to pay a PILOT. Bills have been introduced in Albany. The notable ones would make large nonprofits, those over $100M in revenue, pay the municipalities where they hold a lot of property. None has passed. The politics are hard. Hospital and university lobbies are strong. Legislators also do not want to set a precedent that squeezes the biggest employers in a struggling region.

So the realistic path is not to wait for Albany. It is to write PILOT language into the city's own approval process. Then any time Arnot, Elmira College or LECOM comes to the city for a land use approval, the PILOT question comes up automatically.

Where the city has an opening

The Arnot expansion opportunity

Arnot Health has been upgrading buildings and expanding services across its campuses. Any large project that needs city approval is an opening. None of this has to be hostile. The health system is one of the area's biggest employers and it anchors the local economy. But the conversation has to actually happen, out loud, with the city holding specific numbers and a reasonable ask.

Here is one reasonable opening ask. A 10-year PILOT at 20% of the city tax the property would owe, or about $201K a year. Tie it to assessed value, and review it at year five. Against Arnot's revenue that is a modest number, and it signals that the city means it. The alternative is to keep raising rates on taxable property while the exempt share grows. That is also a choice, and its results are already visible on the tax rolls.

← Back to City of Elmira overview
Data: NYS ORPTS 2025 assessment roll via data.ny.gov. The tax rates used here are the printed line items from a 2025 City of Elmira tax bill, as set out in the rate note above. Arnot Ogden's Form 990 filings are public at ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Comparable-city PILOTs: Cornell/Ithaca, Yale/New Haven, Princeton, Boston, Johns Hopkins/Baltimore, Albany.