News Briefs:
Five bids for Town Hall Solar
(Feb. 27): Five companies, one of them local, have tendered bids to construct solar panels atop the Enfield Town Hall, the Town’s former Highway Dept. Garage. Expect the Town Board to award the winning bidder March 12.
Each of the five offers fell close to one another in terms of price and equipment. Judged on cost alone, the company, “Solar Environment” of Saratoga Springs registered lowest at $66,000, less an estimated rebate of about $6,000 from a state agency.
Competing bids ranged up to $71,040. Enfield-based Fingerlakes Renewables tendered a quote in the middle range.
The Enfield Town Board agreed last September to proceed with the project having received a pair of grants for $60,000 to cover most of the expense. Town taxpayers might contribute up to $5,000 toward the work. Members thought it was a good bargain.
State law permits towns to evaluate competing bids based on “best value.” So the lowest dollar quote does not necessarily assure its award. The close range of these bids could put any applicant in play.
Bid documents anticipate fast-track completion this spring or early-summer.
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Josh’s Donkey Dust-up
(Feb. 26): It might safely be said that everyone’s got too much time on their hands.
Credit the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) for unearthing—and of course, exploiting—a nasty intra-party fight between Democratic Congressman Josh Riley and Hudson Valley State Senator James Skoufis.
In essence, Skoufis—the senator who pushed our local elections to even years—faults Riley for not hating President Trump as much as he does.
“All due respect, you haven’t tweeted about Trump since July 2024,” Skoufis answered Riley on X, according to the NRCC. “I’m in a Trump +12 (percent) district and do so regularly… Yet, you have no problem lobbing a cheap shot at (Hudson Valley) Democrats like… me who are fighting to make our prisons safer.”
“Do better,” Skoufis scolded Riley.
The senator’s anger peaked over Riley’s stand on grievances raised by New York’s striking prison guards.
“Corrections officers have a tough job in harsh conditions with minimal resources,” Congressman Riley had earlier tweeted. “Instead of helping, Albany politicians are making things worse with half-baked policies and mandates.”
Of course, the NRCC should have just stood back and let two Dems fight. It couldn’t help itself.
Riley’s “wasting his time criticizing,” an NRCC spokesperson accused the Congressman. “No wonder even Democrats are sick of him already,” Maureen O’Toole decried. /RL
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Higher ICSD Tax Cap Eyed
(Feb. 25): Providing financial first-light at the dawn of this year’s Ithaca City School District budget process, Dr. Dom Lisi, ICSD’s Assistant Superintendent for Business, briefed the Board of Education Tuesday on projected revenues. And he brought good news.
Whereas last year’s state-set “tax cap” was only 2.9 per cent, the projected 2025-26 tax cap may be almost a full percentage point higher, 3.76 per cent.
What that means is that the school board, should it choose, could hike the 2025-26 budget’s tax levy by $4.17 Million without having to obtain 60 per cent super-majority support from voters in the May referendum. A simple majority would suffice.
Last year, after a more expensive budget lost disastrously at the polls, the ICSD Board pared spending to keep within the tax cap, and the trimmed-down budget passed.
Dr. Lisi’s assistant admitted Tuesday that tax-abated “PILOT” revenues are still “a little foggy” at the moment. They could alter the tax cap’s calculation.
The school board gave little reaction to the revenue figures. Nothing was said about spending.
Lisi’s other calculations estimated a 3.3 per cent increase in state aid to Ithaca’s schools, up more than a million dollars. The administrator repeated the Tompkins County Assessment Director’s prediction of a flat tax base on the assumption that most homes won’t be reassessed for the next four years.
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Multi-Million Decision Dawdle
(Feb. 24): For a second consecutive month, a key committee of the Ithaca Board of Education has declined to recommend how big a capital package to place before voters later this year.
“We keep not coming to a resolution on this, and I don’t expect us to come to a resolution tonight,” Facilities Committee Chair Jill Tripp said back at a February 11 meeting. That’s when the committee spent just five minutes at session’s close discussing decision timetables, but not dollar amounts.
What’s more, the date of a capital referendum keeps changing. In mid-December, Tripp revealed that an internal consensus had set October 21 as the voting date. But at the February meeting, she referenced a presumed December referendum instead.
Board of Education President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell, according to Tripp, had urged all board members to attend the committee’s February meeting in hopes of resolving details. But even Eversley Bradwell didn’t show that day, so no recommendation emerged.
Choices offered the board back in December cited $30 Million, $40 Million, or $50 Million capital options.
Lacking any committee guidance, the full Board will likely face the matter head-on March 11… or maybe the 25th. This is a can that often gets kicked. / RL
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John bows; Primary dodged
(Feb. 18): It escaped widespread attention beyond the airwaves. But three-term Tompkins County legislator Rich John has quietly disclosed his intention not to seek reelection this year. He’s the sixth incumbent on the 14-member legislative body to plan departure.
“I really think it’s time for me to go on to another opportunity, and frankly for somebody else to come in with new ideas and energy and give it a shot,” John said in a WHCU interview January 31.
What nobody’s reported so far is that had John chosen to run, redistricting would have forced him into a primary battle with another incumbent, fellow Democrat Veronica Pillar. It might have become the only contest for any of the Legislature’s incumbents, who, recent experience holds, often win re-election unopposed.
But the seats that will be vacated could see challenges. Tompkins County Elections Commissioner Stephen DeWitt confirms he expects multiple candidates to petition in some districts, both inside and outside the City of Ithaca. DeWitt did not name names.
“I think that the people need to be represented from somebody else for a while,” Rich John told his interviewer. But least for some of those in John’s new district, that “somebody else” could be incumbent Pillar.
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TCPL “Weeding” gone awry
(Feb. 17): It may explain why the many shelves at the oversized, yet underutilized Tompkins County Public Library look so naked.
A deep-dive 3,500-word expose posted Monday in The Ithaca Voice, product of a year-long investigation, profiles troubled times at the heavily County-funded library, most of the problems traced to Leslie Tabor, library director since 2022.
There’s dissention amongst staff, The Voice’s story reports. Unionized employees have lodged unfair labor practices complaints. Some people have quit. A high-profile law firm was brought in to investigate.
Most troubling, however, is the destruction of books. It’s called “weeding,” and Tabor allegedly ordered it with a vengeance. The director disposed of nearly 109,000 books and other materials during her first year of service, more than 40 percent of the library’s total collection, The Voice reports.
For the 33-library Finger Lakes Library System, as many as 60 percent of stored volumes were tossed out, many of them books the local library did not own.
“Weeding” drew little attention during Tabor’s 30-minute budget presentation to the Tompkins County Legislature last September. Yet not all were happy.
“I’ve seen empty shelves; we’ve heard a lot of griping from members of the community,” legislator Deborah Dawson told Tabor that day.
And yes, to those of us in rural places like Enfield, we could have used those books. It’s a crying shame. / RL
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Lucy Brown: 1933-2025
(Feb. 17): Any Baby Boomer who came of age in Ithaca and held a passion for civil rights knew the name, Lucy Brown. And if fortunate, they knew her personally.
Brown was an activist icon of an older generation one looked up to. It would pay disrespect to compare her to anyone else but herself.
It took nearly a week for Brown’s passing to circulate widely in this community. Now it has.
Lucy J. Brown—known endearingly as “Mama. Lucy” or “Ms. Lucy” by those who knew her—died February 9th at age 91.
Brown served on many local boards and committees. She mentored students as an administrative assistant at Cornell. She helped co-found Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services (INHS), whose leadership last week paid tribute:
“Beyond any title or position, Lucy J. Brown was a lifelong agent of change, a constant advocate for those marginalized, and a respected presence in decision-making processes,” INHS stated.
Lucy Brown was on hand last August when a commemorative statue was unveiled in her honor. It stands outside the Henry St. John Building on Ithaca’s Clinton Street.
A celebration of Lucy Brown’s life is planned for March 1 in Georgia, where she’d resided with family since 2020.
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Tenney tenders “Trump Day”
(Feb. 16): Memorialized holidays usually honor dead people. Congresswoman Claudia Tenney wants one to revere someone still very much alive—her beloved President Donald Trump.
On Valentine’s Day, Tenney, who represents our neighbors in the Town of Hector, Seneca County, and points north, introduced the “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act.”
If adopted, our banks, government offices and schools would, no doubt, close every June 14—Donald Trump’s B’day—inconveniently just a few days before our other new holiday, Juneteenth. Flag Day falls on the same calendar day as when Trump was born.
“No modern president has been more pivotal for our country than Donald J. Trump,” Tenney’s sycophantic press release states. “As both our 45th and 47th President, he is the most consequential President in modern American history, leading our country at a time of great international and domestic turmoil,” Tenney proclaims.
Given how President Trump has polarized America, one can only envision how divisive a “holiday” like this would be. You’d find more protest than praise in places like Ithaca.
But anyone who drove Routes 5&20 near the Geneva Walmart before the election and saw that grinning Trump-Tenney billboard will surely find Claudia’s payback gratitude unremarkable. / RL
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Newfield Solar Review Moves Forward
(Feb. 13): All may not like it, but the Newfield Town Board has taken a key procedural step toward approving yet another solar farm off Millard Hill Road.
By majority vote, the Town Board Thursday assumed what’s called “lead agency” status in the environmental review of TJA-New York’s planned 5 Megawatt facilities to be located not far from other solar farms near the Enfield town line.
In its Resolution, the Newfield Board also designated Barton and Loguidice as the consultant that will guide its environmental study. By taking the lead, Newfield’s elected officials assume the authority often assigned to the town’s appointed Planning Board. Planners had started the review.
Notable in Thursday’s discussion, TJA’s Michael Frateschi stated preference for negotiating any Payment-in-Lieu-of-Tax (PILOT) agreement with the Town directly, and not through the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency.
“We’re very willing to work with the Town,” Frateschi told the meeting. By state law, a Town-based PILOT can only run 15 years. After that, a “standardized assessment model” would apply, members were told.
Newfield Supervisor Michael Allinger finds himself defending his Town against criticism the project would harm taxpayers.
“The Town Board has one job and that is to work for the best of the Newfield Community,” Allinger wrote on the Town’s website February 3rd in reply to a social media critic.
The project’s next step will likely be a Public Hearing, tentatively set for March 13.
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Enfield to join NFIP
(Feb. 13): Enfield residents, for the first time, will be able to purchase federally-backed flood insurance, under a wordy resolution adopted Wednesday night by the Enfield Town Board.
But the actual availability of those policies must await Town Board approval of floodplain development regulations, still under review.
New York rules mandate Enfield now join the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) after newly-approved federal maps identified lowlands along portions of Enfield Creek—but nowhere else—as lying within a floodplain. In those flood-prone areas, the state also dictates Enfield restrict what’s built there.
Enfield’s Town Board and Planning Board have scurried in recent weeks to meet a March 20 deadline for submission of draft regulations to state officials. Before Wednesday’s meeting, Supervisor Stephanie Redmond had attempted to jump-start the process by getting draft approval almost on-the-spot.
It didn’t work. Questions arising during Town Board discussions—including whether the Town could ban new home construction altogether in floodplains—bogged down the process. A mid-March submission now seems more likely.
Expect it to be June before Enfield residents can actually buy NFIP policies.
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Dog Law debated, delayed
(Feb. 12): Enfield Town Board members, you might say, were set back on their haunches Wednesday night as three public critics vigorously faulted a proposed new Dog Control Law for the town, one that’s been discussed off-and-on for nearly a year, but that night finally made it to a Public Hearing.
“Are we fixing something that is not broken?” one Enfield Main Road resident asked the Board.
“Why are we going after every dog owner?” resident Tammy Alling inquired. “So many other things in this town are more important.”
What rankled the critics, owners of multiple canines, was a provision that would designate any home with five or more dogs as a “kennel” and impose restrictions on food storage and waste removal. It would expand Enfield’s current, concise two-page dog law to as many as 16 sheets, with new dictates the Town’s attorney had recommended.
“It’s to protect the dogs,” Town Clerk Mary Cornell pleaded as she defended the revisions. But faced with more than an hour of withering criticism—with at one point Supervisor Stephanie Redmond yielding the floor is disgust—the Town Board gave up. It postponed action, and adjourned the hearing until April.
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No ICSD Pushback to Trump… Yet
(Feb. 12): It was a meeting of the Ithaca Board of Education Tuesday night made newsworthy for what wasn’t said. An elephant standing prominently within the ICSD’s York Lecture Hall, where members convened, got purposely ignored during the more than 90-minute session.
In its first meeting since word surfaced that the Trump Department of Education had launched an investigation into alleged anti-white bias at the Ithaca City School District’s “Students of Color Summit,” neither school board members nor Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown chose to face Trump or his administration’s policies head-on.
To the contrary, Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell shut down any critique.
“This is the first time the board has had a meeting in two weeks,” Eversley Bradwell reminded observers. “So it would not be wise for any board member to respond without us having some time to share space together to determine what our path forward is.” All members complied. The Board President promised a statement, eventually.
Superintendent Brown acknowledged that he, too, has been begged to comment, even by shoppers at Wegmans. Brown, like all others, guarded his words Tuesday night, saying only that current programs are “lawful… compliant and consistent with the state standards and frameworks” to which the ICSD adheres.
“I hope our actions speak louder than any statement,” Brown told the Board.
Equally surprising, no one from the public addressed the school board on the subject. Restraint prevailed. But the emotional undercurrent remained palpable.
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4-Year Assessment Pause Eyed
(Feb.11): Tompkins County Assessment Director Jay Franklin reportedly told an Ithaca Board of Education committee Tuesday he’ll recommend a four-year pause in most property reassessments so as to convert his department to new, more reliable software.
The Department “will not attempt to measure market changes between now and 2029,” Finance Committee Chair Garrick Blalock relayed to the full Board of Education Tuesday evening.
Franklin’s revelation, stated at a committee meeting just hours earlier, marked its first known public disclosure. Franklin had never mentioned it when he updated the County Legislature’s Government Operations Committee five days earlier.
“He will reassess physical changes,” Blalock advised the board of Franklin’s plan. But if you’re assessed for $300,000, and your house “doesn’t fall down and you don’t improve it, it’ll stay at $300,000, even if you sell it for $400,000.”
Any multi-year reassessment pause would require the County Legislature’s consent. One or more legislators are expected to oppose a lengthy delay.
Last year, inflation-powered, double-digit assessment increases stunned many homeowners. Franklin told the County committee February 6th he’d sent out more than 20,000 assessment changes last year, but only 630 so far in 2025, the director already planning a one-year hiatus. But a four-year pause is new.
The big downside would be sticker shock later on. “If I’m on this board in July 2029, don’t come here and say I didn’t see this assessment coming,” Blalock warned taxpayers.
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Plastic Pie in the Sky?
(Feb. 11): On the same day President Trump ordered the federal government to go back to using plastic straws—not paper ones—a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature moved Monday in the opposite direction, supporting a likely-to-fail effort to force the producers of plastic packaging to pay for recycling it.
“I love this. I’ve loved this for a long time,” legislator Amanda Champion crowed as the Planning, Energy, and Environmental Quality Committee backed a proposed state law, introduced for this, the fifth consecutive year, to impose “producer responsibility.”
“Is there any hope it’s gonna’ pass?” Champion queried.
Probably not. Any “bubble-pack bill” faces stiff headwinds from industry lobbyists. Moreover, what’s on Albany’s table may not be ready for prime time.
“I totally agree with the goal,” Rich John, a law professor, stated. But “I looked at the legislation, and I was appalled. It’s a total mess.”
There’s a section on financial impact. “There’s nothing there,” John reported. Drafters had failed to predict what the law might cost producers—and ultimately, consumers.
What’s more, the text is “massive,” John observed. “It involves an incredibly complex bureaucratic system that by all indications New York State is not capable of. They just cannot do this.”
Rich John voted no. Champion, Veronica Pillar and committee Chair Anne Koreman supported the endorsement, which heads now to the full County Legislature.
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TCIDA Expansion Advances
(Feb. 5): Ithaca Board of Education member Jill Tripp spoke. So did the President of the Ithaca Teachers Association, as did this writer, Enfield Councilperson Robert Lynch.
And their time was rewarded Wednesday as a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature recommended adoption of state legislation that would expand membership of the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) from seven to nine members.
The initiative, first pressed by the Ithaca School District, aims at granting school districts and rural towns a louder voice in the IDA’s tax abatement decisions.
“I’m always going to err on the side of having more people at the table; more diversity at the table,” Housing and Economic Development Committee member Travis Brooks said, one of six on the panel who gave expansion unanimous support.
But concerns came from others. Legislator Rich John—not a committee member, but holding a seat on the IDA—feared a school representative would tend to reject valuable abatements that actually bring schools benefits.
“The IDA has helped the schools fundamentally in gigantic ways,” John said. “You absolutely need growth if you’re going to have a sustainable community.”
The committee’s resolution next goes to the full County Legislature and then to lawmakers in Albany.
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Planners back Flood Law
(Feb. 5): Acting on short notice, and never bothering to cast a formal vote, the Enfield Town Planning Board Wednesday recommended Town Board adoption of a Flood Damage Protection Law needed for the first time now that federal authorities have classified slivers of land along Enfield Creek as lying in a flood plain.
“I’m comfortable with it,” Planning Board Chair Dan Walker said following less than a one-hour Board review of the law, drafted by state officials and given the Town to adopt as nothing short of a mandate.
The 20-page document—plus add-ons and appendices—may see preliminary adoption by the Town Board February 12th. Its requirements would either prevent new development altogether in flood plains, or require buildings there to be elevated, perhaps on stilts.
After advising Enfield a full year ago not to enact a local law until flood maps were set, state officials in mid-January directed the town to hastily adopt a draft “floodplain management ordinance” and submit it for their review by March 20.
At least one Enfield Councilperson (this writer) had cautioned Wednesday that he would not vote on anything until the Planning Board had given its blessing. Now, with that evening’s endorsement, it has.
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Trump DEI Crackdown hits ICSD
(Feb. 4): An arm of the Trump Administration has launched an investigation into the Ithaca City School District’s annual “Students of Color Summit” and whether it excludes white students, according to one local media report, published Tuesday.
According to The Ithaca Times, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on January 27 activated a probe into the complaint filed last August against the school district’s event, but left unanswered by the prior Biden Administration.
A conservative group founded by Cornell University Law Professor William A. Jacobson alleged in the complaint that the district’s one-day events, held for each of the past four years, violated both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause “by intentionally excluding white students,” according to the article.
Nevertheless, a photo accompanying the Times report, one taken at the 2023 Summit, appears to show white attendees.
“It is hard to imagine more open, prolonged, and intentional racial discrimination, despite ICSD’s denials,” Jacobson reportedly wrote in his complaint.
Ithaca School Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell told the Times he “welcomes the investigation,” but denied the allegation.
“Ithaca City School District programs do not exclude,” Eversley Bradwell said. “The 2024 event was created by students to support and affirm Students of Color, and all students, staff and educators were invited to attend.”
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Closed huddle; open questions
(Feb. 5): The most newsworthy part of the Tompkins County Legislature’s February 4th meeting may have been the part we never saw.
Just five days after federal agents seized for presumed deportation an undocumented immigrant in downtown Ithaca, and after some conservatives have called for Sheriff Derek Osborne’s arrest for earlier releasing the man from custody, Chair Dan Klein called the Legislature into Executive Session at the close of Tuesday’s public meeting “for discussions regarding proposed, pending or current litigation.”
Klein wasn’t more specific. No public action was taken afterward. And in a departure from usual, some opposed the decision to convene in private.
“I think we should have this discussion in open session,” Republican legislator Mike Sigler said before the majority voted to close doors, shutter cameras, and kick the public out. “I don’t think we should have an executive session for this discussion,” Sigler said.
Fellow Republican Lee Shurtleff and Democrats Susan Currey and Travis Brooks joined Sigler in opposing the closure.
The “Meeting in executive session” tile stayed on the screen for just over an hour before the feed was finally cut. We’re left to speculate what “litigation” lawmakers discussed.
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Fire House leased, amidst grumbles
(Feb. 4): Recently-elected Commissioner Don Gunning cast his first dissent Tuesday as the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners authorized its Chair to sign a one-year, $75,000 lease of the Enfield Fire Station from its owner, the volunteer fire company commissioners oversee.
“While this may not be perfect,” Board Chair Greg Stevenson said of the lease, “we need someplace where to operate out of and where to park our trucks.”
The rental charge is up four per cent from that of last year. “It is what it is,” Commissioner Barry “Buddy Rollins said of the agreement he nonetheless supported. But Rollins complained the rental payment stands $23,000 over what the owning fire company pays on its mortgage.
Gunning took a different position, faulting the fire company for not renting out its large meeting room for community events.
“We’re here to fight fires and train and not in the rental business,” Fire Company President Dennis Hubbell countered. Hubbell said renting out requires oversight and maintenance. It also puts the fire company in direct competition with the Enfield Community Council and the Enfield Valley Grange.
The contract approved Tuesday has been tossed back and forth between attorneys for months, leaving its approval delayed. The Fire Company’s Board of Directors is expected to give its own consent this Thursday.
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Kelles condemns ICE Raids; backs locals
(Feb. 2): In a statement issued following the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids locally last Thursday, Ithaca Assemblymember Anna Kelles has spoken out, both condemning the Trump Administration’s escalating deportation initiatives and defending local law enforcement officials who allegedly failed to cooperate.
“The intentional misinformation spread by the current federal administration highlights their targeted actions against the entire immigrant community in our country,” wrote Kelles on official letterhead. “This community represents millions of people who collectively contribute to the economic and social wellbeing of our nation,” she stated.
While not referencing Tompkins County Sheriff Derek Osborne by name—some Republican critics have called for Osborne’s arrest—Kelles defended the local Sheriff’s only limited cooperation regarding a former jail inmate later apprehended by ICE agents in downtown Ithaca.
Citing the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, Kelles, the original author of what equates to Tompkins County’s “sanctuary city” law, stated: “The notion that the federal government can mandate compliance with immigration initiatives is a misinterpretation of the Supremacy Clause, and courts have consistently upheld that states cannot be forced into such roles.”
Sheriff Osborne had not commented on the matter as of the weekend. But Tompkins County Government has defended his conduct.
Meanwhile, a top Justice Department official, Acting Deputy attorney General Emil Bove, according to the Associated Press, has signaled that the U.S Attorney’s office will investigate local actions “for potential prosecution.”
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Josh’s Purple Progression
(Feb.1): Our district’s new Congressman, Josh Riley, during his first campaign in 2022, was photographed on a park bench, accepting the endorsement of progressive Assemblymember Anna Kelles, who when in the Tompkins County Legislature authored the closest thing our county has to a “sanctuary city” law.
But now in Congress, facing Donald Trump’s headwinds, Riley appears backing off on his progressive bona fides. Though he was hospitalized on the day the vote was taken, Riley has stated his support for the “Laken Riley Act,” the newly-adopted, Trump-signed statute that may receive the credit—or blame—for at least one local immigrant’s detention by federal officers this week.
“By ending ‘catch-and-release’ policies for undocumented immigrants who commit certain crimes, this bill takes an important step toward keeping our communities safe-and that will always be my top priority,” Josh Riley released in a statement, quoted by The Ithaca Times.
Forty-six Democrats supported the Laken Riley Act when the House passed it January 22. But 156 in Riley’s party opposed it. Progressive icon Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the law’s critics, saying the measure constitutes a “fundamental suspension of a core American value,” namely due process. An immigrant need only be accused of a crime, not convicted, to risk deportation.
Josh Riley barely won election last November. No doubt, he knows what kind of attack ads Republicans could run next time should he vote the wrong way. Welcome to reality. / RL
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