News Briefs:
Towns, Schools could earn seat on IDA
(July 18): After two years of trying, local school districts and towns are closer than ever to earning a seat on the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency (TCIDA).
In the flurry of action before adjournment last month, the New York State Senate granted unanimous, final legislative approval to a Home Rule bill that would expand seating on the TCIDA from seven members to nine.
The state Assembly, where the relatively routine legislation died last year, passed the resubmitted bill, 140 votes to one, on April 27.
Local school boards and the teachers they employ have lobbied locals for TCIDA expansion on grounds schools need a voice in agency-granted tax abatements. They’re lucrative to developers, yet cost schools tax revenue.
The Enfield Town Board endorsed agency expansion in January 2025. Enfield urged Tompkins County to add a rural municipal leader to the agency as well as a schools’ representative.
Governor Kathy Hochul must still sign the bill authorizing the Tompkins County Legislature to expand membership.
And expect much talk about tax abatements in coming days. The current, seven-member agency will take public testimony July 29 on a $17.5 Million abatement request by developers for new housing adjacent to the former Morse Chain factory on South Hill.
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ICSD to revisit phone ban
(July 17): At an Annual Organizational Meeting that saw Adam Krantweiss elevated to Board President on a split vote, the Ithaca Board of Education Friday called for a snap, special meeting on Monday, July 20 to re-examine the Ithaca City School District’s (ICSD’s) year-old ban on student cell phones in the classroom.
The newly-empaneled school board will consider toughening current policy. Board member Todd Fox, a critic of the policy, would have students sequester their phones in lockers from their arrival at school through dismissal.
To comply with state-imposed restrictions, the ICSD last year provided students Velcro pouches and relied largely upon the honor system for students to keep them there. Reports have found the policy often abused with little resulting punishment.
“I don’t want our teachers to police the kids,” Fox told the July 17 meeting, “Get the phones out” of the classroom, Fox said.
“I’d like the resolution to be done properly,” colleague Karen Yearwood countered. Yearwood saw a Monday meeting as “too soon.”
Scheduling the special session fell on a six-three vote. By the same margin—and with the same players in each faction—board members chose Krantweiss as Board President over Garrick Blalock.
Members elected Jacob Shiffrin as Vice-President. Yet the three who dissented on Krantweiss, also abstained on Shiffrin’s selection.
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A Moratorium, such as it is
(July 14): Half a loaf may be better than no loaf at all. But to some, a full loaf would be better.
Amid much fanfare, Governor Kathy Hochul July 14 signed a first-in-the-nation executive order that places a one-year moratorium on the permitting of the largest of data processing centers. It imposes the pause “in order to build a nation-leading regulatory framework that protects ratepayers, the environment, the energy grid and communities,” the Governor’s press office said in a statement.
“As data center development threatens to hike up utility bills, deplete our natural resources, and create uncertainty for New Yorkers, it’s my responsibility to take action and lead,” the Governor said.
The moratorium would temporarily halt conversion of the former Milliken Station power plant in Lansing into a major data center.
But what many reports overlook is that Hochul’s order would only impact so-called “Hyper-Scale Centers,” those using 50 megawatts of power or more. A bill passed by the State Legislature in early-June, its key Assembly sponsor, Ithaca’s Anna Kelles, would have imposed a one-year moratorium on data centers as small as 20 megawatts.
Hochul has not stated whether she’ll sign or veto the Kelles bill, itself a compromise. (Kelles had wanted a three-year moratorium.)
Meanwhile, the Enfield Town Board proceeds with its own moratorium, likely to reach a vote in September. Newfield adopted its moratorium July 9.
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Newfield Adopts Data Center Moratorium
(July 10): With no discussion among Board members and following only brief comment at a public hearing, the Newfield Town Board July 9 approved a one-year moratorium on the permitting of new data processing centers within the town.
Unanimous Board adoption came even though no such centers have been proposed for Newfield.
“The Town Board finds and determines that any Data Processing, if approved without amendment to the (Town’s) Comprehensive Plan and adoption of appropriate local laws, could have a harmful effect on the health, safety and welfare of any existing or future residents of the Town,” the three-page moratorium law states.
“This is a farming community,” Joe Pellegrino, one of the few attendees, told the hearing. “If they dumped it in the middle of open land, I don’t see how this is going to benefit us in the community,” he said.
Board members had discussed the moratorium more extensively at their June 11 session. They agreed that a moratorium would allow time for boards and committees to update the Comprehensive Plan and write other laws to address data center development.
Local concern has grown since TeraWulf disclosed plans for a data center in Lansing.
One night before Newfield’s vote, the Enfield Town Board began writing its own, nearly identical moratorium law. Enfield’s could reach adoption by September.
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Enfield Tax Override Passes
(July 9): Town of Enfield budget numbers for 2027 won’t surface until September. And Supervisor Stephanie Redmond claims New York State has yet to tell her what Enfield’s tax cap will be.
Nevertheless, following a brief public hearing Wednesday, the Enfield Town Board voted to override that (unknown) cap with its property tax levy. The vote July 8 was 4-1. Councilperson Robert Lynch cast the lone dissent.
“We do this even if we don’t expect to go over the cap,” Supervisor Redmond explained. Recent Enfield budgets have routinely exceeded the cap.
We vote an override “just to be safe,” Councilperson Jude Lemke stated.
Several persons, including recent Town Board candidate Rosie Carpenter and former Supervisor Gary Fisher, opposed the override during the hearing.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Fisher stated. “This is just CYA.”
Councilperson Lynch (this writer) said he might vote to override in October, but not this early. He quoted Tompkins County legislator Greg Mezey, who’d opposed a County Budget override June 16.
“I think the cap is a discipline mechanism, and I think the moment we override it we lose the discipline in the budget process,” Lynch quoted Mezey.
Redmond questioned Lynch whether he thought members of the board, other than him, lacked that discipline. Lynch answered it could become a collective failure.
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Puzzling Vote Stalls EVFC Changes
(July 9): In a vote that left heads scratched, the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners July 7 failed to advance changes that would have removed the long-standing requirements that adult members who join the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company (EVFC) hold both a high school diploma or its equivalent and a valid driver’s license.
Commissioners’ Chair Greg Stevenson moved the deletions at Tuesday’s meeting. His motion received no second, and the commissioners did nothing more.
What’s baffling is that others at Tuesday’s meeting voiced more support for lifting the mandates, particularly the driver’s license rule, than did Stevenson.
“I was just trying to put it in the table,” Stevenson later explained why he’d advanced what he did. “This is still a dynamic process,” he added.
The chairman would have retained the licensing requirement, yet allowed the commissioners to grant waivers. To Stevenson, “religious beliefs,”—like being Amish—might qualify for waiver, but “my seven DUI’s,” in his words, “that’s different to me.”
“I don’t think it’s our business to tell people that they have to have a license,” Commissioner Donald Gunning rebutted.
Another commissioner, Barry Rollins, has argued for months to lift the diploma requirement.
Confusion could have infected Tuesday’s non-decision. A re-vote may come later.
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T.C. Tax Increase Target Six to Eight Percent
(July 3): In a virtual meeting with municipal leaders July 2, Tompkins County Administrator Korsah Akumfi predicted a recommended tax levy increase of between six and eight percent in next year’s budget, the administrator revealing that department requests have come in “beyond what we initially projected.”
“We don’t have a specific number that we’re looking at, but I am hoping that I will be able to put before the Legislature a recommended budget that does not exceed anything between six and eight percent tax levy increase,” Akumfi informed a small group of town board members and village mayors.
The levy increases the administrator forecasts would far exceed the 2.7 percent preliminary state tax cap that Akumfi has calculated. Legislators have already voted to override that cap, if necessary.
But the prediction also exceeds legislative sentiments expressed at an informal “budget retreat” lawmakers held May 12. At the retreat, legislators split 7-7 on whether to raise the levy above or below five percent.
What’s changed since then are departmental requests. Most have now come in, and Akumfi advised the Thursday conference that if all were granted, the levy would rise “six or seven times” the revised increase he now predicts.
In a break from recent years, Akumfi indicated that no second budget retreat in July will likely occur. It means that firmer numbers may not reach legislators until early-September.
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Bostwick Culvert Work Begins
(July 2): The lush, foliage-shrouded shoulders of Bostwick Road where it crosses Enfield Creek as you’ve driven it for years won’t last for long.
Beginning Monday, July 6, Bostwick Road between Applegate Road and Enfield Main Road (NY Rt. 327) will close for two months. Crews will dig up the old stream culvert, reroute the stream in part to stem erosion, and then put in place a new concrete box culvert to pass the creek under the road.
It’s going to look like they “threw a whole bunch of grenades and blew the whole thing up,” project Engineer Brian Reaser warned Town officials back in January as to what the site may look like this summer. There’ll be a “massive adjustment of what the scenery looks like,” he warned.
The twin concerns of environmental protection and road preservation drive the expensive project. A nearly $700,000 state grant, awarded two years ago, funds the majority of the cost. But bids came in high for the culvert. It, alone, cost $471,600. Installation work, bid separately, added another $351,300.
Town officials could have opted for a slightly less expensive design, but declined to do so last winter.
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July 2026
Cell Tower Hearing Set
(July 1); With comments cautiously supportive, not critical, the Enfield Town Planning Board Wednesday set its next meeting, August 5, for a public hearing on a proposed new cell tower off Van Dorn Road, just north of Hayts.
Mustering only three of its members, a bare quorum, planners raised few questions among themselves and had little to ask the cell carrier’s site developers.
First advanced in mid-winter, Verizon would move antennas from an existing tower a fraction of a mile away to a new, 170-foot structure near the rear of a residential lot at 217 Van Dorn Road North. An earlier proposal, since revised, would have located the tower closer to the road. The old tower would remain.
“I personally don’t think it’s going to be a huge impact,” Planning Board Char Dan Walker told the meeting.
“What would be our response if we had a half a dozen people saying I don’t want to see that tower?” board member Henry Hansteen asked.
Walker said public reaction would guide his response.
And there could be many attendees. A newly-revised town law requires every property owner within a half-mile radius of the tower to be notified. “That’s a lot of people,” Walker observed.
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