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 12th.
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.
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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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