News Briefs:
ECC’s “Grand Canyon” Problem
(Aug. 28): The driveway to the Enfield Community Center follows an uphill slope. It’s only gravel. And every deluge carves deep ruts.
The Enfield Town Board August 13 had authorized the Town Highway Department to “grade the driveway” for the Enfield Community Council’s (ECC’s) benefit. But that work’s been done before. And results never last.
We have to “stop the Grand Canyon that is washing our driveway into the ditch,”ECC President Cortney Bailey advised the agency’s Board of Directors Thursday. “I would just like to put in a water bar and forget it,” she said.
But that’s a problem. A water bar (a cross-driveway grate) hampers snow plowing. Bailey has an idea…. actually two.
First, the ECC President’s husband and son, heavy equipment operators, would supplement the Highway Department’s work by shaping the top of the driveway to channel water to its side.
Next, Bailey plans to investigate buying “temporary speed bumps.” They’d be laid down during the summer, then removed and stored in winter.
Also at the ECC’s August 28 meeting, planning continued toward the 50th annual Harvest Festival September 20. Many of the usual events will return. There had once been talk of a parade. But no one stepped up to plan it.
“No parade,” Bailey confirmed. “Too bad,” ECC founding member Helen Hetherington reacted. “Maybe next year,” Vera Howe Strait next said .
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ICSD Cell Ban Final… Sort of
(Aug. 26): After another half-hour’s discussion… that on top of an hour’s debate two weeks earlier… the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) Board of Education Tuesday granted supposedly-final “Second Reading” approval of a policy implementing the state-mandated ban on student cell phone use.
For ICSD students and parents, what the board did this more recent Tuesday holds little impact. Students will still be assigned Velcro-closing, signal-canceling pouches in which they’ll place their phones during classes. The state-compliant pouches were already bought, so the school board had little choice but to agree.
Doubts remain. “I think they’re going to put the phones in their pocket or their backpack,” board skeptic Todd Fox told the meeting. Fox would prefer Newfield’s reported solution: Have students keep the electronics in their lockers.
One of the few revisions to the policy made August 26 affected when and how teachers may confiscate the phone of a rule violator.
While most policy votes like this one make the rules final; not here.
Given unpredictable student behavior and what some called the phones’ ”addictive” nature, the ICSD Board and Superintendent Luvelle Brown agreed to revisit the policy September 30 to ascertain how effective it’s been,
“We will bring back stories and anecdotal evidence,” Brown promised.
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Oberacker may challenge Riley in ’26
(Aug. 23): New York State Senator Peter Oberacker, who once represented parts of Tompkins County, is testing the waters for a potential 2026 challenge to incumbent 19th District Congressman Josh Riley, multiple media sources report.
And Democrat Riley is taking him on from the starting gate—if not before it.
“After much thought and prayer, I’m giving serious consideration to running and will share my decision soon,” the Otsego County Republican said in a statement, reported by the online publication City & State.
NY-19, one of the most competitive congressional districts in the nation, has see-sawed between Republican and Democratic control. Democrat Riley won it last year. The GOP’s Marc Molinaro held it for two years before that.
Sparing no criticism, Riley blasted Oberacker in a fundraising message on Friday.
“Oberacker was a corporate executive for a Big Ag monopoly that put small family farms out of business and poisoned kids,” Riley texted supporters.
Riley labeled Oberacker an “Albany Insider and Do-Nothing Politician.”
Peter Oberacker is beginning his third, two-year term in the State Senate. Before redistricting, he briefly represented the Tompkins County towns of Dryden, Groton, Danby and Caroline. His district now encompasses seven counties to our east, the nearest Chenango and Broome.
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Plan: Office for Aging to Lansing
(Update: The Tompkins County Legislature, by a vote of 13 to one August 19, and without controversy, approved the Office for the Aging’s and Assessment Department’s temporary relocation to the Dutch Mill Road building.)
(Aug. 18): In an obvious game of bureaucratic musical chairs, the Tompkins County Office for the Aging would temporarily relocate to newly-purchased office space in Lansing to facilitate the Downtown Center of Government’s planned construction.
A resolution placed on the Tompkins County Legislature’s August 19 agenda would move the Office for the Aging from its present home at the so-called “Human Services Annex” at State and Albany Streets in Ithaca so that the Tompkins County Board of Elections could, in turn, move into the annex, thereby allowing “deconstruction” of the Elections office’s building on the Center of Government site.
The Office for the Aging would occupy new quarters at 31 Dutch Mill Road, Lansing, along with the County Assessment Department.
Earlier plans had called for Elections Board to also go to Dutch Mill Road. But amidst community pushback, the Legislature resolved earlier this month to keep Elections downtown.
As an attachment to legislator Lee Shurtleff’s member-filed resolution slated for action Tuesday, Tompkins County Director of Assessment Jay Franklin wholeheartedly supports his own office’s temporary relocation. However, neither the Commissioners of Elections nor the Office for the Aging’s Director provided similar ringing endorsements.
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NY Left: Cancel my Rebate
(Aug. 15): Critics may call it Governor Kathy Hochul’s “Walking Around Money,” government handouts to entice New Yorkers to vote for her in next year’s elections.
But frightened that a projected $10.5 Billion deficit in next year’s state budget would gut social programs, a group of New York progressives are calling for a special legislative session later this year to repeal Hochul’s $2 Billion rebate plan, the one that would this fall give most low-to-middle income families $400 checks.
Antonio Delgado, the Lieutenant Governor, who’s also challenging Governor Hochul’s reelection, has become one of the rebate’s loudest critics.
“That was a gimmick in the first place,” the New York Public News Network reports Delgado told a Manhattan rally. “Everybody knew this (the deficit) was going to come, and yet the governor thought it was somehow going to be important to hand out a sugar high.”
President Trump’s funding cuts get blame for much of the predicted New York shortfall. But before one says cancelling the rebates serves only liberal interests, consider this:
Tompkins County faces its own projected deficit, $11 Million, in the coming year. Some of that reflects Albany’s stinginess with Medicaid reimbursements. Canceling rebates might trickle down to lower property taxes here.
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New Subdivision Regs; Tax Cap Override
(Aug. 13): It’s finally done!
By a unanimous and perhaps long-overdue vote Wednesday, the Enfield Town Board granted final approval to a 37-page rewrite of Town Subdivision Regulations. The Town Board began its review a full 23 months ago when the draft revisions were first handed it by Enfield’s Planning Board.
With line-by-line review typically shoved to the end of monthly meetings, weary Board members had found procrastination convenient.
And although some had suggested bold initiatives along the way—including involving elected officials more deeply in traditional Planning Board functions and assuring lot buyers a right to groundwater—most initiatives were later scrapped leaving the final document much as the Planning Board had offered it.
The regulations’ most significant change would deregulate simple two-lot subdivisions to mostly an administrative task, precluding public hearings in most instances.
The Enfield Town Board also August 13, with one dissent, agreed to override New York’s largely penalty-free tax cap for next year’s budget. It did so even though tentative budget figures won’t be released until next month.
“We should look a little harder,” Enfield resident and Town Board candidate Rosie Carpenter urged lawmakers, urging budget economy. “People don’t have deep pockets,” Carpenter said.
Supervisor Stephanie Redmond said Enfield’s state-calculated tax cap for 2026 will be just over three percent.
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ICSD Delays Cell Ban Rules
(Aug. 12): The Ithaca City School District (ICSD) will walk right up to the edge before adopting the schoolhouse ban on student cell phones, mandated by the state to take hold in September.
Following nearly an hour of discussion Tuesday, the Board of Education postponed adoption of the draft cell phone policy for two weeks. Members had many questions concerning protocols for safe storage of the devices and “intervention” measures should a student violate the rules.
“A cultural shift is going to be required,” School Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell advised fellow board members. “How do we change that? That’s going to be the real question.”
To speed matters along, the Board unanimously accepted the policy for its “first reading,” but without adoption. The procedural vote should enable revised language to become final at the August 26 meeting,.
“The ICSD Board of Education prohibits the use of personal internet-enabled devices by all students in preK-12 during the school day and on school grounds,” the draft policy states. Limited exemptions would apply.
The policy would “ensure a common set of tiered responses” for violations. But no student would be suspended for merely breaching the policy.
Current plans point to most students keeping their phones in “secure pouches” during the day, rather than imposing bell-to-bell confiscation. ICSD would likely buy the pouches, a $20,000 expense.
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Nothing to See Here(?)
(Aug. 11): They convened at 6 PM. The meeting ambled along until 8:30. Midway through, I touched the wall to see if the paint had dried.
The Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners Monday held what was supposed to have been a “budget workshop.” But Commissioners never got to the budget. “We didn’t get any workshopping in,” Commissioners Chair Greg Stevenson admitted during the meeting’s final moments.
What Commissioners did, instead, August 11 was conduct an impromptu “Audit Meeting.” And that’s what became kind-of newsworthy.
The Enfield Fire District has changed both its Treasurer and its Secretary in recent months. And maybe because of the transition—or perhaps in spite of it—problems have cropped up.
Fellow Commissioner Robyn Wishna and Fire Chief Jamie Stevens had spotted concerns, Stevenson said: expenses sometimes placed onto wrong budget lines. In other instances, a line that should have been created for a common expense never was.
So invoice-by-invoice, Commissioners wandered through nearly eight months of bills.
The unintended audit meeting was “very productive and very appropriate,” Stevenson credited the session afterward. It was also very, VERY boring. / RL
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NYSDOT’s Odd Logic… Again
(Aug. 9): NY Route 79 is the most dangerous place in Enfield; a road too narrow, too hilly, with traffic too fast.
But once again, the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) has turned a blind eye.
The Town of Enfield this week received NYSDOT’s reply to its September 2024 request for it to consider added safety measures—including lowering the current 50 mph speed limit—at the intersection of Route 79 with Waterburg and Black Oak Roads. Our request followed several bad accidents there.
NYSDOT replied that it would only cut some tree branches back; do nothing more.
“Our investigation determined that lowering the speed limit would not be appropriate at this time,” Scott Bates, Regional Traffic Engineer, wrote the Town in a letter July 18. “The 85th percentile speed on this section of Route 79 supports the current limit of 50 mph,” he said.
Bates explained that “the 85th percentile is the speed at which drivers will drive under free-flowing conditions and is used to set the speed limit at a safe speed, minimize crashes, and promote uniform traffic flow.”
Stop and consider NYSDOT’s logic: By that same prescript, if 85 percent of drivers text while driving, we should never ban texting. We must never nudge motorists toward safer behavior.
Where’s the “nanny-state” when you truly need it?
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Poet Laureate Politics
(Aug. 7): The Community Arts Partnership introduced Tompkins County’s newest Poet Laureate to the County Legislature this week.
As is customary, designee nicole basta (lower case, please) read to lawmakers a poem she’d written for the occasion. It was pointed, not pretty. And it proved basta the perfect fit for Ithaca’s activist culture.
“Poetry never stood a chance of standing outside History,” titled the composition basta read; quoted here, in part:
“But can I call myself a poet if I perform no alchemy, if in the white of where the water falls I do not also see the white of a shroud that covers a dead child?
“I’ve never claimed to be good at numbers, but here are two: In the last 668 days, over 60 thousand killed in Palestine. Dead is a word. Killed is another. Forcibly starved is, too…
“For I am not here to merely soothe you, beloved. This is a time to be so fierce and awake. Poet is a word that means human, that means witness, that means turning toward…”
nicole basta finished her reading. Legislators politely applauded. Republican Mike Sigler has long displayed a tiny Israeli flag on his desk. He was not seen joining in.
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A “Whopper” of a Mistake
(Aug. 6): What we have here is a journalistic case study into how one bad assumption can turn everything that flows from it into a trail of trash.
Tuesday, August 5, the Tompkins County Legislature adopted member Greg Mezey’s member-filed Resolution to commence negotiations with the Maguire car dealership’s parent company for location of a Code Blue homeless shelter at what the published resolution’s text stated was “100 Commercial Avenue.”
100 Commercial Avenue is the address of Harbor Freight tools. This writer’s advance report of Mezey’s newsworthy initiative referenced Harbor Freight. But as first disclosed during the Legislature’s Tuesday discussion, the proposed shelter’s correct location is the former Burger King restaurant. The eatery’s street address is 340 the Elmira Road.
Asked to explain, Legislator Mezey clarified the next day that, “It’s my understanding that the parcel was recently consolidated by the Maguire family into one parcel, 100 Commercial Ave.”
“It can be a little bit confusing at first glance, but it is correctly noted in the resolution,” Mezey added.
But “correctly noted” to whom? Not to the casual reader, one who would base locational judgments on street addresses, not tax parcels. A legislator writes not just to his own colleagues, but to us all.
More clarity was warranted here, especially concerning an initiative that had not gained widespread coverage. / RL
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Skin-of-Teeth Tax Override
(Aug. 5): The Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners voted Tuesday night, (8/5) to ensure itself more headroom in planning next year’s budget. But it almost didn’t do so.
Mustering the bare minimum three affirmative votes needed, commissioners agreed to override the (largely penalty-free) state-set cap in next year’s tax levy. The state limit is usually about two percent. The Enfield Fire District’s budget, itself, has yet to be drafted.
“Why does the state keep setting a tax cap that everybody votes to override, anyway?” Fire Commissioners Chair Greg Stevenson posited after Tuesday’s meeting.
Stevenson and fellow Commissioners Robyn Wishna and Alan Teeter supported the tax cap override. Commissioner Donald Gunning, with little explanation, voted no. Commissioner Barry Rollins was excused, but his absence didn’t alter the three-vote requirement.
Asked what next year’s tax cap would be, Stevenson couldn’t say. “The Comptroller’s Office hasn’t told us yet,” he replied.
Fire Commissioners begin their budget planning August 11. The Enfield Town Board faces its own tax cap public hearing and likely override vote August 13.
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