One Big, Burdensome Building

Tompkins legislators commit to fund Center of Government, build it Downtown

By Robert Lynch; June 4, 2025

 “What’s the worst-case scenario?  How much is this going to raise my taxes? 

Tompkins County legislator Lee Shurtleff

“We don’t know yet.”

Tompkins County Administrator Korsah Akumfi.

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They debated.  They voted.  They waited briefly for self-congratulating applause.  No one clapped. That should tell us a lot.

Driven by exhaustion, exasperation and anxiety far more than by excitement, the Tompkins County Legislature late Tuesday approved its firmest-ever commitment to build a new Center of Government and to build it in downtown Ithaca.

By a nine-to-four vote, following more than a full hour of discussion, legislators endorsed a resolution June third closely aligned with one recommended earlier that day by an oversight committee.  The Legislature approved funding up to $50 Million to construct the mammoth new building on downtown land that the county bought for the project nearly four years ago.

The four-story (or higher) office structure adjacent to the Tompkins County Courthouse and DeWitt Park would shelter departments either scattered around Ithaca currently or cramped in undersized facilities on the County’s so-called “downtown campus.”

“We have been talking about this for at least six years,” one of the exasperated, Lansing legislator Deborah Dawson, observed as she criticized the sluggish progress that’s dogged the building project for a half-decade.  “And the reason that the price keeps going up is because we keep talking about it.  Nothing gets cheaper.”

All three legislative Republicans, plus Ithaca Democrat Travis Brooks, voted against the resolution. Among those dissenters was Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown, who’d earlier in the day supported a nearly-identical measure unanimously recommended by the Legislature’s Downtown Facilities Special Committee.  Brown chairs the committee. 

In one way or another for much of this millennium, Tompkins County officials have advanced the Center of Government concept.  Latest chapters in that quest reach back about seven years.  As the pages turn, the price always goes up.

The latest cost estimate for the building’s design, construction, furniture purchases, and related expenses, together with subsequent repurposing of existing facilities, has grown 25 percent just in recent weeks.  Projected cost had been $40 Million.  By contrast, when the County Legislature pulled the Center of Government idea from years-long dormancy in early 2019, the estimated cost had been pegged at no more than $18.5-19.5 Million.

Do the math:  More than 2.5 times the cost to construct the building now rather than then. Who thinks inflation will stop?

In committee Tuesday, Dryden legislator Mike Lane, the body’s longest-tenured lawmaker, hinted at a project cost of $60 Million.  Still another trusted source warned the price could climb to $75 Million.

And during the eight hours between the Downtown Facilities Committee’s vote and committee member Anne Koreman’s bringing her modified resolution to the Legislature’s floor Tuesday night, the building’s footprint had grown from 45,000 to 48,000 square feet. (It was explained that the architect had forgotten to provide for hallways and stairwells.)

Yes, full legislative action on the committee’s recommendation could have waited.  Maybe, it should have.  But the persistent impatience of newly-named Tompkins County Administrator Korsah Akumfi—on the job for only four-and-a-half months—has prodded the Legislature to act sooner rather than later.

“There needs to be a commitment.  There is a need for that commitment to be made right now so that we can continue with the project process and not look back,” Akumfi advised the Downtown Facilities Committee when it met in the morning.

“This resolution is not a binding document on any contractor terms or anything,” Akumfi informed committee members.  “It’s just a direction from all of you to tell us that there is a commitment for us to move the project forward.”

This month’s rapid-fire rush to commit financing to the Center of Government marks the first significant legislative promise to proceed with it since the County Legislature in September 2023 passed a “Resolution to proceed with space, architectural, and engineering plans” for the project. 

The 2023 resolution authorized Tompkins County to “proceed with plans” for the building and to solicit a design consultant.  The legislature found that architect and has since invested at least nine million taxpayer dollars toward designs and land acquisition.

But the degree to which Tuesday night’s action locks in Tompkins County to putting its money where lawmakers’  mouths rest  depends on whom you ask.

Questioned whether the resolution required a larger-than-usual majority because it commits money, County Attorney Morey Josephson said it did not.  “It’s aspirational as opposed to a fixed expenditure,” Josephson explained.

But later, Deputy County Administrator Norma Jayne took a different position.

“What I believe is happening with this resolution is we are committing funding,” Jayne said of the resolution’s impact.  “If you vote for this tonight, you are committing to spending money at some time down the road in the next few years because you can’t start the project without planning to continue it, seeing it through.”

Korsah Akumfi’s insistence on a firmer financial commitment appears driven by his new-on-board observation that decisions toward building a Center of Government have been too tentative, made without financial promises to undergird them.

Akumfi’s own Administration Department will relocate to temporary quarters across town in coming weeks so that the office of Information Technology can briefly occupy the third floor of the “Old Jail” while I.T.’s current home readies to be torn down.  To enable the Center of Government’s construction, three existing structures, including “Building C” on East Buffalo Street, where I.T. resides, must be razed.  Schedules call for Building C’s deconstruction by late-winter.

Timetables envisioned by the project’s consultant, Holt Architects, predict groundbreaking for the Center of Government in January 2027, with its completion in November or December of 2028.  A subsequent renovation and repurposing of other County offices would follow.

But the rapidly escalating cost of all this new work worries some, particularly the legislators who opposed Tuesday’s resolution.

“I tried to pinpoint the cost of this,” Randy Brown said, saying he’d talked with Holt’s design team.  ”And they just don’t know.  They don’t want to commit to anything.”

“I’m hearing two things; it’s not a commitment, but it is a commitment. And it signals that we’re going to go ahead,” Groton’s Lee Shurtleff, another of the dissenters, said. 

But Shurtleff has multiple worries.  Sales tax revenues are flat. Property assessments aren’t rising as they were.  “Sin tax” revenues are “negligible,” he said.  Investment income is declining.  Reserve funds need propping up.  And future state assistance remains all too uncertain.

“I can’t in good conscience support tagging that number ($50 Million) not having a better idea of what the implication on the future tax rate may be,” the Groton Republican concluded.

So Lee Shurtleff sought the tax impact answer as best he could and got a response less-than-assuring.

“What’s the worst-case scenario?  Shurtleff asked Administrator Akumfi. “How much is this going to raise my taxes?  Do we have an idea how to answer that?”

“We don’t know yet,” Akumfi responded.  Tax impact depends on variables, like bond interest rates.  It’s a “combination of many factors,” Akumfi said.

Dryden’s Greg Mezey guesstimated that project bonding could hike the tax levy by about four percent.

But while Shurtleff expressed reticence, Democrat Amanda Champion had grown impatient.

“I think that if we do not pass this tonight, we should forget the whole project,” Champion insisted.  Elections are this fall, she noted, and as many as nine new legislators will replace incumbents, including her.  They’ll have new opinions and they could take the Center of Government “back to the drawing board,” she warned.

“And if there isn’t the desire to build a Center of Government, let’s just drop it,” Champion enounced.

As for whether the $50 Million building should go downtown or be put somewhere else, legislators have pretty much resolved to keep what they’d build putting a shadow over DeWitt Park.

“I think the ship has sailed in this,” Randy Brown said of the Downtown preference.  Downtown’s prospects grew after the New York State Office of Historic Preservation (SHPO) granted its verbal consent to the existing buildings’ removal.  A written confirmation will likely follow soon.  “If we’re going to do anything, it’s going to be downtown.” Brown reasoned.

Deborah Dawson agreed.  “If it’s not downtown, it’s going to be somewhere in the burbs, she predicted.  And Ithaca is the only place that’s centrally located and reachable equitably from everywhere.  “If you put it in Groton, people in Enfield are not going to be very happy,” Dawson concluded.

That said, many would reason that it’s just as easy and quick for someone in the western towns to reach the airport area or the malls in Lansing as it is to navigate Ithaca’s parking-deprived downtown streets.

Ithaca’s Travis Brooks was the only Democrat on the Legislature to oppose Tuesday’s resolution. He rattled off his reasons.

“I don’t really feel this is the best place for this,” Brooks said of the downtown site, referencing parking and traffic congestion concerns.  But there’s also cost.

“I can’t believe this thing is only going to be $50 Million, especially by the time we get started,” Brooks cautioned. “I’m definitely not going to vote for it just on the fact that I don’t think it should be downtown to begin with, and it’s not going to house all of our downtown departments, and it’s not going to be $50 Million.”  He predicts it’ll cost more.

As part of its outreach effort, perhaps intended to “sell” a hefty, eight-figure construction project to reluctant residents, Tompkins County will host five “Community Engagement” meetings in various municipalities beginning in mid-June.  The first will be held in Groton Wednesday, June 11, followed by a hastily-scheduled session at the Enfield Community Center, Thursday, the 12^th.

A staff-scripted printout states that the Engagement Meetings’ purpose is the “documentation of community needs and priorities,” to relate “stories illustrating current challenges,” and to “identify metrics from the perspective of the community.”

Perhaps the most meaningful “metrics” would have sought answers to questions that legislators chose to answer for themselves, and by themselves, Tuesday night: Questions like, “Why build a Center of Government in the first place?”  And if so, “why build it downtown?”

“If you adopt this resolution tonight,” this writer, Enfield’s Councilperson, told the Legislature during evening privilege-of-the floor comments, “you are essentially putting the cart before the horse.”

As to allowing the public to speak first, legislator Champion thought differently,.  “If you have not had enough time at this point, you have not been paying attention,” the animated Ithaca legislator insisted.

But why this sudden rush to strike fiscal commitments that never held priority status a few months ago?  Korsah Akumfi may be the reason.  Hired away from Schoharie County late last year and haven taken office only in January, Akumfi had formerly served as County Administrator in a place governed by a Town-elected Board of Supervisors, not an independently-elected County Legislature. 

The dynamics could be different.  Supervisors drawn from varied constituencies may demand more guidance and delegate more power.  At times, Korsah Akumfi’s management style here has resembled that of an elected County Executive. But he does not hold that more powerful office.  Over the decades, Tompkins County legislators have closely guarded their power.  They remain in charge.  The County Administrator answers to them, not the other way around.  But at least in this instance, the new Administrator’s demand for “clarity” in the Center of Government’s path to a groundbreaking has encouraged those we’ve elected to comply with the Administrator’s request.

“It’s a big number, it’s a big commitment,” Democratic legislator Rich John acknowledged before casting his vote in favor of Center of Government funding. “But you have to do it to keep the ship sailing in the direction we’ve all talked about for all this time,” he said. 

Yes, there could be “this huge surprise,” John admitted.  The federal government could do something “that just destroys our fiscal condition,” John admitted.   Interest rates could “go bonkers.”  The Center of Government could prove unbuildable under those circumstances.  And if so, John said, County Government could cancel its plans; “We can say no.”

“There’s real cost to saying no, to opting out” Rich John recognized, “but we can do that, and a responsible legislature would consider doing that, if conditions change radically.”

But for now, opting into a Center of Government, building it despite escalating cost, has become Tompkins County’s preference, and to do so whether or not those our elected leaders represent truly want it or not.  Hold the applause.

****

Note:  On June 5, Tompkins County announced that the location for its Thursday, June 12 Community Engagement Session in Enfield to discuss the proposed Center of Government project had been moved from the Town of Enfield facilities earlier identified to the Enfield Community Center.  County officials said the relocation was to better accommodate attendees and staff. (A previous version of this story had listed the initially-designated location.) / RL

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County proposes big EMS expansion; Bangs pushes back

Department proposal would hike a 500k annual program to $3 Million

By Robert Lynch; May 28, 2025

Improving local emergency medical services and speeding ambulance response times, particularly to patients in Tompkins County’s rural areas, has suddenly gotten a lot more complicated.

Two supposedly complimentary—though potentially conflicting—proposals that would increasingly involve Tompkins County Government in the emergency treatment and transport business got their first, individual airings May 27 before the Tompkins County Legislature’s Public Safety Committee.  But after the committee’s 90-minute discussion Tuesday had ended, no clear plan emerged as to in which way emergency medical services (EMS) will actually go.

“We’ve kind of been proceeding on parallel tracks,” committee Chair Rich John observed of those choices even before staff from Tompkins County’s Department of Emergency Response (“DOER”) and Paul Bishop, Project Director of the consulting firm Center for Governmental Research (“CGR”), had taken their respective turns before the committee.

CGR asked only for money and a contract.  Bishop requested County Government spend $48,000 for his Rochester-based firm to study EMS’s problems.  Under his proposal, CGR would make recommendations and then outline available options to the County Legislature by September 30. 

DOER’s proposal is far more concrete—not to mention ambitious.  And its concept has already ruffled a few feathers along the way.  DOER would expand the already existing, but now operationally modest, County-run Rapid Medical Response (RMR) service to become a backup ambulance operation of sorts.

Under DOER’s self-proclaimed “EMS Strategic Vision,” RMR’s annual spending would skyrocket five-fold. 

DOER’s “Strategic Vision” would have Tompkins County buy three ambulances, increase RMR’s full- and part-time medical staff from its current six people to as many as 30 (plus Per Diem help), and grow a $546,828 budget to just over $3 Million.

“We came up with this program to help augment our current transport agencies and not replace them, Joe Milliman, Tompkins County’s EMS Program Manager, informed the committee.  He joined Director of Emergency Response Michael Stitley for the May 27 presentation.

But the Rapid Medical Response program Milliman and Stitley envision to fill perceived needs and to serve its limited purpose is a far cry from how the program began and what it remains at present.

Aside from the multiples of increased cost, RMR would expand from only EMT-level “Basic Life Support” (BLS) to also include “Advanced Life Support,” (ALS), higher-level care that Stitley says requires a trained paramedic to deliver.  Under the “Vision,” one ambulance would run 24/7, the second, daytimes-only.  The existing service currently runs from only 7 AM to 7 PM, weekdays.

RMR was conceived and launched in April of last year after officials sensed a shortage of volunteers, a shortage that had depleted the ranks of local fire department rescue squads, particularly during daytimes.  RMR presently employs Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT’s) only.  It stations them one to a car, and utilizes pickup trucks and SUV’s repurposed from the County Government’s motor pool. 

The current RMR service has no ambulance.  Any new units purchased would provide only basic life support.  DOER budgets them at $150,000 apiece.

Nowhere in its written proposal does DOER specify a start-up date.  Nor was it stated at the meeting.  But one infers that the transformation could take place as soon as 2026.  After the committee adjourned, Director Stitley acknowledged that the service could begin as soon as next year; if not that soon, then in 2027.

The Public Safety Committee took no vote on any of the Emergency Medical Response choices Tuesday, leaving matters very much up in the air.  Instead, Rich John signaled that he’ll offer a so-called “Member-filed Resolution” for the full Legislature to consider, probably in June.  The member initiative would authorize some revised version of the Center for Governmental Research’s initial proposal. 

We will “refine the scope,” John said of the study after the meeting had adjourned.  John suggested the consultant’s fee would likely fall below the $48,000 Bishop had quoted.  The chairman also assured that the study will include DOER’s expansive model among its considered options. 

The Department of Emergency Response’s heretofore undisclosed proposal emerged almost from nowhere.  Its first disclosure came in an attachment to the committee’s online agenda packet, posted on Tompkins County’s meeting portal a few days before the meeting.  Quite likely, some in government didn’t want details publicized ahead of time.

And that reticence could be for good reason. 

As Milliman outlined his department’s initiative, several officers of the privately-owned and Ithaca-based Bangs Ambulance, Tompkins County’s largest transport agency, sat in the gallery.  Invited by Rich John after the presentation to come forth and speak, company president Tim Bangs and Board of Directors member Brian August took polite, though direct hits at the DOER proposal.  They viewed DOER’S plan as being too costly to the taxpayer and too demoralizing to the volunteer rescue squads that have partnered with Bangs for decades to save lives.

Regarding the money, Tim Bangs asked, “For the 80 years that Bangs Ambulance has been providing that service to Ithaca and Tompkins County, what has Tompkins County paid for that?  Nothing.”

“It’s hard for a private service to compete against a public entity,” Brian August stated.  He reminded all that public employees receive lucrative public benefits.  August feared that if RMR were expanded, some Bangs’ staff would quit or downsize to part-time so as to join Tompkins County’s workforce and then reap the benefits.

Tim Bangs advised the committee that when the RMR service launched last year, “the generic staffing level” amounted to “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”  One employer’s gain was another one’s loss given the short supply of EMT’s and paramedics both in Tompkins County and across New York State.

And a critical read of the staffing plan to implement the “EMS Strategic Vision,” suggests that Milliman and Stitley have employed a healthy amount of wishful thinking.

“The biggest question that we get is where are we going to get the staff,” Milliman acknowledged to the committee.

“Tapping into the local colleges,” the EMS program manager mentioned as one idea.  Continuing to work with Tompkins Cortland Community College and Syracuse’s Upstate Medical Center to bring EMS training courses to Tompkins County was another the plan tossed out.

But the major expansion DOER envisions requires not just lower-level EMT’s, but also higher-skilled paramedics.  Tim Bangs claimed that the nearest paramedic training schools require travel to Elmira, Syracuse, or Binghamton.

And then there’s the issue of volunteer morale; the attitudinal adjustment that comes when a firehouse volunteer learns that what he’s doing for free has become a task somebody else is doing for pay.

Tim Bangs said he’d heard the complaints when the RMR program began.  Volunteers would say, “If this call comes out… and I know that the County is getting paid to go to that call, I’m going to sit in the station, and I’m not going to go because I’m not getting paid for it.  I’m a volunteer.  If they’re going to get paid, let them go on the call.”

Tim Bangs’ advice to the committee: “We would love to see instead of slamming the door on these first response agencies, let’s try to rebuild them.”

Yet “doing nothing is not an option,” Dryden Councilperson Dan Lamb stressed when Rich John invited outside comment.  Lamb is among the select few who sit on the Emergency Planning and Preparedness Subcommittee of the Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG).  It was the subcommittee that in separate meetings first tapped Paul Bishop’s advice for EMS restructuring ideas, and then at a second session, heard DOER’s proposal.

This writer, Enfield’s TCCOG representative, attended the early-April session with Bishop, but was then requested by the subcommittee’s chair, Caroline Supervisor Mark Witmer, not to divulge its substance; only to recite  a generalized statement Witmer had dictated.  The later meeting with DOER was even more shrouded.  Not even the full TCCOG membership was made aware of it when TCCOG convened May 22.

Witmer Tuesday defended his decision to keep subcommittee sessions private, arguing that the subcommittee is only a “working group,” exempt from the Open Meetings Law.

But more important than staffing, the key component to EMS’s reimagining is its cost.  How will the bills get paid?  If the Rapid Medical Response service’s budget is to balloon from a half-Million dollars to nearly six times that amount, who will pay the difference?

“New York State is not coming to save us,” Dan Lamb, a leader well-connected to Albany power-politics, cautioned the committee.  “We’ve got to fix this on our own.”  Yet how?

When funding for the current, more modestly-priced RMR program was first discussed, several cost-sharing ideas came forth.  Back then, talk was that Tompkins County would pay a portion, maybe half, of the expense; local municipalities would fund the remainder.  Under one option, the Town of Enfield’s share would exceed $58,000.  That request later fell to $10,000, and still later dropped to zero, but only after a one-time state grant came through to underwrite the expense for 2025.

No similar lifeline will likely come for the year ahead, Director Stitley predicted after the meeting.  Meanwhile, County Administrator Korsah Akumfi implied during the session that municipal cost-sharing remains very much on the table.

“It’s not worth paying for a service or a study (like, for example, Paul Bishop’s consultancy) if there’s no commitment to implement,” Akumfi said. “So we need to have that commitment from all the municipalities that we will buy into the idea so that it can be successful.  Without that commitment, it will not be successful,” the Administrator reasoned.

There’s an elusive, yet pervasive unease one gets from examining DOER’s suddenly-surfaced prescription to Tompkins County’s EMS crisis, if indeed a crisis truly exists.   One perceives a proposal slapped together too fast and founded on too many impulsive assumptions.  And one discerns a plan that grants all-too fleeting consideration to the all-important bottom line:  the money. 

Public Safety Committee members grasped that unease Tuesday.  And the deeper one digs into the Milliman-Stitley vision statement, the more essential Paul Bishop’s more detached perspective may prove advisable.  An experienced consultant may find holes in the plan ready to poke.

Example:  DOER wants Tompkins County to buy three ambulances.  Paul Bishop’s reality check:  “If you were to order an ambulance today… you wouldn’t see it for two, two-and-a-half years, if you wanted a new one.”

Or staffing: “It’s harder to find EMT’s and paramedics than it was even three or four years ago,” Bishop provided.

Sometimes, third-party expertise is worth what you pay for it.  Chairman Rich John and the Public Safety Committee seemed to grasp that concept Tuesday.   

Nevertheless, the Department of Emergency Response’s “EMS Strategic Vision” has its well-placed cheerleaders.  They include Dryden’s Dan Lamb and Trumansburg Mayor Rordan Hart.  Both leaders have professionally-paid municipal ambulance services within their towns, and both sit with Caroline’s Witmer on the TCCOG Emergency Preparedness Subcommittee.

“From the standpoint of the Village of Trumansburg, we strongly, strongly support the notion of the expansion of the RMR program,” Hart emphasized to the Public Safety Committee.  “For me, this is really a public policy question, not an EMS or EMT operational or a structural question,” Hart stated. 

Mayor Hart would have Tompkins County treat EMS like it does law enforcement, consider it a department like that of the Sheriff, and budget the service accordingly.

As many of 26 percent of Trumansburg Ambulance’s calls go to places outside of T-Burg’s service area.  Many gap-fill for Bangs.  And many calls lose money.  That out-of-area rate stands as high as 40 percent in Dryden.

“The thing that we can’t do is wait another year on this,” Dryden’s Lamb told the committee, “because my taxpayers are kicking in about a half-million dollars a year going outside of my town, and that’s a really hard thing for me to justify to the people that I serve.”

That said, equally hard to justify for anyone in Enfield government would be appropriating some large annual sum—maybe in the six-figures—as the local “cost-share” for a County-run, stand-by service that some may say duplicates work of the already well-equipped Enfield Volunteer Fire Company’s Rescue Squad.

But for those who might think that way—perhaps including Tim Bangs—Mayor Hart counters they’re living in the past.

“There isn’t in my opinion a way to make Tompkins County 1985 again, for lack of a better phrase,” Hart told the committee, “and resurrect a volunteer first response situation that simply doesn’t exist anymore.”

Then again, if Mayor Hart stands correct, where does all that new money come from; three million dollars of new money?  No one’s offered that answer yet.

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The Flood Law leaders like, locals don’t

Enfield regulations impair our freedom, critics charge

by Councilperson Robert Lynch, May 26, 2025

“I don’t think anybody wants flood insurance. What they want is to be able to get a mortgage.”

Enfield Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, Town Board meeting, May 14.

“It seems like a bunch of bull to me.”

Enfield landowner John Rancich, same meeting.

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Rosanna Carpenter’s and Rodger Linton’s log home lies at the edge of—but just beyond—the newly-designated Enfield flood prevention zone.  You need to cross a private bridge to reach their residence.  Carpenter and Linton maintain that bridge.  They also own land each side of it, vacant fields that could someday sprout new houses, if only government will tell someone it’s OK to build there.

Right now, Carpenter and Linton are angry.  And they brought their discontent to the Enfield Town Board earlier this month.  Others living or owning land in the flood plain did so as well. They didn’t like what the Town Board did that night.

Federal and state authorities last year decided that a narrow strip of lowland along Enfield Creek could someday get flooded, even if no more often than once in 100 years.  And because of that remote risk, state officials successfully strong-armed the Town Board May 14 to enact new, stringent flood plain development controls in what they call the “area of special flood hazard.”  New buildings there could have no basements, and many might need to be built on stilts.

The tighter rules accompany Enfield’s forced participation in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).  Federally-supported flood insurance will be available to all Enfield homeowners as of mid-June.

People like Carpenter and Linton argue that neither the regulations nor the insurance is needed, and that the government controls smack of first-ever, Enfield zoning.

Flood insurance rates run three-times the average of a homeowner’s policy, Carpenter said at the May 14  Public Hearing called to address the proposed law.   The hearing ran just five minutes short of an hour and filled nearly all the room’s chairs.  “So if you have a $2,500 policy on your home, it’s going to cost you $10,000 a year to take the chance that you might get flooded,” Carpenter estimated.

“Has anyone ever drowned in this town from a flood?” Linton asked rhetorically. “Has anyone even been made sick from a flood, ever?  Can anybody answer that question for the Board?”

This Councilperson said he couldn’t recall any deaths.  The criticism continued.

“My apartment buildings are in the flood plain.  They’ve been there for 35 years, and I’ve not had any floods” John Rancich, Enfield’s best-known landlord, informed hearing attendees.  “I’ve had the creek come up a little bit, but there’s never been a flood.”

“It seems like a bunch of bull to me, and the town doesn’t need flood insurance,” Rancich asserted.

Need it or not, federally-backed flood insurance will soon become available to every Enfield homeowner.  And a few residents may even be forced to buy it. 

The Town Board’s adoption of the controversial regulations May 14 fulfills a federal and state requirement that governmentally-backed—and yes, pricey—flood insurance be made available to everybody in Enfield now that federal and state regulators have identified a flood-prone place in the Town.  That strip along Enfield Creek may be small.  It includes only a handful of houses.  Nonetheless, its existence suffices for the government’s mandate to kick in.

The leverage government holds is that as of mid-June anyone owning property within the flood plain will need to purchase flood insurance to qualify for a new, federally-backed mortgage or to hold onto a mortgage already held.  The mandate covers financing from any bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

The Town Board’s vote to adopt the Flood Damage Prevention Law was four-to-one.  Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) cast the only dissent and took pains to explain why he’d done so.

“There wasn’t one person at this meeting tonight, at the public hearing, who said they want to buy flood insurance, not one” Lynch took note.  “And I didn’t hear any person who said, ‘I’ve got a federally-backed mortgage and I need to buy flood insurance.’  I didn’t hear that either.” 

Instead, Lynch said, “I heard people saying if I’ve got a federally-backed mortgage, and I’m required to buy flood insurance, I’m going to get financing somewhere else.  That’s what they’re saying.  I’ve gotta’ listen to what the public says.”

Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond took a different view. “I don’t think anybody wants flood insurance,” the Supervisor asserted.  “What they want is to be able to get a mortgage.  That’s the reality of it.  It’s hinging on a mortgage.”

But the public’s mood of the night was anger. Quite plainly, what came from the visitors’ gallery was defiance.

“You’re condemning people’s property,” Roger Linton asserted.  He zeroed-in on a stronger-than-state-requirement that Enfield had initially proposed—but later in the meeting withdrew from the law—that would have banned any new residential construction within the flood zone.  “You’re making their property worthless,” Linton admonished the Town Board.

“I’ve not heard anything here or what I’ve read that’s going to help anybody in this town,” Marie Vandemark, whose family owns Sandy Creek Mobile Home Park, said.  Some of Sandy Creek’s manufactured homes rest within the flood plain.

“Look, boilerplate or not, you do have some power here; you do have a small voice, and I would love to see you all, individually or as a collective group, say, ‘Look, State of New York, or whoever you’re talking to, this isn’t really suited to our town.  We have a very small population, and a small group of residents that are going to be affected,’” Vandemark said. 

Other voices joined her.  “Now they’re going to pass a law about flood insurance that I’m going to have to buy that I don’t need,” landlord Rancich lamented.  “It’s no big deal to me. I’ll just raise my rent.  And so, once again, there’ll be more cost to people that are renting my apartments, because the Town wants flood insurance that they don’t need.”

“We’re asking you to fight for us,” resident Donald Head instructed the Town Board.

“There’s nobody here in favor of this,” Linton informed Enfield’s lawmakers.  “I haven’t heard one single person speak in favor of this.  They don’t want it… Stand against it.”

“Go into violation,” Rancich dared the Town.

“If we don’t adopt the law, then the Attorney General of New York can come in and force us to adopt the law,” Councilperson Jude Lemke cautioned.  Of anyone that evening, Lemke offered the harshest prediction of state retribution.  A lawyer herself, Lemke relayed advice from the attorney for the Town, Guy Krogh.

A plain reading of statute, on the other hand, provides a more benign interpretation of potential punishment.  True, New York Environmental Conservation Law does prescribe that a town like Enfield, newly-designated with a flood hazard area, must “promptly… apply for and complete all requirements for participation in the national flood insurance program.”

But the “sanctions” meted out for non-compliance under that same article of conservation law fall short of the draconian punishments Lemke quoted from attorney Krogh.  Statutory sanctions, the text states, limit themselves to the inability for residents to secure FDIC-backed mortgages, and, the law states, “in areas of special flood hazard, ineligibility for flood disaster aid.” 

Obvious to many, Councilperson Lemke attempted to read the penalties more expansively, implying a wider, town-wide impact.  At one point, she inaccurately warned that failure to adopt the Enfield law could place everyone’s home mortgage at risk of cancelation.  Lemke later corrected herself.

“We as a Town and the residents of the Town will not be able to apply for federal funds if there’s a presidential disaster declared that we will not be able to participate in and get funds from the federal government, not just for floods, but for any federal disaster,” Lemke said. 

The lawyer-Councilperson relied heavily upon an email circulated to Board members only hours before the meeting and signed by Kelli Higgins-Roche, New York State Coordinator for the NFIP.  Some Town Board members (including this writer) had not read Higgins-Roche’s letter.  But a careful reading of that letter afterward suggests some meeting night exaggeration.  The NFIP coordinator’s admonitions confine themselves to mortgage availability and to grants and disaster aid specific to “identified flood hazard areas” or to municipal flood prevention in general.

In many ways, a healthy dose of misinformation circulated about the meeting room that Wednesday night. 

“People who are in the flood hazard zone will be required to purchase the flood insurance,” Councilperson Lemke stated at the hearing’s start.

Not so.  No property owner in the flood zone, including Stoney Brook Townhouses’ owner John Rancich, will be required to buy flood insurance, unless he or she holds a federally-backed mortgage, one that the bank is forced by the feds to insure.

“This has an impact on the Town as a whole,” Lemke continued.  “It will limit our ability to receive any funds from the federal government.”

Any funds?  That’s an ambiguous assumption.  Higgins-Roche’s letter does not state such a categorical denial, unless the funding relates to flood relief and mitigation.

Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond cautioned that failure to adopt the regulations could imperil an already-awarded grant to a near million-dollar culvert project for Bostwick Road, and also to a forthcoming application to replace a second culvert, its location under Rumsey Hill Road.  Still, the Bostwick Road replacement is state-funded, not federal.

“There are no direct fines imposed on the communities for not complying with [Article 36 of Environmental Conservation Law],” Higgins-Roche conceded, “but there may be other grants at a state and federal level that the Town would be ineligible for due to lack of NFIP participation.”  She did not specify the endangered state grants.

Let’s “strip this law down to its skivvies,” this Councilperson indelicately stated.  Before its final vote, the Town Board adopted two, separate amendments to the Flood Damage Prevention Law.  First, it removed the absolute prohibition on new residential dwellings in “areas of special flood hazard.” Then, the board similarly excised a prohibition on placing new manufactured homes in flood zones.  As amended, the Enfield law stands no more restrictive than New York State’s model ordinance.

The number of properties within Enfield’s flood zone varies based on whom you ask. The NFIP coordinator puts the number at “about 20.”  A Tompkins County Planning Department spreadsheet lists only six.  Town Clerk Mary Cornell said she’d notified about eight people.

“The public is not fully informed about what you guys are doing,” Carpenter complained.  “No one knew anything about this law,” she alleged, after having gone door-to-door.  “You can’t pass a law that they don’t even know about,” Carpenter scolded the Town Board.

Town-wide flood insurance availability and the individual mortgage protections that hinge upon it became central arguments to flood law supporters during board member debate.

“Anybody in this town can buy flood insurance, if we participate in this program, whether they’re in the flood zone or not,” Lemke stressed as she promoted the new law.  If the Town declines participation, flood protection policies won’t be available to those on high ground or low, she said. 

“They haven’t been able to buy flood insurance now, before the designation, because we weren’t an NFIP member,” this Councilperson reminded his colleague.  So nothing much would change for most people.

“So if anybody was close to a flood plain and wanted to buy flood insurance, they would not be able to unless we adopt this,” Lemke answered.

“And I don’t hear anybody saying they want to buy flood insurance,” Lynch rebutted.  “But I’m hearing a lot of people say we don’t want the regulations.”

Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond was home ill, but she zoomed in to participate minimally and to vote. Redmond directed her concerns to the mortgages, and her pointed criticism to this writer-Councilperson.

The Supervisor worried about people in the flood zone who hadn’t known of the hearing, about those who might suffer unplanned hardship and later need a mortgage they couldn’t then secure for lack of insurance; and about those whose relative may die and force a home’s sudden sale.

“And I’m sorry, but people aren’t walking around with like $300,000 of cash on hand,” Redmond said.

“Yeah, I understand why people don’t want to all of a sudden, you know, be in a flood zone, but the reality is they are in a flood zone… and there’s nothing this Town Board is going to do to make it not a flood-zone,” the  laryngitis-stricken Supervisor said with what little voice she could draw forth.

“But where are they tonight?” this Councilperson, Lynch, queried.  “They aren’t in this room.  None of them are here.  The people who were here say we don’t want the regulations.”

“But we have an obligation to all the residents of the Town, and we have an obligation to uphold the state law,” Lemke interjected.

More than an hour after the hearing had ended, and after the Town Board’s own 20-minute discussion had run its course, the clerk called the roll, and Councilperson Cassandra Hinkle, quiet through most of what had transpired, waived off casting the first vote.  Only after Supervisor Redmond had voted her own affirmation did Hinkle do so as well.

“Honestly, I hate this too,” Hinkle said of New York’s strong-arm mandate.  “It is the state coming down on us for it.  So what could we do as an alternative?  Fight it as Enfield?  No.  To what end?”

“Freedom!  Property Rights!” two voices erupted from the gallery.

“People are going to lose their house.  They’re going to lose their mortgage and lose their house,” Redmond reacted from her virtual perch on the big screen.  “That’s no freedom.  That’s unhoused.”

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Posted Previously:

Jill Tripp ousted by ICSD voters

Ithaca Budget passes; reformers struggle

by Robert Lynch; May 20, 2025; expanded coverage May 21, 2025

This year was not last year. And results from Tuesday’s Ithaca City School District (ICSD) school board elections show a return to what might be called the predictable:  Budgets pass by wide margins; and candidates endorsed by the teachers union gain the advantage over those who weren’t.

Updated, official results posted late Wednesday on the ICSD’s website, not significantly different from earlier preliminary numbers, show newcomer Jacob Shiffrin, incumbents Karen Yearwood and Erin Croyle, plus another newcomer, Madeline Cardona, finishing in sequential order for the four school board seats open in this year’s election.

Shiffrin, Yearwood, Croyle, and Cardona were endorsed by the Ithaca Teachers Association, the district’s influential instructional union.

The only incumbent who lost stands notable by her defeat.  Jill Tripp, regarded by many as a budget hawk and the taxpayer’s friend, lost the election, coming in fifth and falling 113 votes behind Cardona.

The proposed $169 Million 2025-26 district budget, meanwhile, breezed to approval, as did a proposition to appropriate money for school buses and building improvements.

The proposed budget won voters’ support, 3,756 votes (77.7%) to 1,078 votes (22.3%) opposed.

The bus and building expenditures secured almost identical support; 3,733 votes (77.4%) in favor; 1,089 votes (22.6%) opposed.

Tuesday’s results may signal that taxpayer frustration, which propelled a massive budget defeat in first round voting last year, may have now subsided.  This year’s results more closely mirror the comfortable ICSD budget approval margins of earlier years.

The top three vote-getters in the May 20 ICSD election—Shiffrin, Yearwood, and Croyle—will each assume new, three-year terms beginning in July.  Fourth-Place finisher Cardona will serve the remaining one-year of a board vacancy, and would need to run again next year to keep her seat.

In the latter days of this year’s Ithaca School Board campaign, three of the newcomers, Shiffrin, Scott Jahnke, and David McMurray, formed a coalition slate and marketed themselves as reformers.   Of the three, only union-endorsed Shiffrin won.

Updated, official tallies placed Jacob Shiffrin in the lead with 3,492 votes; Karen Yearwood securing second place with 2,932 votes, followed by Erin Croyle with 2,709 votes, and Madeline Cardona with 2,351 votes.

Jill Tripp fell out of the running with 2,238 votes, followed by Scott Jahnke with 2,019 votes, and David McMurry with 1,960 votes.

The Ithaca Board of Education unanimously certified the election results the following night, Wednesday, May 21.  The meeting took less than a minute. Jill Tripp seconded the motion that confirmed her defeat.

Newfield, like Ithaca, dodged the budgetary bullet Tuesday.  As in Ithaca, Newfield’s school budget failed in its first presentation to the voters last year.  But the Newfield budget, like Ithaca’s, comfortably won in this more welcoming of election years.

The Newfield budget passed, 342 votes (68%) to 159 (32%).  A separate proposition to buy one wheelchair-accommodating school bus passed 381 votes to 120.  A second proposition to buy an electric school bus proved much closer, passing by a mere 13 votes, 257 to 244.

In a crowded, seven-way contest for the Newfield Board of Education, George Taylor, Christina Ward, and Antwane Lynch prevailed.  Taylor got 297 votes, Ward 251 votes, and Lynch 248 votes.

In the Trumansburg district, the school budget passed by a lopsided 528 to 101 margin.  A Vehicle and Equipment Capital Reserve Fund Proposition secured voter passage, 533 votes to 93.  Suzanne Organ, Jim Mielty and James Kemmerer won election to the school board there.

****

Madeline Cardona has become this year’s freshest new face to grace local school politics, given her Tuesday win for a seat on the Ithaca Board of Education.  Cardona drives for Uber, holds only a High School degree, and moved to Pennsylvania from Puerto Rico at the age of 16.  A single mom, Madeline has two teenagers who attend Ithaca High School.

Cardona will become the only Latinx on the Ithaca School Board, either this coming year or at any time in recent history.

“I’m running for the Board to give a chance to families like mine; somebody who cares and works hard as a single mom.” Cardona proudly told a candidates’ forum May 15 at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School.  It was the only occasion all seven candidates met together on the same stage.

And that night, Cardona was the only candidate who declined to say how she’d vote on the proposed school budget.  (All others said they’d support it.)

I’m “not fully educated” on the budget, Cardona candidly informed attendees.  Instead, she said, “I come as a single mom,” and then promised, “If elected, I do plan to get educated and become familiar with the budget.”

Some might have viewed Cardona’s acknowledged fiscal ignorance as a gaffe, as a disqualifier, and assigned it the only misstep during the two-hour debate.  But district voters may not have seen it that way.  In the election, voters awarded the newcomer the opportunity to serve, if only, initially, for a single year.

Madeline Cardona had other opinions to share that evening.

“I don’t believe that law enforcement should be in our schools,” the soon-to-be member-elect said when the issue of immigration officers entering school buildings came up.  “A lot of our children do not feel safe in our schools,” Cardona responded when candidates were later asked whether New York’s newly-imposed ban on student cell phone use might compromise pupil safety.

It’s said campaign cash buys votes.  Perhaps it does some times.  But in the Ithaca School Board contest it didn’t buy enough of them.  Candidates Jacob Shiffrin, Scott Jahnke, and David McMurry joined forces to purchase yard signs and to mail a slick, oversized postcard to voters’ mailboxes.  For many, it was the only contact they had with any candidate.

In the election, Jacob Shiffrin came in first.  But Jahnke and McMurry fell to the back of the pack.  The trio’s wildly-divergent political fortunes may be explained by the fact that Shiffrin won the teachers union’s endorsement, and the other two did not.

Karen Yearwood’s victory ensured the continued presence of two African-Americans—she and Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell—on the Ithaca Board of Education.  Meanwhile, third-place victor Erin Croyle, who’ll commence her third, three-year term this summer, provides the school board a continued voice for disabled students’ rights.

Raising—and educating—a child with Down syndrome “changed my entire life,” Croyle told the May 15 candidates’ forum.  At board meetings, Croyle has advocated for main-streaming learning disabled students.  She’s also fought for higher budgets and heightened educational funding.  Consider Croyle perhaps the ICSD board’s most liberal member.

How does Erin Croyle view the state of Ithaca school finances, amidst recent efforts to reduce the funding she’d prefer get spent?  “The pandemic hit, and we’ve been in triage ever since,” Croyle told candidates’ forum attendees.

It may be the  cruelest of ironies that the relatively stable 2025-26 Ithaca School Budget that Jill Tripp worked hard to engineer may have been what cost her the election. 

Last year, amid skyrocketing residential assessments and what was initially proposed as a 12 per cent hike in the tax levy, Ithaca district voters had a taxpayer tantrum.  Seven out of ten of them rejected the first proposed budget put in front of them.  They later ratified a revised spending plan only after Tripp had led the effort to trim spending back.

But this year the (now-approved) $169 Million budget grew the tax levy by only 3.76 percent—a number tied to this year’s state-calculated “tax cap.  Because of Tripp’s efforts, the broader electorate may have shrugged, have become complacent.  It’s been reported just one person showed up for a mid-May budget hearing.

Meanwhile, last year’s spending cuts, dictated by frugality, have taken their bite out of school programs, cancelling at least one language offering at Ithaca High School and reducing administrative and teaching staff through attrition.

This was a year for Ithaca teachers and some parents to vent their anger in a different way. Unionized instructors are also angling for a pay raise larger than what district administrators have offered so far.

“I’m frustrated as a parent and a taxpayer,” second-to-last-place finisher Scott Jahnke had told the candidates’ forum last week.  Jahnke complained that as many as six schools—including Enfield Elementary and both of Ithaca’s middle schools—have been cited by New York State for poor academic performance.

“We need a change now; we need to see that the community gets what it needs,” Jahnke had said.

But what is that need?  Neither runaway budgets nor schools placed in detention study hall by their Albany taskmaster seem to have propelled the outcome of this year’s Ithaca City School District elections.  Other issues were put in play; other speakers stood on the soap box, what little they did   This was not Scott Jahnke’s year.  Nor was it Jill Tripp’s.

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Enfield Board to Trump: Obey the Constitution

by Robert Lynch; May 19, 2025

In what some may argue strays way beyond its pay grade, the Enfield Town Board this month adopted a strongly-worded Resolution that implores President Donald Trump to follow due process, respect the judiciary, and above all else, obey the Constitution.

Town Board action Wednesday, May 14 came near the end of a full agenda that also saw adoption of a Flood Damage Prevention Law over public objections, and affirmation of earlier, informal consent given a Westchester County business to locate a cannabis farm and processing facility within the Breezy Meadows subdivision. (Separate stories will be posted.)

“Resolved, that, being that these are tumultuous times, it is our charge and responsibility as elected officials to represent our constituents, to uphold the core tenets of democracy and the U.S. Constitution, in order to prevent our nation from slipping into dangerous and authoritarian chaos,” Enfield’s 20-paragraph, 800-word messaging statement asserted.

Adopted by a four-to-one vote, the Town Board’s decidedly anti-Trump admonition will be mailed to as many as eleven federal and state elected or appointed officials, including to President Donald J. Trump, himself.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, New York A.G. Letitia James and New York’s Governor, Kathy Hochul, will also be served.

Paradoxically, given the issue addressed, Enfield’s “Request… to Defend the Constitution and Constitutional Rights of Citizens,” was itself an immigrant crossing the border.  Its language wandered its way across Cayuga Lake from Lansing, where the Town Board there had adopted nearly-identical language, but with little controversy, April 16. 

Lansing Town Supervisor Ruth Groff subsequently forwarded her board’s resolution to other town supervisors in hopes they’d encourage similar adoption.  Supervisor Stephanie Redmond emailed Groff’s request to other Enfield Town Board members in late-April, at which time at least two other board members expressed their eager support.

Whether Groff’s Town Board constructed the resolution itself or imported its content from other sources—perhaps in bits and pieces—remains unclear.

“As elected officials sworn to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States of America, we are increasingly alarmed by actions we are seeing that violate fundamental constitutionally protected rights,” the Lansing and Enfield resolutions begin.

“Currently, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is unilaterally revoking visas and deporting people without judicial review or due process,” the resolutions continue. “We recognize that due process is not an obstacle to justice; it is a constitutionally guaranteed right for a person accused to see what they are accused of and to present contrary evidence,” the resolutions state.

The towns’ position statement cites the Trump Administration’s alleged defiance of Federal Judge’s James Boasberg’s orders to return detained migrants from a prison in El Salvador, as well as the Administration’s alleged retribution against major law firms “that employed his perceived political opponents.”

When the messaging resolution debuted April 16 in Lansing, it gained minimal notice.  Councilperson Joseph Wetmore had introduced the measure before an almost-empty room that night.  Supervisor Groff called for discussion, but got none.  After a few seconds of silence, the Town Board voted. 

Democrat Groff, Wetmore, and a second Lansing Councilperson, Christine Montague, supported the measure. Given the video replay’s less-than-perfect audio, Councilperson Judy Drake, an Independent, was heard uttering a quiet response that could have been taken as a dissent, but was recorded as an abstention.  (A fourth Councilperson, Laurie Hemmings, didn’t attend that night.)  The Lansing Board embraced the matter in just under a minute. The resolution never got a full reading.

In Enfield, nearly one month later, the issue found a different reception.  Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, at home, nursing a bad cold, declined to get involved, apart from casting her affirmative vote.  Councilpersons Jude Lemke, Cassandra Hinkle, and Melissa Millspaugh joined to endorse the Trump-critical statement. 

As in Lansing, the resolution could have breezed toward quiet approval had not the fifth beard member, Robert Lynch (this writer) spoken up.

“I may as a person, as an individual, support every last word in this resolution.  Or I may not.  It doesn’t matter,” Councilperson Lynch began.

“When I walk into this room and I sit down at this table, I am… no longer representing just myself.  I’m representing three-thousand, six-hundred some people of the Town of Enfield,” Lynch stated, in a message he took three minutes to complete.  “And like it or not, this is a blended community.  There are people with different opinions.  And there are some members of this community who will staunchly support the policies that this resolution condemns.  And I must respect their opinion diversity.”

Were the Town Board to embrace the resolution—which it subsequently did—the message to Trump supporters would be “you don’t represent me anymore,” this writer told fellow board members.  “And I can’t do that.  I can’t in good conscience put my vote to something that I know some people in this town are going to so resent and is really going to have minimal impact, if any.”

The only Town Board member to answer the criticism was Councilperson Lemke.

“I don’t have a strong feeling one way or another about sending this.  But I would say that what it’s asking us to request isn’t all that controversial,” Lemke maintained. 

“We’re asking them to follow the Constitution and respect the rule of law, and uphold the core tenets of democracy and the U.S. Constitution,” Lemke said.  “They’re required to do that by their oath, anyway, so I don’t see that is all that controversial.”

At the Enfield Town Board’s earlier, April ninth meeting, Lemke had introduced a measure, which the board adopted over Lynch’s objection, to post on the Town website what amounts to a statement of detainees’ rights.  Lemke said its words came from a leaflet passed out at an Ithaca protest rally she’d attended the weekend before.

“It’s just a list of what happens if you’re stopped by ICE (‘Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’), or if ICE comes to the house, and you’re arrested; what are your legal rights,” Lemke explained words from the handout she’d gotten, a flyer printed in both English and Spanish.

“As elected officials, our ability to create and maintain a safe and stable community is undermined when our residents live in fear of being rounded up by the federal agents and deported at any moment” the Enfield Town Board’s adopted May 14^th resolution states. 

“As elected officials, we implore our federal and state representatives to take any and all appropriate legal actions to ensure that all members of the federal government follow the Constitution and respect the rule of law,” the resolution continues.

When it travels to Washington and Albany, the Enfield Resolution on constitutional liberties may be seen by some that its Lansing counterpart will not. 

Before adopting the final measure, the Enfield board—at Lynch’s urging—broadened the list of recipients to include not only Democratic Party lawmakers and New York officials, but also President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, and Republican Congressional leaders Mike Johnson and Senator John Thune.

The Town of Lansing “was fairly timid,” Lynch asserted.  “They just sent it to friendly ears,” he said of the Lasing resolution.  But as for Enfield, “Those who vote for this Resolution tonight, whoever they are, should be able to stand behind it and basically look the President and his Attorney General in the eye.  And without that, this resolution is meaningless.”

As adopted, the Enfield admonition will go all the way to the top.

Much less politically-charged, though still imported from the same Lansing Town Board April meeting, the Enfield Board also adopted a second resolution May 14, this one urging federal budget negotiators not to end the long-held income tax exemption granted interest earnings from municipal bonds.

“An advisor to President Trump recently floated the idea of taxing municipal bonds,” the Enfield and Lansing resolutions stated, never specifically citing the advisor in question or the probability of the  change’s enactment. 

“As elected officials, we implore our federal and state representatives to take any and all appropriate legal actions to ensure that all municipal bonds continue to enjoy their tax-exempt status,” the towns’ resolution states.  It passed both the Enfield and Lansing Town Boards without opposition.

“This has a quantifiable financial impact on Enfield,” Councilperson Lynch stated at the meeting, differentiating his support for this second messaging resolution from his opposition to the one prior.  “If we remove the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds, those bonds will cost more money for towns like ours, and it will impact our taxpayers negatively,” he stated.

No other Enfield Town Board members offered comment.

The Kiplinger financial website cites Stephen Moore, whom it describes as “an informal advisor” to President Trump, as a key driver behind taxing municipal bond interest.  Kiplinger reports Moore believes that taxing those bonds’ interest “aligns with Republican goals of ‘widening the tax base’ and is ‘politically feasible’ because it primarily affects high-income investors who benefit most from the exemption.”

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From Hens to Housing

One Breezy Meadows barn would convert to 24 apartments, developer proposes

by Robert Lynch; May 8, 2025

Decades ago, it sheltered Babcock Poultry Farm’s chickens.  Then, for a short time, it quartered hogs.  Now, if a Ulysses developer realizes his goal, one of those many, long-abandoned, 600-foot long barns within Enfield’s Breezy Meadows subdivision could be chopped into sections and converted into affordable housing, 24 units in all.

Developer Jordan Bonafede, accompanied by his attorney, Charles Wolff, brought their initial “sketch plan” to the Enfield Town Planning Board Wednesday, May 7^th.  Admittedly, Bonafede’s concept has a long way to go before it becomes reality.  He said he doesn’t even yet own the land.

“We haven’t even put in an offer,” Bonafede told the Planning Board.

Enfield residents have rightful reason to be surprised that a long-dormant, 24,000-square foot, long, low-slung, former laying barn could become an apartment house.  Deed covenants that the one-time farm’s initial developers, New York Land & Lakes Development, LLC, had attached to the lots it sold—and promised to the Planning Board that they would limit Breezy Meadows’ growth—were supposed to restrict each  lot’s development to no more than one, single-family home and one accessory dwelling unit.

But Bonafede told the Planning Board Wednesday that the restriction doesn’t apply to the development he plans.

Bonafede said Land & Lakes allowed a “commercial use” exception to those few, big lots with the long, yellow barns.  And since a multi-unit apartment complex serves a “commercial” purpose, Bonafede said, he can convert the barn into apartments and still remain within deed compliance.

“I don’t remember Land and Lakes asking us any exceptions to the lots,” Planning Board member Mike Carpenter told Bonafede.  And Carpenter followed with this warning:  “Any of your neighbors could sue you.”

Jordan Bonafede would buy so-called “Lot 4” at Breezy Meadows, one of 33 lots New York Land & Lakes created when in 2023 it subdivided the 337-acre former John William Kenney farm between Podunk and Halseyville Roads.

Lot 4 includes as many as three of the longer barns, plus two smaller structures, all at the southernmost side of the Breezy Meadows tract when viewed from the east side of Podunk Road.

To circumvent building code requirements that mandate that large, multiple-residential buildings have sprinkler systems, Bonafede would chop the 600-foot long barn into six sections, placing each piece under the 5,000-square foot threshold. 

Each section would include four modest apartments, one- or two-bedroom dwellings, ranging from 800 to 1,200 square feet.  Just by removing small sections of the existing building’s roof and walls, Bonafede would maintain the fire code’s minimum 12-foot separation between the sections.

“We need more housing,” Planning Board alternate member—and Enfield Deputy Town Supervisor—Greg Hutnik remarked. He said so even though Hutnik, like others on the Planning Board, seemed startled that the authorizations they’d granted Land & Lakes two years ago could lead to such aggressive residential development now.

Bonafede said he’s already accomplished a similar, 20-unit conversion in the Town of Covert.

“As long as you know what you’re getting into,” Planning Board Char Dan Walker cautioned the developer.

Asked what he expects to charge in monthly rent for each unit, Bonafede said he’s talking a “$1,200 price range.”  It’s “affordable housing,” Bonafede acknowledged.

Several steps, important steps, remain to be taken before Bonafede’s proposed barn conversion can go forward.  The Planning Board will undoubtedly demand several review sessions, along with better-detailed drawings and at least one public hearing.  What the developer had readied for the Planning Board Wednesday was no more refined than penciled drawings on graph paper.

After Wednesday’s meeting, Bonafede claimed that the site’s current owner is asking $279,000 to sell the 30-acre tract.  Purchase would require “six-to-eight weeks” time to complete, Bonafede estimated.  After title had been secured, he’d expect to launch the approval process through the Planning Board over the next several months.

And then there’s the question of water.  Water adequacy was a prime concern to neighbors when Breezy Meadows was first proposed two years ago.  Planners at the time brushed aside the water-supply worry, arguing that widely-spaced homes spread out on 33 lots in a 300-plus acre subdivision provided sufficient separation to disperse groundwater demand.  But putting 24 families on just one of those lots few had ever envisioned.

“We’ll have to do an evaluation of the water supply,” Board Chair Walker said during the meeting.

Afterward, Bonafede admitted he may have to install a storage tank.

The developer told planners he’d start small, segmenting and repurposing just one of the barns, the second-removed from the road of the three Bonafede would own.  But he declined to dismiss the prospect of similarly renovating the nearly-identical barn he’d own nearest Podunk.  The farthest one back, Bonafede said, is smaller and in worst shape.  Its roof has collapsed in the middle.

“There’s no way we could afford doing the whole thing at once,” Bonafede conceded of the three-barn complex.

But monkey-see, monkey-do.  Breezy Meadows has as many as thirteen of those long poultry barns scattered amidst the weeds.  They’re in various states of disrepair and owned by different investors.  Their owners may have other plans.  But a profitable adaptive re-use by one developer could prompt copy-cat conversions by others.

Breezy Meadows may have brought to Enfield an idea that opportunists had conceived well before Town fathers (and mothers) had ever imagined it could happen.  Now, it may.

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SHPO Green-lights Downtown Demo

Center of Government site could be cleared by February

by Robert Lynch; May 6, 2025

New York State’s bureaucratic preservations appear no longer an impediment as Tompkins County legislators seek to bulldoze three buildings in the shadow of DeWitt Park to allow construction of a massively expensive downtown Center of Government.

At a legislative committee meeting Tuesday, architects for Tompkins County’s ambitious project put meat on the skeletal bones of an offhand remark County Administrator Korsah Akumfi had made at a County Legislature meeting three weeks earlier:  The New York State Historic Preservation Office (“SHPO,” pronounce it “Shippo”) has ended its year-long objection to removing the three buildings adjacent to the County Courthouse, structures hardly historic, but up until now considered by SHPO as “contributing” to the DeWitt Park Historic District’s character.

“The process with the State Preservation Office has gone much more smoothly than we had anticipated,” Quay Thompson, of Holt Architects, Principal Architect for the Center of Government project, told the Tompkins County Legislature’s Downtown Facilities Special Committee May 6. 

“We basically have the verbal approval from SHPO, and we’re in the process of finalizing the letter of recommendations, as what they call it,” Thompson told the committee.

“I’m glad to see the process go a little faster than all of us, I think, anticipated,” Ulysses-Enfield legislator Anne Koreman responded.

SHPO regulators have dogged Tompkins County for more than a year as lawmakers have sought to fast-track the “deconstruction” of the three buildings: the former Key Bank building at the corner of North Tioga and Buffalo Street, the honeycomb-faced former Wiggins Law Office next to it, and “Building C,” once an Ithaca College TV studio and now home to the Board of Elections and Tompkins County’s Assessment Department.

Although the Historic Office may have no direct veto power over the buildings’ demolition, SHPO regulators could delay either the permit approvals or the grant awards that the new office building might need.

At a meeting of the Tompkins County Legislature April 15, Administrator Akumfi had stated, as part of an otherwise-routine biweekly report, that SHPO had granted “conditional approval to proceed at demolishing the buildings on site with some guidelines.”

Akumfi had said little more at the time about the approval and had never detailed what those “guidelines” might be.

During his presentation to the Downtown Facilities Committee Tuesday, architect Thompson suggested that those SHPO-demanded “mitigating measures,” as he termed them, might be minimal and largely symbolic.  They might require designers to preserve “drawings and photographs” of the demolished buildings and encourage designers’ “creating some sort of historic component in the new building” that “talks about” what was torn down.

With SHPO’s consent essentially now assured, architects and schedulers, with legislators’ full support, intend to move headlong toward deconstruction.  Each building would start being pulled apart this fall, likely sequentially, with full removal planned by the end of winter.

“Schedule-wise, we are looking for the deconstruction to start in September and finish in February ’26,” Bernard Best, Project Manager with Holt Architects, Tompkins County’s design consultant, told the committee.

Most likely the law office would be first to come down, then the former bank, and finally Building C.

Building’s C’s removal poses the biggest obstacle, as it currently houses County Government offices.  The Board of Elections, the Assessment Office and the Information Technology nerve center—complete with its web-server—would all have to move.  Relocation plans have yet to be carved in stone.

In fact, there’s much remaining to be resolved.  And it includes, quite remarkably, the County Legislature’s no-turning-back commitment to proceed with the Center of Government altogether.  Legislators have during the past year or two passed sense-of-the-body resolutions directing planning for the building to proceed.  But they’ve never made a promise they couldn’t retract.

At the close of Tuesday’s two-hour committee session, Administrator Akumfi, on the job for only three-and-a-half months, worried aloud about perceived legislative indecision, with lawmakers “checking boxes” instead of implementing a grand vision.

“We are at a point whereby we need to have a clarity of direction of where we are going with the project,” Akumfi advised the committee. 

“We need to have clarity from the Legislature as we move forward with the project so that we are not derailed in our approach, in our time lines, and also that we are not looking at anything else if this is the commitment,” Akumfi stated.

The Administrator said what’s needed is “clarity that the project is a ‘go,’ and we are doing this.”

That “anything else,” alluded to by Akumfi, would likely entail moving County Government offices out of downtown altogether, placing them on cheaper land, more expansive land, a place with ample, free parking for staff and visitors, real estate maybe out by the airport. 

Most legislators have winced at that out-of-Ithaca prospect, sometimes as they did so disregarding economic logic.  They wince at it still.  “Building in a cornfield,” as one legislator has often derisively termed it, never gained serious consideration during Tuesday’s committee meeting.

The Downtown Facilities Committee took no votes Tuesday on any direction forward.  But members suggested they may put before the full Legislature as soon as in June a departmental assignment plan that would play a pricey game of musical chairs, deciding which offices would go where once the Center of Government gets built.

One of the more challenging choices, both short- and long-term, is where to quarter the Board of Elections.  Holt Architects’ current preferred plan would place the elections office not in the Center of Government, but over at the County-owned Human Services Annex, located at State and Albany Streets, many blocks away.

The Elections Board’s migration would torpedo plans favored by some to vacate the Annex altogether and sell off the building for commercial and residential development.

“I think this is a waste, personally, of some prime dirt and space in the core of the City that is begging for more, and I just think this is a poor use,” Dryden legislator Greg Mezey said of retaining the Human Services Annex for the Board of Elections.  “From a planning perspective, I’m not OK with this.”

Mezey’s Dryden colleague, Mike Lane, took a different view.

“I guess I don’t totally agree with Greg,” Lane responded.  “I don’t think the City needs to have a big box apartment building on every block,” he maintained.  “Yeah, you can generate more money with vertical sprawl, but you also have all the problems that come along with it.”

“I wasn’t the one that said this, but they said the City of Ithaca has lost its soul, and I think it’s true,” Lane opined.

The initial Center of Government construction schedule had called for “Building C” to remain standing until the new building was largely built.  Wreckers would demolish it later.  But that could waste time and money, architect Thompson told the committee.

Instead, to facilitate quicker deconstruction, yet keep computer systems humming, Information Technology would temporarily relocate to the third floor of the Old Jail building.  A $15,000 cable run would string along the street to serve it.  And the third floor’s current occupants, namely County Administration and the County Attorney, would soon be evicted.

Where would the Administrator and County Attorney go?  Most likely they’d migrate to temporarily occupy vacant space in the Mental Health Building on the other side of downtown.  But there’s a problem there as well.  County staff might have nowhere to park.

Dislodging the State Historic Preservation Office’s opposition to deconstructing the trio of buildings on the Center of Government site proves the benefits of successful salesmanship (with maybe a bit of fact-bending along the way.)  Quay Thompson reported to the committee that his firm had first enlisted the help of a Corning-based preservation architect.  They drew up six options for consideration, then gridded them against as many as 19 distinct factors that would weigh in favor or against each choice.  An option’s relative desirability was color-coded in green, yellow, or red (Green, good; Red, bad.) 

“Looking big picture, essentially the process was we submitted a report, a fairly large report, to SHPO,” Thompson said.  “They spent about three weeks reviewing it, and then we met on-site.”

Consultants, County officials, SHPO bureaucrats, and apparently no one else, toured the buildings and then convened in Legislative Chambers.  That meeting, Thompson asserted, proved key.

“At the outcome of that meeting, SHPO was basically supporting our recommendations that it made sense for the three buildings to be decommissioned, deconstructed, and a new building to be built,” the project architect told the committee.

Yet please note that the process largely bypassed the public, those whose members might have raised pointed, critical questions and advanced a contrary narrative.  The process apparently also omitted City of Ithaca leaders, who’ve sought unsuccessfully in the past to block deconstruction.

Last year, the County Legislature employed a questionably-applicable New York court holding to pre-empt Ithaca’s authority in the matter.  City Hall never took the County to court, and has had little involvement since.

Still, some might question the conclusions architects drew in their sales pitch to SHPO.  One of the six options presented regulators was to keep the three buildings intact and just renovate them.  Two more choices would have built a new office building in various forms around the existing structures.  Another alternative would have kept the Key Bank Building, razed the other two, and built the new building attached to the old bank.

Quite plainly, the County’s favored option was to level the site and build a completely new building.  The sixth choice was to build somewhere outside the City.

The all-new Center of Government, kept downtown, and the “Cornfield Option” scored the highest under Holt’s carefully-choreographed, 19-factor grid.  And a couple of the highly-subjective criteria gave downtown the slight edge.

Factors weighed such issues as departmental efficiency, the “flexibility to accommodate change,” access to public transportation, walking, and biking,” and whether the project “maintains and enhances downtown economic vitality,” an argument Holt’s team had told legislators in March should be considered.

On those latter two points, transportation access and economic health, Thompson said it was advantage downtown:

“Another big factor that SHPO was interested in was maintaining and enhancing the downtown community vitality,” the architect advised the committee.  “So this is preserving the vitality of the historic district, but also preserving the vitality of Downtown Ithaca.”

A factor on which Holt assigned downtown and “someplace else” surprisingly equal weight was on whether the office building “meets parking needs and requirements.”  Thompson and Best in committee danced around why downtown earned a passing grade.  Anyone who’s ever tried to find a vacant parking spot may wonder how downtown scored equally with the cornfield.

All along, the Downtown Facilities Special Committee— just like a similarly-named committee before it—has advanced a pre-scripted narrative:  It’s that downtown is best and that a totally-new building is best.  Tuesday’s meeting expanded that theme to convey the message that SHPO regulators have likewise been sold the value of those arguments. 

A new downtown Center of Government is now planned to sprawl upward five stories, expand to nearly 40,000 square feet, contain a cornucopia of government offices ranging from District Attorney, to Planning, to Human Rights, and cost at least $40 Million—some say as high as $60 Million.  And each step along the way always leads to the next.

Boxes get checked, Korsah Akumfi would say.  And now, more likely than ever, those three buildings that stand a stone’s throw from the Courthouse will come down, and will do so sooner rather than later.

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Posted Previously:

Budget Retreat foretells higher taxes; likely cuts

Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; April 30, 2025

A tornado warning came in from the National Weather Service better than halfway into the meeting.  Somebody read it off her computer or phone.  “Take cover now!  Move to a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building,” the message said.  Attendees had convened in the Rice Conference Room at the Tompkins County Health Department.

“This is pretty good,” Tompkins County Administrator Korsah Akumfi said, evaluating his room’s presumed sturdiness.  The meeting went on.

By best accounts, there was no tornado.  But inside the Rice room that night, especially for Deputy County Administrator Norma Jayne, sitting nearest her boss, a different kind of whirlwind was swirling.  For more than two hours, during a meeting that those in charge would generally prefer people like us not attend, Jayne found herself constantly plugging holes in Administration’s first look at a 2026 Tompkins County Budget. 

Maybe it was best that no one from the downtown media bothered to attend the County Legislature’s little-publicized annual “Budget Retreat” April 29.  It was a challenge for the best of minds to keep thoughts straight or grasp a coherent narrative.  Other than the County Administrator’s daughter, this Enfield Councilperson was the only person in the room not on the County payroll.  There’ll be no video replay.  For many, perhaps, it was a meeting to forget.

But it won’t get forgotten.  News was made.  Legislators left the session learning that if current programs and personnel are left intact, next year’s Tompkins County property tax levy could rise by 7.11 percent.  And should the tax levy increase fall to that of the estimated 3.06 percent state-directed tax cap, administrators and lawmakers would need to make more than $2.2 Million in program and personnel cuts.

“What you’re telling me is we’re over budget at this point,” Lansing Republican legislator Mike Sigler replied to Administrator Akumfi and to the room, reaching for a conclusion that begged to be stated.

Still, don’t be scared away by the ominous prospect of a seven percent tax increase.  It’ll likely never happen. 

For one thing, it’s a legislative election year.  And for another, April warnings of a higher-than-desirable tax increase invariably vanish by October, budget adoption time.  Steep increases generally get whittled away, even if it takes dipping into savings to make that happen.    This year may prove no different.

“Neither of the choices are the one I would pick,” Legislature Chair Dan Klein said Tuesday of Akumfi’s two alternatives, either the one carrying the higher tax increase or the one with the $2.2 Million in cuts.  Klein declined to state where he’d draw the line.

The “Budget Retreat” has become an understated, yearly ritual.  State law demands it be open to the public.  But it’s not an official meeting where actions become binding and minutes are kept.  Legislators meet away from their downtown chambers ostensibly to keep their first look at next-year budget projections as informal as possible.  Their spiriting away also encourages comments be held as private as the law allows.  Few outsiders—or reporters— ever venture out to hear what’s spoken.

At the retreat one year ago, former County Administrator Lisa Holmes had advanced a “Maintenance of Effort” budget that would have carried a 5.9 percent tax levy increase.  Legislators that night balked, casting a series of straw votes that messaged to Holmes a levy increase of no more than two percent.  Keeping it that low would also have required more than $2 Million in cuts to programs. 

Holmes couldn’t stick to the directive, although she tried.  In November, following a summer full of number crunching and department head pushback, legislators settled on a 2.72 per cent levy increase for 2025, exactly equal to the then-calculated tax cap.  Tompkins County’s tax levy increase had been two percent for the prior year; no increase at all for each of the two years before that.

At Tuesday’s most recent budget retreat, there were no straw polls, no haggling, no target tax increases set.  Newly-hired Administrator Akumfi discouraged legislators from early-on goal-setting.  Akumfi would do things differently.

“When you meet with the departments, ask ‘Why do you need this extra item?” Akumfi advised legislators. “You need to justify why the increase is so high,” he’d tell department heads.

It’s actually the County Administrator who first negotiates with heads of departments.  Legislators, themselves, don’t meet with them until autumn.

In essence, the new Administrator has appeared to signal a preference for bottom-up, rather than top-down budgeting.  By his message, Akumfi would first urge departmental austerity, next bundle up whatever fell into his spending basket, and then calculate taxpayer burdens based on what’s within it. 

Tompkins County Government has never done budgeting that way in modern times.  But that’s how Akumfi might want it.  And the approach seemed to throw some legislators a bit off balance.

“Will there be an ‘action item’ when you can come to us and ask us for a comfort level?” the Legislature’s Budget Committee Chair, Mike Lane, a long-tenured legislator, asked Akumfi.

Lacking a response he found sufficiently convincing, Lane requested, and then secured, permission for a second budget retreat sometime this summer, likely in July.

Tompkins County’s procedures require the Administration Department to present a draft 2026 Budget just after Labor Day.  Legislative line-by-line review then follows and consumes numerous meetings in the fall.  The Legislature adopts the final budget in November.

“This is our first conversation about the budget,” legislator Amanda Champion cautioned colleagues.  She appeared to cut the new Administrator some slack.  “We have many, many, many months,” Champion said.

Yes, compared with his predecessors—Lisa Holmes, and before that, Jason Molino—Administrator Korsah Akumfi tackles budgeting differently.  And his unconventional approach at times left Tompkins County’s 14 legislators begging for answers that seemed elusive.  Problems were identified more than directions given.  Akumfi’s thick African accent didn’t help, especially in the Rice room, where the acoustics are downright awful.

Then, there were the missteps; too many of them.

“It’s my error.”  “I apologize.”  “I made a mistake.”  Korsah Akumfi uttered those words at various times during his presentation.  The administrator had prepared a 60-slide PowerPoint and distributed its paper copy to attendees.  Slide number 59, the final one of substance, detailed the tax levy implications, the numbers people care most about.  It almost got forgotten.  Someone had to restart the computer.

“It doesn’t seem like that second line is correct,” Legislature Chair Klein questioned, after Slide 59 finally appeared.  It carried tax increase projections of dollars, percentages, and homeowner impacts.

The presentation’s most glaring error occurred at its worst-possible place: setting the tax levy.  Korsah Akumfi is new.  County Administration’s budget division is understaffed.  And in preparing its numbers, those in charge had committed a major blunder. 

As Deputy Administrator Norma Jayne would need to explain later, $1.3 Million in interest earnings had been misstated.  The corrected error had transformed a 4.74 percent tax levy increase for the “Maintenance of Effort” budget into a 7.11 percent increase.  The slide on the printed page showed the smaller number; the quickly—albeit partially—revised slide on the screen showed the bigger one.  (My mumbled astonishment carried to legislators seated in the row ahead of me.)

Norma Jayne, as Deputy Administrator, found herself fixing numbers on the fly as fast as she could.  She apologized later.  Of course, one bad number in a chain can contaminate everything that comes thereafter.

The preliminary County Budget Administrator Akumfi presented estimates revenues conservatively.  Both sales tax and casino revenues were kept flat between this year and next, even though gaming receipts have slightly exceeded recent budgets.

On the expense side, the Administrator predicted only a three percent employee vacancy rate, even though vacancies presently stand at eight per cent of authorized positions.  (They’d been 12 per cent one year ago.)   Fewer vacancies mean higher payroll.  Legislators questioned why Akumfi thinks vacancies will drop by so much.  He never provided a convincing answer, at least not that I could discern.

Projections of fund balance—Tompkins County’s comfortably-large year-to-year savings account—left some legislators baffled. 

Was that $64 Million General Fund Balance calculated at the start of this year or last, someone asked?  Akumfi needed to explain. 

“Do we have a plan in this budget to refund our fund balance?” legislator Greg Mezey asked.  The Administrator said he did not have such a plan.

Then, there are what may be called the budget “New and Unknowns,” the wild cards; expenses like the new homeless shelter, the continuation and possible expansion of the Rapid Medical Response (“RMR”) program, and application of the new, higher so-called “Living Wage.” 

By past resolution, Tompkins County is a Living Wage Employer.  Its government is supposed to pay employees living wages In late-February, the Tompkins County Workers’ Center grew the calculated Living Wage to $24.82 per hour, up 34.5 percent from its computation of two years ago.

“We had $2.5 Million set aside for Living Wage.  Is that off the table?” Dan Klein asked.

Deputy Administrator Jayne said the number was “closer to $1 Million.”

Legislator Shawna Black, a Living Wage advocate, sought to have all 14 legislators weigh-in on the Living Wage’s application, and perhaps do so as soon as that night’s meeting, late as it then was.  The discussion didn’t happen.  Expect Black to raise the wage issue later.

Emergency Response promoters—including those in Enfield—had hoped the Budget Retreat would provide guidance toward extending, maybe expanding, the RMR program into 2026.  That guidance didn’t come.

“Has the funding ended?” Akumfi asked inquisitively when RMR came up.  Norma Jayne had to inform him that funding runs through this year.  On to the next topic.

****

What’s the message discerned from wading through those laborious 60 PowerPoint slides and listening to what Administrator Akumfi and legislators had to say at the Budget Retreat?  Maybe, that it’s still way too early.

Yes, the 2026 Tompkins County tax levy could rise by 7.11 percent—but probably it won’t.  More importantly, the evening’s two-and-a-half hours spent in a crowded, window-deprived room told one more about the state of County Government than about the cost of County Government.  Some whom we pay handsomely to serve us remain on a learning curve.  Others are scurrying around tirelessly to prop their colleagues up.  And truth be told, it’ll be darned tough to figure out where Tompkins County taxes will be heading until at least the late summer, if not the fall.

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Posted Previously:

Enfield’s “Pot Lot”

Westchester cannabis grower targets Breezy Meadows

by Robert Lynch; April 22, 2025

An Ossining, NY-based company with a strange sounding name may establish a marijuana farm and processing facility off Halseyville Road within Enfield’s Breezy Meadows subdivision.  And because a majority of the Enfield Town Board has agreed to fast-track the approval process, local residents may have little voice into whether the state should grant the company a license. 

In an email to the Enfield Town Board April 15, Daysi Briones, president of IQ CANNABIS-KHUYAY CORP. (“Iq Cannabis”), requested a “Letter of No Objection” from Town officials, a requirement to secure permission from New York’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) for an” Adult-Use Microbusiness License” at Breezy Meadows.  Briones had requested a response by April 22, just one week later.

Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond confirmed Tuesday, the 22^nd that the Letter of No Objection had been sent based on the majority opinion of Town Board members.  One Enfield Councilperson (this writer) also wrote the applicant that day to clarify that no formal approval vote had actually been taken.

Company president Briones stated in her letter to the Town that Iq Cannabis had purchased Lot 33 in Breezy Meadows which subdivision documents identify as a 5.035-acre parcel, the more northerly of two Breezy Meadows lots which abut the west side of Halseyville Road. (Look for the patch of woods.)

“Our intended use of the land is for agricultural cannabis cultivation, utilizing both outdoor and mixed-light methods,” Briones stated in the company’s email.  “We also plan to conduct agricultural processing activities on-site (including drying and trimming). No on-site retail or public commercial traffic is planned,” she stated.

Briones’ email sent the Town Board provided no further details of the project.

Iq Cannabis’ email caught Town Board members by surprise. 

The time stamp on Daysi Briones’ email indicates it was sent at 7:50 PM on April 15.  In little more than an hour, Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond had shared the message with other Town Board members, asking them to weigh in on the company’s request for a Letter of No Objection.  That letter is apparently all the company needs at the moment to advance its application with the Office of Cannabis Management.

Redmond pointed to Briones’ hurried April 22 deadline for a reply.  The date would come well before the Town Board’s next scheduled meeting on May 14.  And rather than call a special session, Redmond circulated the Iq Cannabis email, asking board members to “weigh in to let me know” if they’d approve her sending the letter. Redmond stated that she, herself, had no objections to the letter being sent.

By the following morning, April 16, Councilpersons Cassandra Hinkle and Melissa Millspaugh had emailed their lack of objections, thereby joining with Redmond to constitute a Town Board majority of three.

Yet Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) weighed in differently. 

“I must respectfully abstain,” Lynch replied in an email that same morning.  “I know too little about what IQ CANNABIS-KHUYAY CORP. proposes for Lot 33 at Breezy Meadows to express my support at this time,” he wrote.  “Those whom we represent may have concerns or objections, and those objections deserve the opportunity to be aired at a timely-called Town Board meeting.”

“I cannot believe that the permitting procedure employed for the requested Adult-Use Microbusiness License did not accord Daysi Briones sufficient time to come before our Town Board at a prior monthly meeting, outline the company’s plans, and receive residents’ inquiries,” Lynch wrote Town Board colleagues.  “As the saying goes, ‘Failure to plan on your part does not create a crisis on my part,’” he stated.

Under parliamentary procedure, an abstention is treated the same as a dissent.

The final and fifth Town Board member, Jude Lemke, had not expressed her opinion on the matter to Town Board colleagues by the morning of the deadline.

Upon learning from Supervisor Redmond that a Letter of No Objection had been sent based on a three-member informal poll, Councilperson Lynch wrote Iq Cannabis his own letter April 22 the clarify the limited nature of the Town Board’s consent.

“In my opinion, writing as one Town Board member, any implied local municipal consent given to the proposed IQ CANNABIS-KHUYAY operation stands premature and has been stated apart from our Town’s customary authorization procedures,” Lynch wrote.  He requested that his comments be incorporated into any communications the company has with the OCM concerting local approval.

Two years ago, New York Land & Lakes, an Oneonta-based real estate developer, purchased the 337-acre John William Kenney farm between Halseyville and Podunk Roads in Enfield and subdivided it into 33 building lots.  News of the subdivision prompted initial neighborhood objections, with critics fearing depletion of their water wells, loss of agricultural land, and damage to Tucker Road, the gravel roadway that transects the former farm.

Despite the objections, the Enfield Town Planning Board approved the Breezy Meadows subdivision that June.  By late-2023, Land & Lakes had sold off most of the lots.  Now, two years later, few parcels have seen development.

Depending on its construction timetable, IQ Cannabis may become among the first purchasers to break ground.

“We believe this use aligns with the protective covenants outlined in the recorded Warranty Deed, which permits agricultural and non-commercial uses,” Briones stated as to the cannabis growing and processing operation.

But the extent to which IQ Cannabis would develop the site, and just what it would put there, remain unclear.

“The company’s plans for ‘agricultural processing activities on-site’ raise issues of whether the Iq Cannabis-khuyay operation borders on an industrial activity,” Councilperson Lynch wrote Town Board colleagues April 16. 

“The Town of Enfield has no zoning law,” Lynch informed Iq Cannabis in his letter April 22.  “All site plan review is conducted by the Town of Enfield Planning Board,” he explained.  “To date, the Planning Board has not considered this development.  To the best of my knowledge, Planning Board members remain unaware of it.  The Planning Board must decide whether our Town’s Site Plan Review Law empowers its oversight of the quasi-industrial operation proposed by your company.”

Iq Cannabis-khuyay Corporation was founded in July 2021, according to corporate records on file with the New York Department of State.  It lists its headquarters as 4 Narragansett Avenue, Ossining, NY, in Westchester County.  No other information about the firm was readily available.

Daysi Briones held out the opportunity to meet with the Enfield Town Board if required to do so and provide the Town additional information.  Lynch urged Board members to accept that opportunity.

“Make no mistake.  I do not necessarily oppose the IQ CANNABIS-KHUYAY Corporation’s proposal.  I just know too little of it,” Lynch wrote the applicant Tuesday.  “In my opinion, the letter submitted your company on our Town’s behalf should only issue following full consideration at a public meeting where public input is both permitted and invited.  Such has not occurred.  And of that shortcoming, the OCM should be made aware.”

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