Also: Town Board affirms Cargill-critical pleading
by Councilperson Robert Lynch; January 12, 2025
It’s jumped onto a bandwagon that had steered very much toward the ditch a few years ago but now finds itself back on firm pavement. The Enfield Town Board early this month urged the Tompkins County Legislature and also New York State to add two more seats to the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) Board of Directors, one of those added seats reserved for local town of village board delegates.
Action came at the Town Board’s January 8 Organizational Meeting, during which its majority also endorsed a once-tabled resolution that urges heightened environmental oversight of a salt mine reclamation project by Cargill Incorporated under Cayuga Lake.
As to the IDA, Enfield’s effort comes as the County-sponsored agency has increasing involved itself in granting property tax abatements to commercial solar farms outside of Ithaca, projects that rural critics allege deprive them of valuable tax money. Those Payment- in-Lieu-of-Tax (PILOT) Agreements, which state law empowers the IDA to authorize, often run for decades and can tax a housing development or a solar farm at a fraction of the tax a non-abated assessment would require it pay.
Contrary to the development agency’s purported mission, many of those PILOT agreements create few, if any, permanent new jobs.
“The Town of Enfield stands among those rural municipalities affected, often adversely, by recent IDA decisions concerning solar farm PILOT agreements,” the Town Board’s unanimously-adopted Resolution states.
“This Town Board believes that an additional representative on the Tompkins County IDA, a representative drawn from the governing boards of our county’s rural municipalities, would provide our rural communities a vitally needed voice in the IDA’s tax abatement decisions, its PILOT Agreements, and all other IDA decisions that impact rural Tompkins County,” Enfield’s Resolution adds.
The latest call for an expansion of Tompkins County IDA membership first arose last November when the Ithaca Board of Education urged the addition of a school board representative to the current seven-member IDA Board of Directors. At a December fourth meeting, a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature next considered growing IDA membership by not just one member, but two. That second new seat would likely go to the rural towns.
“What I think is really important… is to have a school district member at the table,” Enfield-Ulysses County legislator Anne Koreman told the Housing and Economic Development Committee that December day. “Who else is not at the table?” Koreman then asked. “Rural municipal officials have been asking for many years if they could have a seat at the table, too,” she reminded the committee.
“Granted, more of the projects happen in Ithaca proper,” Koreman acknowledged, “but they’re not always. Sometimes they are in the rural areas,” she said. “So what we have is an issue with communication and representation.”
The continued absence of rural representation, a true voice, rankles municipal leaders in places like Enfield.
In 2021, Norbut Solar Farms sought a tax-abating PILOT agreement from the IDA for its 15-Megawatt sprawling array off Applegate Road. The PILOT granted Norbut will run a full 30 years and pay three taxing authorities combined only $63,000 a year, payments ratcheted up a meager two percent annually.
Before the deal was inked downtown, the Enfield Town Board resolved that the proposal “stands unacceptable to the Town” absent any additional compensation. But the IDA approved the bare-bones PILOT anyway. Only one member of the IDA, organized labor’s representative, opposed it.
Since the 2021 approvals, Enfield has toughened its solar permitting law. Theoretically, it can now request the supplemental compensation that was previously denied it. Yet Town Councilperson Jude Lemke, a lawyer, cautions that a cunning solar applicant can easily circumvent the local provision.
Three Tompkins County legislators, including Koreman, now sit on the IDA Board. The Board’s corporate arm, Ithaca Area Economic Development, claims a fourth seat. A labor representative now takes the fifth position. The two last appointments supposedly remain “at large.” But an Ithaca City politician always secures one of them.
Legislative minutes show Tompkins County last considered altering the IDA’s composition in 2020. But instead of expanding membership back then, County lawmakers merely substituted a labor representative for one of the four legislators who then sat on the panel.
Legislators knew then—and also realize now—that to enlarge the IDA, they’ll need New York Home Rule legislation. Enfield’s Resolution recognizes that reality. Getting a jump start at the county level now, legislators argue, could allow representatives in Albany time to draft what’s needed before the State Legislature adjourns in June.
Economic Development Committee Chair Greg Mezey says he hopes to have a committee resolution ready for action by early-February. Before then, Enfield will seek out added support from the Tompkins County Council of Governments.
“I’m not necessarily saying I’m supportive of going to nine,” Mezey said of IDA composition back in December. “But I would be supportive of looking at what a school board representative on the IDA would be, and I think we need to weigh either the seven-member composition, or increasing that to nine. There are two buckets we need to evaluate,” Mezey said.
Parliamentary vote-counters hate even numbers. Too many ties; too-frequent deadlock. So if the schools secure member number eight, a municipally-chosen ninth member becomes a natural.
But Enfield’s endorsement of the IDA’s expansion recommends some selective eligibility for municipal membership. It calls for delegate towns to be truly “rural,” Councilperson Lemke choosing to exclude the more-developed Town of Ithaca “and maybe even Lansing.”
“They could effectively neuter the whole thing by putting someone from the Town of Ithaca on there,” Lemke cautioned about how the expansion effort could run afoul.
Lemke’s online attendance Wednesday night brought to the Town Board the third crucial vote needed to adopt and send on to state officials a resolution critical of Cargill Incorporated’s plan to flood an unused portion of part of its cavernous salt mine under Cayuga Lake as part of a reclamation plan.
Instead of the Department of Environmental Conservations (DEC’s) “negative declaration” of environmental significance—a first step toward signing off on the proposal—the Town Board would demand from Cargill a full-blown Environmental Impact Statement, a call for public hearings, and a more costly decommissioning bond just in case something under the lake went terribly wrong. Preferably, the resolution’s text would have DEC deny Cargill’s application altogether.
The Enfield resolution passed three-to-one. Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) continued the objections he’d first expressed in December. Supervisor Redmond abstained, a recusal arising from her employment by an activist group that’s called for the Cayuga Mine’s closure.
“Significant concerns have been raised regarding the adequacy of Cargill’s application, including compliance with the Mined Land Reclamation Law, monitoring and treatment of waste materials, the potential for groundwater pollution, the stability of the mine, and the long-term reclamation of the affected areas,” Enfield’s adopted resolution states.
Before its endorsement of the pleading that Redmond had first advanced in December—but which the Board then tabled (see earlier-posted reporting)—the Town Board rejected for lack of a seconding vote Lynch’s proposed amended compromise. The revision would still have called for an Environmental Impact Statement and a hearing, but would have stopped short of recommending the outright denial of Cargill’s application.
Lynch’s rejected compromise would also have urged the DEC to direct Cargill to submit “a Statement of Economic Impact” to analyze the “potential adverse consequences to the local economy which would (or could) result should the denial of Cargill’s renewal and modification of its Mined Land Reclamation Permit lead to closure of the Cayuga Salt Mine.”
The proposed amendment described the Cayuga Mine as “a driving force in the local economy,” employing “more than 200 full-time, well-paid staff” and pumping millions into local pockets and treasuries.
Acknowledging that a potential ownership change for the mine may be in the works, this Councilperson, Lynch, stated, “I would rather not do anything that would… encourage either Cargill or the buyer to close the mine and put people out of work, some of whom, no doubt, live in Enfield.” The message continued, “And if there could be an economic impact analysis done in some way, shape, or form to show what the balance would be, I would feel much more comfortable as a Town Board member approving a more aggressive environmental stance.”
Shawn Wisczynski, the Facility Manager for Cargill, attended the Town Board’s discussion. Wisczynski wasn’t certain the DEC’s purview extended to economic impact. But he downplayed the degree of potential environmental disruption that now faces state regulators.
It’s “relocation of storage of water within the mine, which is currently permitted,” Wisczynski told the Town Board. The permit modification just seeks a different storage location, a fact Wisczynski believed prompted the DEC initially to view the proposal as a “minor change,” one negating a broader range of concerns.
Like the manager, Councilperson Lemke questioned whether environmental law allows the DEC to weigh economic consequences. Supervisor Redmond initially remarked she’d “be OK “ with Lynch’s amendment, providing it also drew-in worst-case economic hazards like potential salinization of Cayuga Lake, negative impacts on tourism, or what she termed the “industrialization of surface operations.”
“We can still state it in our Resolution,” Lynch said of an economic study. “If DEC says the law doesn’t allow us to do that, then DEC says the law doesn’t allow us to do that.”
With no second, the Enfield Board chose not to advance the economic argument either.
Other decisions—many of them organizational, but others not—received the Enfield Board’s attention January 8th. Some will receive expanded treatment in later reports.
- Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins presented, and the Board subsequently approved, his road work plan for 2025. The unanimously-adopted so-called “284 Agreement” would see Colegrove Road and two portions of Van Dorn Road, north and south, upgraded most intensively. And Rollins confirmed that in each instance roadside tree “canopies” would be pruned. Aggressive pruning generated resident complaints last year elsewhere in the town. “That’s standard; that’s law,” Rollins stated flatly to defend his pruning authority.
- After the Board had adopted Rollins’ work plan, its majority, without comment, rejected this writer, Councilperson Lynch’s, accompanying Resolution that would have ensured “community transparency” by posting online the roads to be improved and setting aside Town Board time no later than mid-April for residents to question the Highway Superintendent about them. The motion got no second. “I’ve said it before; I believe conversation is better than confrontation,” this Councilperson spoke to his rejected motion near the meeting’s close. “I wish that you had adopted this Resolution, because it’s all positive.”
- The Town Board paid tribute to the memory of former President Jimmy Carter by ordering flags on all Town-owned properties lowered to half-staff for the full 30-day duration specified by President Biden following Carter’s death December 29. Enfield’s directive would continue the flag-lowering until January 28th, even should President-Elect Donald Trump—as some have suggested—direct that flags be raised back up shortly after his inauguration.
- The Town Board conceded that its earlier-envisioned Conservation Advisory Council (CAC) may wither on the vine of apathy. In December, the Town Board invited volunteers to join the environmental oversight group. No one responded to the online solicitation. Without citizen interest, Supervisor Redmond admitted, the idea may drop. The Town will keep seeking interest.
- Someone else who has sought to serve, albeit in another capacity, was rewarded for having done so. Former Councilperson Mike Carpenter filed for a second, five-year term on the Enfield Planning Board. With no one else interested, Carpenter won Town Board reappointment.
- And in a noted departure from its otherwise rapid-fire approval of more than two dozen organizational resolutions, the Town Board addressed the woeful lack of local reporting by The Ithaca Journal, the publication in which state law insists Enfield post legal notices and designate as its “Official Newspaper.” The revised Resolution, offered by this Councilperson, Lynch, called the Gannett daily’s decline “a dereliction of journalistic duty for which this Board wishes to express its extreme displeasure.” The Board instructed the Town Clerk to investigate the cost and feasibility of publishing notices in a second printed paper, likely one of the local weeklies, to better inform and to protest.
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Posted previously on Cargill and the Enfield Board:
A Town Board and a Salt Mine
Enfield may weigh-in on the Cargill controversy
Reporting and Analysis by Councilperson Robert Lynch; January 3, 2025
There are two sides to every important issue. Best we discuss them both.
The Town of Enfield’s borders don’t touch Cayuga Lake. Cargill Corporation’s sprawling underground caverns don’t snake as far as Enfield’s real estate. Nevertheless, the leader of Enfield’s Town Government, an environmental activist herself, believes her Town should register its opinion on whether New York State must take a more aggressive posture on mine reclamation plans; changes that environmental critics allege could permanently damage Cayuga’s lake waters.
Supervisor Stephanie Redmond almost succeeded in turning her Cargill-critical passion into an adopted resolution at the Enfield Town Board’s monthly meeting in mid-December. Her initiative stopped short of passage only because of another Board member’s unplanned absence and this writer-Councilperson’s assertion that Redmond holds an inherent conflict-of-interest.
Should Councilperson Jude Lemke return to the meeting table January 8th, the Cargill Resolution could be lifted from the table and voted on then. If so, most likely it would pass.
“We have an absolute duty to protect this lake, which currently is the drinking water source for 100,000 people,” Redmond asserted during an emotion-driven, risk-riddled seven minute monologue that went on and on, seemingly nonstop toward the close of the Town Board’s December 11th session. Quite obviously the Supervisor had recited each of the talking points from memory. Redmond had good reason to know them by heart.
Stephanie Redmond’s second part-time job is that of program manager for Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now, better known by the acronym “CLEAN.” Of any group on the environmental Left, CLEAN stands foremost in attempting to block Cargill’s plans to continue mining salt beneath Cayuga Lake and doing so for the indefinite future.
And although the activist group may at times deny its true intentions for strategic reasons, CLEAN would prefer that not one more thimbleful of road salt be pulled from the depths of Cargill’s Lansing mine.
“We would like to take this opportunity to update you on the ongoing efforts of Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now (CLEAN) to have Cayuga Salt Mine shut down,” CLEAN proudly proclaimed in the introductory paragraph of its most recent online newsletter to supporters, posted last May 17.
What the Enfield Town Board considered in December—and what it will likely resurrect January eighth—is a direct appeal to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The proposed resolution’s density defies condensation. But cutting through the geologic gobbledygook, what the Resolution asks is for DEC to give the current Cargill permitting application much heightened scrutiny.
DEC administrators—presumably, scientists—have tentatively granted the Cargill application a “Negative Declaration” of environmental significance. The misleading, double-negative declaration would exempt Cargill from preparing a detailed and expensive Environmental Impact Statement to buttress its current plans. That declaration would also likely hasten the permit application toward approval. Moreover, the “Negative Declaration” would negate the need for public hearings, forums at which there’d be the predictable airing of Cargill-critical citizen comments.
“Various stakeholders, including environmental groups and local officials, have expressed concerns regarding the potential adverse impacts of Cargill’s proposed activities, highlighting the need for a more comprehensive environmental impact statement and public engagement,” a key paragraph in the resolution before Enfield lawmakers states.
It’s an “industrial waste site,” Supervisor Redmond pointedly described Cargill’s mine at one point in the December discussion.
It takes at least three affirmative votes to enact anything that comes before the Enfield Town Board, no matter how many members attend on a given meeting night. December 11th, Councilperson Jude Lemke had planned to attend remotely, but couldn’t. Councilpersons Cassandra Hinkle and Melissa Millspaugh—given their absence of objections—would likely have joined the Supervisor to provide the three votes needed for the resolution’s passage, that is until Redmond’s potential conflict-of-interest came to light. Parliamentary procedure considers an abstention the same as voting no.
“You will not have my vote on this tonight, this writer, Councilperson Robert Lynch, stated following Redmond’s reading of the Cargill Resolution.
“If the state regulators were saying that Cargill was in danger of polluting the lake or causing other environmental damage, you might have a different vote from me on this,” I acknowledged. “But what I fear is that regulations or resolutions like this are only going to serve one purpose, and I think that is the purpose that some people want to do, and that is to close the Cargill mine.”
Supervisor Redmond had given this Councilperson and others on the Board little time to do their homework. Although she’s a paid official of CLEAN, Redmond had sprung the agenda item to others in an email attachment at 8:30 AM on the day of the December evening’s meeting, a mere ten hours before the session would convene.
Drawing upon a trusted source in Tompkins County Government, this Councilperson brought to the table that night some statistics.
The Cayuga Salt Mine, I informed the Board, employs “more than 200 full-time employees in operations, maintenance, engineering, finance, management and support positions.” According to a recent independent study, the source had quoted me, Cargill contributes in economic benefits $4.6 Million to the Town of Lansing, $173 Million to Tompkins County, and $221 Million to New York State annually.
And if too many regulations burden Cargill, this Councilperson warned, and if too much pressure from New York State and its communities is brought to bear upon the company, “they’ll just fold up their hands and say ‘We’re leaving.’… There’s another business gone; there are 200 jobs lost.”
“And don’t think those 200 people are going to be retrained to be stockbrokers or computer programmers,” I added. “They’re going to be working at Walmart for a dollar over Minimum Wage. And I don’t want to see that.”
Stephanie Redmond views the economic tradeoffs differently. Like one or two prominent New York State lawmakers, Enfield’s Supervisor is willing to risk the loss of well-paying mining jobs to achieve a greater good.
“As far as the 200 people are concerned,” Redmond acknowledged as if to draw some economic equivalence, “we have over 60 thousand people locally that are part of our tourism.”
The Finger Lakes and the Great Lakes, the Supervisor maintained, supply 20 percent of the world’s fresh, accessible drinking water. Reprising a theme applied previously in a different context, Redmond predicted “climate refugees” will someday flock to Enfield and our region as they flee “smoke in California” or ocean-side cities swallowed up by rising tides.
“They’re going to come here (and say) ‘Oops, you salinized the water for the profit of a multi-Billion dollar company,’” Redmond forewarned. “It makes zero sense as to why we would sacrifice our grandchildren’s future for a Billion Dollar company so 200 people locally can have some money,” the Supervisor asked.
Supervisor Redmond’s up for reelection this year. Let’s see how much organized labor money she rakes in.
There was much more ground Redmond covered during her seven-minute Cargill critique. Central to the application currently before the DEC, Cargill proposes to flood the abandoned, so-called “S3 Zone” beneath Cayuga Lake with wastewater. The S3 Zone is down deep, maybe thousands of feet deep, but still close enough to the surface to bring Redmond worry.
Stephanie Redmond looked not just to tomorrow, but to a century or more beyond. The flooded salt pillars holding upper portions of the mine could erode, the Supervisor warned. Lakeside shorelines could collapse. “Salinization bubbles” could percolate upward into lake waters and kill brown trout. There could be a “catastrophic collapse” similar to that of the Retsof mine in Livingston County three decades ago. “They permanently destroyed the aquifer there,” the Supervisor asserted.
And she asked, what happens if Cargill does leave? The Supervisor predicted it’s a more than likely outcome, one to occur sooner rather than later.
“It’s a city under there,” Redmond reminded the Board of Cargill’s cavernous labyrinth beneath the lake. “There is no subsurface closure plan besides plugging the shaft,” she said. There’s no requirement that Cargill take out its underground trucks or pump out their hydraulic fluid.
And there’s a class warfare argument as well.
“Cargill is the largest privately-owned company in the United States,” Redmond asserted. “They have 14 Billionaires in their family alone.”
“They are benefiting, profiting off of our community resource,” Redmond alleged of Cargill’s Billionaire ownership. “We communally own the lake and the land underneath it.”
Our own Town Board was told that both the Lansing and Ulysses governing Boards had adopted resolutions encouraging DEC to demand a Cargill Environmental Impact Statement and seek public hearings. Each town borders Cayuga Lake.
The Ulysses Town Board acted November 12th, but sent a much-different letter to the state. That letter—and much of the Ulysses’ Board’s quarter-hour of discussion that night—dealt with whether the Town’s own zoning law holds any power over Cargill’s conduct. At least in theory Ulysses’ boundaries extend to the center of Cayuga Lake.
But New York State likely holds preemptive power in this instance. CLEAN’s lawyer had offered that some town authority might exist over mining conduct. But the Town’s attorney was said to disagree. The Ulysses Board voted 4:1 to send DEC the letter. While never stating his reasons with specificity, but perhaps guided by his board’s perceived overreach on the zoning question, Councilperson Michael Boggs cast the lone dissent.
After Supervisor Redmond had laid bare her extensive case against Cargill before the Enfield Town Board December 11, this Councilperson posed three questions to her:
Do you work for CLEAN, I asked? Yes, she does, the Supervisor answered. Do you draw a salary from them? Again, an affirmative response followed. And has CLEAN taken a position on this issue? Yes—of course— the organization has.
“Under New York State law, you have to abstain since you have a financial interest through your salary in the outcome of this Resolution,” I told the Supervisor. I recalled that when Redmond worked briefly as a state Assembly member’s aide, legislative ethics lawyers had counseled her never to take a local position on pending state legislation while holding dual responsibilities.
Redmond demurred. “This Resolution, whether it passed or not, would not affect my salary,” the Supervisor rebutted.
I respectfully disagreed with her assertion.
No lawyer sat in the meeting room that night. The matter went no further. Tabling until January served as the best of all options. And it preserved a slice of comity.
On the day of last month’s Board meeting, Supervisor Redmond had advised members of a December 20th comment deadline for any response they might make regarding Cargill’s permitting application. But now, CLEAN’s website lists a new, later, January 19th filing date. Enfield’s presumed comment, were it to be resolved at the January eighth meeting, would thus remain timely. Expect this two-sided argument to renew then… and perhaps extend for months beyond.
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Posted Previously:
A Shuttle to a Shower
Legislators seek to cleanse Ithaca’s unhoused and unwashed
[And posted after: Why Enfield’s Fire Board stopped Zooming its meetings.]
by Robert Lynch; December 18, 2024
When Tompkins County last month quickly retrofitted a doomed-to-demolition downtown bank building to become a cold weather refuge for the homeless, it attached a trailer at the back door to provide its chilled, unhoused occupants bathrooms. Yet it never brought in a second module to offer them showers. And that lack of a bathing facility has incensed advocates for the homeless in meeting after meeting ever since.
Tuesday night, in response to one woman’s plight, the County Legislature did something about it.
“I have not had a shower since Thanksgiving Day,” Laura Watkins, a self-identified homeless person and parolee, told legislators during public speaking privileges December 17. “I am still housed at the Code Blue shelter with no good hygenical way of cleaning myself,” Watkins complained. I cannot “take my medication on time with food,” she said, nor can Watkins have assurance, she said, that she’ll remain warm during the day.
Tompkins County’s new governmentally-run Code Blue Shelter, quartered in the former Key Bank building at Tioga and Buffalo Streets, was hustled to an opening November 25th. It opened after discussions with St. John’s Community Services fell apart and St. John’s earlier that month abruptly closed its former shelter in Ithaca’s West End and left town. New York State requires cold weather housing for the homeless. But the mandate covers only nighttime accommodations when it’s freezing. The law apparently does not require operators to provide occupants a way to keep themselves clean.
“If we can’t take a reasonable shower, how are we able to go get an apartment?” Watkins asked. “How are we able to go and get a job? I have been denied three times a house because of my body odor,” she claimed.
Watkins’ plea brought action… and action quicker than customarily expected.
“I’m just thinking, we can actually do something tonight to actually alleviate this problem,” Lansing’s Mike Sigler interjected.
And they did.
Instead of opting for time-expensive committee deliberations that would postpone a final vote for weeks, the Legislature took Mike Sigler’s suggestion., It cobbled together something on the fly Tuesday night and adopted it unanimously among its 13 attending members.
What Tompkins County will do is pay the YMCA in Lansing—or maybe somebody else—to provide shelter occupants access to shower facilities. The County will also pay for free bus passes to get residents to the shower and back.
Action came so fast that nobody had first checked with the YMCA to secure its permission. But neither legislators nor administrators expected any problems in gaining the Y’s consent.
And County Attorney Maury Josephson assured lawmakers that the bathing benefit would not violate the state’s prohibition against giving things away to people.
“We did have opportunities to have showers, but we blew it, and we have to be accountable for that,” legislator Travis Brooks remarked during the 20-minute discussion that led up to the impromptu vote. “In a community like this, we should be doing better,” Brooks admonished those at his table.
“Whenever I hear someone come in and talk about not being able to take a shower, she’s right, you know,” legislator Shawna Black stated, commending Watkins for attending the meeting and stating her case.
“Walking into a job interview and trying to get a job, and you come in, and you don’t feel good, you don’t look good, you stink, that really is setting someone up for failure,” Black stated. “And we have to do better.”
As to why Tompkins County didn’t do things right in the first place and put a shower trailer behind the retrofitted bank, Commissioner of Social Services Kit Kephart said that in her department’s and County Administration’s collective opinion the building couldn’t accommodate another truck.
“I realize DSS (Social Services) doesn’t do everything perfectly; nobody does,” legislator Deborah Dawson commented at one point.
Acting in haste as they did, legislators had to ask themselves Tuesday where the money for shower benefits will come from.
Sigler’s resolution would have Tompkins County first tap its contingency fund for up to $10,000. Eventually, lawmakers hope, New York State will reimburse them for the expense.
Initially, Dryden’s Mike Lane resisted speedy action, preferring Albany first to offer its support. But Sigler inserted qualifying language that addressed Lane’s concerns, and Lane joined in support.
Still, there’s another issue: whether a long bus ride up the hill is the only way for shelter occupants from Ithaca to get their bodies clean.
Suggestions arose as to other shower sites. Anne Koreman mentioned Downtown’s Salvation Army headquarters or Catholic Charities. Randy Brown referenced the Learning Web. Alternatives will be pursued.
“I can’t believe we don’t have resources closer than busing people to the Village of Lansing to take a shower,” Groton’s Lee Shurtleff said with amazement. He urged “flexibility” in the program.
A second vote Tuesday night will make it increasingly difficult for the County Legislature to back away from its much-encouraged, yet increasingly expensive Downtown Center of Government. In effect, the County has put money—your money—where its collective heart quite obviously lies.
With only Groton’s Lee Shurtleff dissenting, the Legislature authorized the County contract with Ithaca-based HOLT Architects for “Design, Engineering, and Construction Administration Services” for the $40-60 Million Downtown office building. HOLT would be paid just short of $4 Million for its services, approximately one-tenth of the building’s estimated cost.
Newfield-Enfield’s Randy Brown chairs the committee that recommended HOLT. And he held out one concession to the frugal: Incremental caution.
“It’s a ‘menu-type’ contract, where we go through various steps,” Brown told colleagues. For example, what if the New York State Office of Historic Preservation balks at tearing down the buildings on which the center would sit?
“If we say, well that’s too sensitive to go forward, or we’re not going to take that next step, we can stop the contract and that would be the end of our obligation for payment,” Brown stated.
The vote on the HOLT contract was 12-1. (Legislator Greg Mezey was excused.) Groton’s Shurtleff did not state why he opposed the architectural agreement, but his dissent likely reflected Shurtleff’s past skepticism of the overall project.
Neither the contract, nor the office project itself gained significant discussion at Tuesday’s session. Neither at the Legislature nor at a prior committee meeting were HOLT’s preliminary designs for the building shown, should such renderings even exist. Brown’s committee in recent months had reviewed materials submitted from six firms and talked with representatives from four of them.
Brown’s committee recommended HOLT unanimously. That comes as little surprise. HOLT had prepared space utilization studies previously for County government, recommendations that led to the Center of Government’s planned construction.
****
One final action deserves note; one which affects Tompkins County’s west side residents less in practicality than it does as a matter of principle.
For its second straight meeting, the Legislature considered, and this time passed, an agreement with the Town of Ithaca to help it purchase 135 acres on South Hill to create the Town’s “Sage Preserve.” The adopted measure will forward the Town of Ithaca $200,000 from a County preservation account that now has just over $1 Million in it.
The money would help Ithaca buy private property, take it off the tax rolls, and remove it from what Ithaca Town officials worry would be overly-aggressive residential development.
The matter of principle is that of governmental gifting. At the Legislature’s December 3 meeting, Randy Brown questioned the legal distinction between what’s being done with the Sage Preserve and the tax relief he’d earlier sought to aid the Enfield Community Council, a request he was then told state law did not permit. County Attorney Maury Josephson said the two matters were different.
Last meeting, the Sage subsidy failed to secure any more than seven legislative votes, one short of a majority. This time, the measure passed, 11 to two. Brown and Enfield’s other legislator, Anne Koreman, supported the Sage subsidy in both instances.
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Zoom No More
Enfield Fire Commissioners halt virtual viewing after porno-bomb attack
by Robert Lynch; December 17, 2024
From now on, if you want to attend a meeting of the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners, you’ll have to travel to the fire station to see it. You’ll no longer be able to view it on Zoom.
Amid the first widespread disclosure that their December third session had been hacked with pornographic content, Fire Commissioners Tuesday unanimously discontinued future streaming of their twice-monthly meetings on the Zoom platform.
“It’s a double-edged sword for me,” Commissioners Chair Greg Stevenson said Tuesday during what little comment the Zoom termination received. “It’s about folks being able to see our meetings; being transparent,” Stevenson acknowledged. But the Chairman also revealed that the Enfield Fire District’s attorney, Mark Butler, had advised him that “there is some responsibility that falls upon us to protect the viewers.”
And in terms of that viewer protection, Stevenson concluded, “I don’t see how to do it and still offer Zoom.”
Legal liability became clearly an issue.
The Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners has up until now regularly offered virtual meeting attendance. Occasionally—but rarely—Commissioners themselves have participated online. The practice began shortly after the initially-appointed Board took office in August 2023. It’s continued with the elected Commissioners who succeeded the appointed Board last January.
Asked as to how many often attend Commissioners meetings online now, Board Secretary Alexis Beckley confirmed attendance has dropped off. Occasionally it’s as low as a single attendee. “There are not many people up on there,” Beckley told the Board.
However, there’s nothing like an impromptu porn show to draw viewers out of the woodwork.
“I was shocked by how many people said what they saw,” Stevenson remarked. At least four or five people saw the Zoom-bomb December third, maybe more, Commissioners were told. Stevenson said some of those who viewed the hack watched it at the Ithaca Fire Department.
Stevenson said the same hacker—with the same X-rated performance—also infected a recent meeting of the Ithaca Common Council. There’s no indication yet that Ithaca’s leaders will respond with the same finality as Enfield’s Fire Commissioners have.
And the same prankster antics could just as easily infect future meetings of the Enfield Town Board.
The Town Board regularly airs its meetings virtually. Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond has occasionally encountered Zoom-bombers as she engineers virtual sessions simultaneously with trying to conduct Town business. However, Town Board hacking has seldom, if ever, stooped to the depth of actual pornography.
There’s also no indication that Enfield’s Town Board will follow the Fire Commissioners’ lead in terminating Zoom coverage.
In other Enfield Fire District business December 17:
The Board of Fire Commissioners upped the level of cancer protection coverage provided for eligible volunteers.
“It’s a no-brainer,” Chairman Stevenson said of the change. “It’s clearly the right thing to do.”
Up until now, the Enfield Fire District’s firefighters’ insurance policy has covered ten categories of cancers, mandated for protection by New York State. Tuesday’s vote expands Enfield’s insurance coverage to cover all forms of cancer, not just those mandated.
The expansion will raise each annual premium by $45 for one class of firefighter; $39 for another. Total cost to the Fire District will rise by about $1,200 a year. Twenty-nine volunteers would benefit.
****
The Fire Commissioners also authorized Fire Chief Jamie Stevens to spend just over $25,000 next year to purchase five additional sets of protective outerwear—so-called “turnout gear”—to continue to keep gear in line with regulatory standards. Chief Stevens said those most active in his organization require two sets of gear, so that if one set’s being cleaned when another fire breaks out, the volunteer will have the protection needed for a second response.
And in reaction to concerns voiced by attorney Butler since the last meeting, the Board of Fire Commissioners revisited—this time in public session—tightened training and service requirements for the Fire District’s line officers.
In addition to some linguistic changes the attorney had recommended, the Board on its own initiative hastened the timetable for officers to meet firefighter training requirements.
“The time line is too long,” Commissioner Barry “Buddy” Rollins complained about the originally proposed training window. “If they weren’t qualified for these positions, then they shouldn’t hold them,” he said.
Since the entry level of leadership is generally the office of “Captain,” the training requirement falls most heavily on that position. Leaders generally advance through the ranks. At several commissioners’ urging, the Board cut the required training window from two years to “one year, or as soon as possible.”
Chairman Stevenson said one must realize that Enfield is a volunteer department. “We’re not talking about full-time firefighters,” Stevenson reminded colleagues. “We’re talking about people with full-time jobs somewhere else.”
As for grooming entry-level leadership, the Chairman remarked, “Sometimes you can’t buy one off the shelf; you have to grow ‘em at home.”
###
ICSD eyes scaled-back Capital Plan
$30-50 Million options would delay Bus Garage replacement
Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; December 14, 2024
The Ithaca Board of Education appears to have learned a lesson: Frugality matters to voters. So does taking things in smaller bites.
Stung badly by last spring’s rejection of a largest-ever $125 Million package of capital improvements, the School Board last Tuesday regrouped on capital spending and gravitated toward asking Ithaca voters to approve a financial package far more modest, between just $30 Million and $50 Million Dollars.
Noticeably absent from any of the three capital options put on the table is the full replacement of the ICSD Transportation Facility on Bostwick Road, a key component of last May’s rejected capital cornucopia.
While the dollar amount likely to be asked from voters would be substantially less, so would the time frame of any capital package. Board member Jill Trip suggested a new, smaller bonding issue’s timeline would be as short as two to three years, not the half-decade or longer forecast for the $125 Million plan.
“I have been privy to these discussions, and I think our general consensus has been that what we would like to suggest to the Board is a relatively small capital project this year perhaps that would be voted upon at some time other than the school board election time,” Tripp, a point person in ICSD budget matters, informed the meeting.
“At this point in time, nothing has been determined,” Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell stressed as he drew the Board’s six attending members into a 45-minute discussion that left most key decisions for a later date.
Eversley Bradwell reduced matters to three questions: Should we put another capital package before Ithaca’s voters? And if so, when should we do it? And how much spending should we seek?
About the only consensus he found that night was that the Board should advance some sort of capital plan. On a referendum’s timing, members were split. A plurality—though not necessarily a majority—preferred keeping a capital referendum separate from the May annual budget and board member elections. The Board never reached a dollar figure that night in any meaningful way.
“Currently we’re looking at between a 30 and 40 Million Dollar proposal for this capital project,” Tripp forecast. Hers was conjecture.
Because just as last school year’s ill-fated $125 Million capital package started small, but kept on growing, this year’s may do so as well. Apparently, it already has. A trio of pie charts shared that evening by the ICSD’s consultant, Tetra Tech, showed a 50 Million option as one of three for consideration.
And a couple of Board members made no secret of their desire to think of needs above economies.
“I get that no one wants more taxes,” Erin Croyle
acknowledged, “but not having a robust capital project from everything I’ve
learned as a school board member is fiscally irresponsible.”
Croyle pointed out that comments earlier in the meeting had
suggested—perhaps misleadingly—that the school district lacked funds to re-do
the playground at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School.
“Well, playgrounds are really important to learning and to our students and for teachers and schools and communities,” Croyle pleaded. “So I’m concerned we’re saving money, but what is that going to cost us in the long run?” Croyle asked.
“So I supported $125 Million seven months ago,” colleague Garrick Blalock reminded everyone. “Now I’m asking do I support 30 or 40 or 50 now. Well, I supported 125, and I still support 125, and I think in the interest of our students and in the interest of taxpayers to do this,” Blalock asserted. “This is just a credit limit, not an expense. The expenses are all decided individually one by one.”
Technically, Blalock is correct. A capital bonding referendum only authorizes maximum expenditures. But in practice governments and school boards seldom resist the temptation to spend every dollar that voters allow them to spend.
Moreover, there’s a “boiling the frog” mentality to these sorts of things. School districts spend a little… then a little more… and pretty soon taxpayers become numbed to how much they’ve committed.
Even Jill Tripp, one of the Board’s more frugal souls, conceded her small-bite, small-dollar strategy essentially accomplishes as much.
“We’re not going for a ten-year capital project here,” Tripp stated. “We’re looking at a two or three year capital project. So we’re staying around that 10-Million-a-year,” Tripp said, referencing past capital plans approved by Ithaca’s electorate as well as the rejected decade-projected package of last spring. ”It continues our habits. It just tightens up how closely we look at them,” Tripp said.
Ithaca School District voters made it clear last May that a $125 Million capital plan was too big a pill to swallow. Although it lost by less of a margin than did the district’s first-round budget (a subsequent,, trimmed-down budget eventually passed), the capital proposal still failed by 13 percentage points, losing 3014 votes to 3919.
Gauging overall consensus at Tuesday’s meeting proved difficult in that Ithaca’s two newest Board members, Todd Fox and Emily Workman, didn’t attend. Fox was elected on a spending-skeptical, taxpayer-supportive platform. And both new members have proven reluctant to do things on the Ithaca School Board as they’ve always been done.
The Board’s ninth seat has lain vacant since summer, and will likely remain that way until next spring. It takes five votes to pass anything on the board. And with only six seated at the table Tuesday, majorities just couldn’t coalesce. No votes on capital spending were ever called, not even a straw poll.
The kinds of capital spending identified in the three pie-chart options presented the Board proved anything but sexy. Money would flow in varying amounts to things like roofs and ventilation systems and nursing suites. New electrical panels at each of two middle schools hardly catch anyone’s eye. What the drive-by observer might most notice would be a geothermal heating and cooling system proposed to serve jointly Ithaca High and Boynton Middle School campuses.
Replacement of the district’s Bostwick Road bus garage—the brick-and-mortar centerpiece to last spring’s ill-fated capital initiative—gained only glancing mention at the meeting. Garrick Blalock referenced the garage only in passing. But he implied its replacement would not come anytime soon. Member Karen Yearwood spoke of garage replacement more directly.
“We did a big disservice to our Transportation Department,” Yearwood said, “knowing how old that building is that we’re not doing any major improvements especially around the size of the staff that we have there.”
Mind you, older adults tend to vote disproportionately on election days, especially when they’re angry. To many of them, a bus garage built in 1967 is not really “old.” Maybe Karen Yearwood should have more carefully chosen her words. “Undersized” might have proven a more apt description. The Bostwick Road facility was built for a bus fleet of 26. That number’s now up to 88.
The last capital referendum pegged bus garage replacement at $40 Million. Each of the three options now under consideration would still spend upwards of $7 Million to retrofit transportation facilities to meet an expected state-mandated conversion to electric buses maybe a decade from now.
So expect another ICSD capital referendum, its total smaller than that of last spring. What’s next to decide in Sean Eversley Bradwell’s list of three decision points is when to hold the vote. There’d be no time to call upon voters before next May. If the referendum was to coincide with the May decisions on budgets and board members, consultants say the capital plan’s scope would need to be fleshed out by late March at the latest; doable, but tight.
So if budgets and capital bonds were forced to play separately, the latter would come at a later time, perhaps as late as December 2025.
“Separating them allows the public to look at the budget and look at the capital projects as separate issues,” Blalock said, “digest them separately, and I think the public will have a better understanding.”
“I think delaying it a bit gives us a chance to really refine and inform people about exactly what… they would be getting for their money,” Tripp reasoned.
Yearwood said she’d favor a referendum in “like the latter part of next year.”
The Board President sensed member agreement that “going out in May may not be the best time.” He cautioned that special elections cost money; perhaps up to $35,000 depending on how many polling places the district employs.
Board member Adam Krantweiss voiced concern about a stand-alone referendum’s cost. “It troubles me a little bit,” he said. But Krantweiss conceded he could be dragged into supporting a special election if others demanded it.
But Erin Croyle does not. She insisted the referendum stay with tradition and remain in May.
“I think us as a school district asking voters to vote yet again is not okay, and it’s also an additional cost that we could work around,” Croyle stated.
Eversley Bradwell, Tripp, Yearwood, Blalock, and maybe Krantweiss, if all held together, would push to a bare majority the idea of holding any capital referendum at some date beyond next May. But any coalition thought to emerge from the December 10th meeting would be perilously fragile. Todd Fox and Emily Workman need yet to be heard.
As for the numbers and categories on the pie charts, don’t bother to memorize their specifics. It’s all too tentative right now. Past practice has demonstrated that how much is spent on what in any Ithaca City School District capital funding bundle invariably changes over time. No doubt, this one will change too.
###
Earlier; the Fire District Election:
Gunning Ousts Willis in Fire Board Rematch
by Robert Lynch; December 10, 2024
One year ago, Enfield Fire Company volunteer and one-time Highway Superintendent candidate Chris Willis beat Donald Gunning by just two votes to secure the fifth of five seats on the Town’s newly-minted Board of Fire Commissioners. This year, in a rematch, the margin was wider. But it was Gunning this time who won.
Whether it signals a taxpayer revolt or just lingering misgivings about last year’s purchase of an expensive fire truck, Enfield voters sent a sour message of sorts to the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company and its supporters Tuesday. By a vote of 92 to 78 (54% to 46%), they replaced Willis on the five-member Board with Gunning, the latter an open and vocal critic of Enfield Fire District spending.
Donald Gunning did not attend Tuesday night’s ballot counting at the Enfield Fire Station. But Chris Willis did, as did two of his Board colleagues, Robyn Wishna and Alan Teeter. Willis sat somber at a table perhaps 25 feet from the ballot-counting. He said little after the vote count, other than to state his resolve to be back next year, in whatever capacity.
The young Enfield Fire District’s budget took a big jump this fall. The District’s 2025 spending plan, approved without dissent by Fire Commissioners in mid-October, will see spending rise by 28.3 per cent. Fire officials explain—and the numbers bear them out—that the first-ever bonding for a new $825,000 pumper engine stands solely responsible for the increase.
The Enfield Volunteer Fire Company (EVFC) ordered the new replacement engine before the Enfield Fire District was formed last year. Voters narrowly approved the truck’s bond financing and ownership transfer to the Fire District in October 2023. Bonds were marketed this past spring. And first-ever bond payments will begin next year; thus the need for more than $126,000 to begin retiring the decade-long debt.
“If you haven’t heard, Enfield Fire District taxes are going up 28%,” proclaimed the boldface words of a three-paragraph flyer received in Enfield residents’ mailboxes about two weeks ago. It was a mailing clearly circulated by the Gunning campaign. “It’s time to elect a new Fire Commissioner to help rein in future Fire District costs and residents’ taxes,” the pro-Gunning mailer’s introductory paragraph concluded.
“Donny, along with his wife, is a successful small business owner who understands what it means to develop realistic budgets and live within his means,” the flyer stated.
No similar mass mailing came from Chris Willis’ campaign. No yard signs popped up for either candidate. Aside from the Gunning letter, the campaign this year for Enfield Fire Commissioner—unlike last year—was surprisingly low-key.
It’s the second loss in two years for Chris Willis. Although he narrowly won a seat on the Board of Fire Commissioners last December, Willis lost earlier by a landslide when he challenged long-time Enfield Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins, first in the Republican Primary, and then the November 2023 General Election. Rollins kept his Highway job.
In an ironic twist, Willis and Rollins—who also was elected last year to the Board of Fire Commissioners—sat side-by-side at this year’s Commissioners’ meetings, usually collegial, seldom confrontational.
Nonetheless, in Enfield Fire District politics, Willis represented the pro-firefighter faction on the Board, having three similarly-minded allies to lean on. Rollins, more fire-critical based on his prior statements, this past year generally supported the majority’s position rather than buck them and become an outcast dissenter.
With Donald Gunning to join the Board in January, Rollins may find himself an ally. And the Board of Fire Commissioners may find a two-vote minority emerging. At this point, it’s too soon to tell.
Last year’s Enfield Fire District election became a mess. All five seats stood to be filled, as the Enfield Town Board had just created the Fire District and had appointed only placeholder Commissioner stand-ins.
What’s more, a controversial call by a former attorney for the District—a lawyer since jettisoned—had allowed voters to select just one Board candidate, even though five seats had to be filled. Voters became angry. A voter’s choice of whom to elect became a matter of gamesmanship. In that chaotic climate, Chris Willis polled fifth among ten candidates in last December’s election, and thereby just barely secured a Board position, one lasting but 12 months. Now, after just one year, Willis will have to forfeit the seat.
Donald Gunning’s term, by contrast, will span five years It’ll run through 2029.
****
While Gunning will become a new participant in Enfield’s twice-monthly Fire Commissioners’ meetings, the person who attends every one of those meetings to advise the Board will likely stay the same.
Enfield Volunteer Fire Company members December 5th recommended that Jamie Stevens remain as Enfield Fire Chief for this, his second year. Commissioners will likely confirm Stevens’ reappointment in January.
Also recommended for line leadership by the Fire Company were Deputy Fire Chief Bailey Stevens; First Assistant Fire Chief Keven J. W. Morse; Second Assistant Fire Chief Alexis Beckley; and Fire Captain Sam Beckley.
###
Fortress Tompkins
Legislature hardens parkside access to chambers; routinely ratifies shelter site purchase
by Robert Lynch; December 4, 2024
It used to be that if you wanted to get a Certificate of Residency or visit Tompkins County Administration, you just walked into the Old Jail building, climbed the stairs or rode the elevator to the proper floor and walked right into an office. Former County Administrator Jason Molino put an end to that during the pandemic. Instead of easy access, you instead had to stand streetside in the rain or snow, buzz an intercom, and hope somebody would let you in. Post-COVID, no one ever changed it back.
And soon, the same aggravating, public-hostile security controls will expand in the building where the Tompkins County Legislature meets.
With only limited discussion and just one man’s dissent, the Legislature Tuesday endorsed a resolution authorizing facilities staff to “install a security camera/intercom system” at the DeWitt Park main entrance to the Governor Daniel D. Tompkins Building,” the place that houses legislative chambers.
By so doing, the County Legislature walked just one step short of imposing the burdensome magnetometer and bag-search procedures Ithaca’s City Hall has long required, surveillance implemented after an emotionally disturbed man famously threw his shoe toward former Mayor Carolyn Peterson at a Common Council meeting years ago.
“I don’t feel safe in this building, myself,” Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown stated as he endorsed the new, ground-level security controls. “Every time that door opens in back of me, I have no idea what’s going on,” Brown said. “I hate having my back to the door. So I think this is a smart thing to do.”
But the main entrance’s lock downstairs won’t actually protect Randy Brown a single bit. State law requires open public meetings. So Legislature Clerk Katrina McCloy told lawmakers she’d unlock the door remotely a half-hour before a meeting starts, then relock it after the session adjourns. When Randy Brown’s attending, someone could still barge in.
“I don’t think it sends a very good message to the public,” Dryden’s Mike Lane, the evening’s lone dissenter, countered. “I just think we don’t need to be afraid of the public. That’s the message that it sends.”
When it comes to protecting legislative staff as well as building contents, what’ll be put in place now is but a second line of defense. For years, legislative staff has had a similar “buzz-in” intercom at the legislative chambers’ second-floor entrance. So all that the streetside door lock truly protects is a vestibule and stairwell to the building’s second floor.
But these days, governments’ default posture always leans toward overprotection. Maybe it comes from watching too much TV. Or in this instance, maybe County officials relied too heavily on a “Federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Security Assessment at First Entry (SAFE)” evaluation which Uncle Sam supposedly performed on buildings in the Courthouse Complex last March. “SAFE,” according to the adopted resolution, recommended the tighter controls. At the time, nobody likely ever pushed back. Cybersecurity nerds seldom consider issues like open government.
“As the years go by, we are in different times,” legislator Travis Brooks observed. “I think people are under a false sense that if somebody came here to do harm, that we could get out, or that we could just press a button, or somebody could see it on the cameras and all of a sudden help us,” Brooks continued. “We don’t have superheroes like that. I don’t know why we don’t want to keep our staff safe and less vulnerable”
The County Planning Department occupies the ground floor of the Daniel Tompkins Building. The Resolution states that planners had no objections to the new locks. We’re told Planning, too, has a locked inner door.
But there’s an inherent danger in relying too heavily on blinders-on studies like the SAFE evaluation in setting your security priorities.
Quite obvious to anyone who frequents the Governor Daniel D. Tompkins Building or any other Courthouse Complex structure is not the threat posed by unlocked doors, but rather the danger one faces of getting mugged at night in an increasingly dangerous downtown Ithaca, including within DeWitt Park.
What a common-sense observer would conclude the Courthouse Complex really needs is the brighter lighting of parking lots, sidewalks, and entranceways, including the one now set to receive those semi-redundant cameras and an intercom.
****
The outcome was never in doubt, and the unanimous vote Tuesday among those present came as no surprise when the Legislature ratified the purchase announced last week of a decaying, metal-faced building at Ithaca’s 227 Cherry Street as the future site of a 100-bed homeless shelter.
No legislator spoke against the $1.1 Million purchase. Rather, most members occupied the three-hour meeting’s final moments congratulating each other for their mutual compassion and foresight.
Dryden legislator Greg Mezey moved the purchase resolution “with excitement and enthusiasm,” he said. From across the table, Lansing’s Mike Sigler asked the clerk to place Mezey’s adjectives into the record. So it went.
“Of course we should do this; it’s the right thing to do,” Dryden’s Mike Lane spoke up. Lane quoted an unnamed legislator from an unnamed county who said he was “envious” of what Tompkins was doing, because, in that legislator’s opinion, too many leaders elsewhere say “it’s not our problem.”
“Tompkins County has always had a forward-looking way of trying to handle difficult situations and to think about people,” Lane expounded. “And even if we miss sometimes, even if we don’t make it right every time, we always try, and we put our money where our mouth is.”
Legislator Deborah Dawson requested and received assurance that the night’s action would not commit Tompkins County to a “low-barrier” model for the shelter, a standard which might lead substance abusers and the mentally ill to populate the place.
But the assurance to Dawson did not stop Mezey from keeping a limited-barrier threshold under discussion or prevent others from urging that rules still apply.
“Sometimes this term ‘low-barrier’ gets a negative stigma or connotation,” Mezey told fellow legislators. “Just because we’re committed to looking at barriers doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily committed to a no-barrier or low-barrier shelter,” he said. “How do we look at what those are and systematically dismantle some of these barriers that are hindering getting people out of homelessness?”
“I do have real concerns about how this is executed,” a somewhat hesitant, yet still supportive, Rich John responded. “I don’t think the current approach is working very well… The evidence is that unrestricted drug use is really bad and dangerous and it’s killing people. I think we do need a new approach.”
Rich John had another caution: “I have real concerns for the residents of Nate’s Floral Estates (the planned shelter’s nearby mobile home park) and for the businesses on Cherry Street in the City’s Industrial Park. We need to be very cognizant of those neighbors, both commercial and residential, and as we go forward protect their interests to the maximum extent we can.”
County Administrator Lisa Holmes clarified the construction timetable. Most likely, she said, the current building would be pulled down next year, the new shelter started in 2026, with the shelter’s earliest opening likely in 2027.
“I think a lot of people think of this as an end and not a beginning,” Republican Sigler remarked of the approved land purchase. “I’d like to think of it the other way around… as the beginning and not the end.”
###
Previously posted on the shelter story:
Tompkins’ Brave New World of Homeless Housing
Reporting and analysis by Robert Lynch; November 29, 2024
Last Tuesday, November 26, Tompkins County held a news conference. Its stated purpose was to reveal the County’s intention to purchase a pricey lot in Ithaca’s Cherry Street Industrial Park as the site for a long-term emergency shelter facility.
But that announcement far understates the sweep and significance of what’s happening. Tompkins County has plunged itself into the business of housing Ithaca’s homeless. And from what we can discern from what County officials have said and written, we, ourselves, may have to shoulder much of the cost.
Here’s what to remember: Our local government grew itself bigger this past week. It took on a new societal obligation it may not have needed to undertake. And did anyone ever ask our permission?
“Tompkins County is in a position to significantly strengthen our shelter system, giving as many people as we can a safe place to go and a reasonable path out of negative situations,” County Legislature Chair Dan Klein told the assembled media Tuesday.
“We agree with the vision of making homelessness rare, brief, and one time,” Klein stated. “This requires big thinking and strong partnerships. And it also requires investment.”
Let’s start with that last part. Tompkins County will pay $1.1 Million for a the one-acre lot, tucked away on a lonely stretch of Cherry Street not far from the so-called “jungle,” the place where many of Ithaca’s unhoused dwell in squalid, makeshift shacks and tents. What stands at 227 Cherry Street now is a dingy, nondescript, tin-sided warehouse quartering the “Found in Ithaca” antique mall. (Until now, I’d never seen or heard of it.) The name overstates the building’s allure. No doubt, “Found” would come down to make way for something much better, something in which the unhoused would live.
With the lot’s purchase presumably nailed down during prior closed-door sessions, the Tompkins County Legislature plans to ratify the acquisition at its next meeting, December 3rd.
A County-offered news release states that “more than a dozen sites were examined” before lawmakers settled on the “Found” lot. Its “For Sale” sign still remained prominently at roadside Wednesday.
“Of all the locations available, I believe this is the best site although I thought the price was too high,” Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown assessed the purchase in an email to leaders of his constituent municipalities the day of the announcement.
We’re told in the news release that the chosen site’s proximity to “several existing homeless encampment areas and service providers” nearby propelled it to favored status.
Expect the purchase Resolution to receive little debate during the Legislature’s forthcoming meeting. The resolution will likely pass without opposition. For those casting the votes, the deal is already done.
“This Cherry Street development plan gives us a chance to look past the temporary solutions we’ve had to stand up and think big about what’s possible in the future,” County legislator Greg Mezey proclaimed at the media event. “Having a purpose-built facility in the City will allow us to shelter people close to services, even bringing many of those services under the same roof as the shelter,” he said. Expect Mezey to place the purchase resolution onto the Legislature’s floor Tuesday night.
It’s what lies ahead that matters. Buying the land does not build the facility. The $1.1 land purchase is a mere down payment. Bigger commitments await.
“An additional $1 Million is in the Tompkins County Capital Program for the local share of shelter development costs,” a Shelter Development Fact Sheet, distributed to municipal leaders and attached to next Tuesday’s agenda states.
The narrative adds, “Tompkins County will apply for New York State Homeless Housing and Assistance Program (HHAP) funds for up to $6.1 Million in 2025 to develop the shelter.” At least, that’s the plan.
Noticeably absent from the factual narrative, or the news conference itself is any backup plan; a strategy outlining what Tompkins County would do if New York State simply says no.
Current vision calls for a new 20,000 square foot homeless shelter large enough to accommodate up to 100 people. By comparison, the recently-closed St. John’s Community Services shelter on Ithaca’s West State Street provided only 26 beds. What Tompkins County expects to build, therefore, could provide far more residential opportunities for “jungle dwellers”—or other unhoused persons—to relocate, assuming, of course, that they want to do so.
St. John’s officially closed in early-November, although legal actions delayed its shuttering a bit for a couple of its residents. The nonprofit’s exodus followed a falling-out with some Tompkins County officials and Tompkins’ subsequent refusal to renew a contract with the agency that would enable St. John’s to continue to shelter the unhoused.
What Tompkins County plans now is for a private consultant of sorts, MM Development Advisors (MMDA) of Rochester, to come in, see what’s needed, determine what’s best to be built, and then presumably build it.
“Tompkins County will work with MMDA and others to create a vision for the property and manage procedural activities related to land use,” the news release states. It described MMDA as “an affordable housing development partner with experience developing shelter facilities.”
Once the shelter is built, Tompkins County plans to recruit a not-for-profit agency to run it. Nobody’s named the agency yet.
County Administrator Lisa Holmes told the news conference that the shelter’s design phase could commence by the end of 2025, but that “the process is contingent on state funding and buy-in from non-profits.” Holmes is hoping that the non-profit operator “would be ideally part of the development team,” so that, she said, “they can help to develop from the ground up and come up with a plan with which to apply (state) funds.” Holmes’ timetable would have the non-profit recruited this year. Project development would begun thereafter.
Then, again, nothing can ever be assured or assumed, including Albany’s support.
A shelter completion date remains too tentative for anyone to predict. In the meantime, Tompkins County is active on several fronts. It’s retrofitted the former Key Bank building (now County-owned) at downtown’s Buffalo and Tioga Streets to meet state-dictated “Code Blue” requirements for cold-weather sheltering. It’s also paying to shelter unhoused individuals at local motels.
Up to 90 beds for Temporary Housing Assistance clients are being secured from motel operators, we’re told. The County’s Department of Social Services will operate the temporary housing program until a suitable nonprofit operator can be identified and contracted with.
What could complicate things, particularly in seeking State Government’s assistance, is the local preference for the kind of shelter that homeless advocates would like to see built. Their preferred option would employ a so-called “low-barrier” model. Envision it as a shelter where excuses supplant compliance, where exceptions override the rules.
What is your income? Might it be too high for you to live here? Do you plan to get a job or at least train for one? Do you intend to get sober or seek substance abuse counseling? These are fair questions to ask of anyone seeking a warm bed at public expense. We’re told government funders like to hear encouraging answers. In essence, does the unhoused person have a plan for moving out and then moving on?
But some local advocates for the unhoused find it constraining and discriminatory to ask tough questions only to receive equivocal answers. Activists like “low barrier.” It’s more compassionate.
But when barriers pull away, state reimbursements may dry up.
“Under current state law, a low barrier shelter would likely need to rely more heavily on local tax dollars, as it would receive less state funding than a conventional shelter,” The Ithaca Voice’s reporter wrote after Tuesday’s announcement.
And that, of course, is where the local taxpayer swoops in. The property tax is always the funding source of last resort.
The million-dollar land purchase revealed this week may have been negotiated in secret. But to the perceptive and informed among us, preparation for a County-run homeless shelter should come as no surprise. The concept’s been discussed, though largely in abstraction, for many months.
Still, the local taxpayer has never truly been pulled in. There never have been—and there likely never will be—public hearings on whether to build a homeless shelter. Nor will there be any referendum. Tompkins County will just do it. And whatever it does, however much it costs, the unreimbursed balance will simply be tacked onto your tax bill.
For that reason, many important questions demand meaningful answers. And those questions should be raised now, not reserved for after it’s too late to turn back.
First, what is the true demand for this thing? Has anybody ever performed a market study? What fraction of those currently living in shacks in the woods behind Walmart actually want to live in a place with four sturdy walls and a roof overhead that doesn’t leak? If we build 100 rooms will we find 100 willing takers?
Next, especially under the “low barrier” approach, how much of the annual expense will fall on us locals?
And what about the City of Ithaca’s involvement (or non-involvement) in the venture? Ithaca, quite frankly, is where most of our county’s unhoused happen to live. City Government, one would think, should have skin in the game.
“The City’s glad to see the progress the County is making, and we stand ready to continue to partner with them and contribute where we can now and in the future,” Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo told the news conference Tuesday. “What’s clear more now than ever is that we all need safe, accessible, and supportive places for folks to go that we can develop,” Cantelmo said.
But nowhere during the news conference’s nearly half-hour of positivity politics was there ever the promise that City Hall will—or even that it should—contribute meaningful money toward the shelter’s land purchase, not to mention its later construction.
“The City stands willing to work with our County partners; the exact form of that has not been determined,” Cantelmo replied to one reporter’s (inaudible) question. The mayor had gone off-script. “We recognize the City is going to play a junior role in whatever occurs here” Cantelmo admitted.
But why should that be,” those of us in Tompkins County’s rural reaches are tempted to ask. And really, does “junior role” imply lip service, but no cash?
“The City of Ithaca can and should be a place for everyone,” the Mayor proclaimed in his prepared remarks. Yes, just so long as no one else sends him the bill.
One final thought: By purchasing an obscure, out-of-the-way, Quonset-of-a-hovel warehouse in an industrial park for its new homeless shelter, Tompkins County may be doing exactly what some of us may quietly wish for, albeit not tor admirable reasons, We’d be tucking away a community problem into a forgotten corner.
Persons of compassion and charity often allege that what many of Ithaca’s more affluent prefer is to put homelessness out-of-site and hence out of mind. Who sees those people who live somewhere in the swampy woods near the railroad tracks, anyway? No one here to see; therefore, no one here to think about.
A more public-facing alternative, the argument goes, would jar the senses. When County officials last month announced their plans to retrofit a former bank for a “Code Blue” emergency shelter just doors from the Courthouse—it’s a mere one block’s walk from the Commons—neighborhood objections erupted, protestations kept muted at times to retain sufficient political correctness.
Will like complaints arise for a shelter at 227 Cherry Street? Unlikely. Few of us go there. And that in itself raises an issue. If the goal here is to proclaim “We’re all in this together,” and that housing insecurity should be out in the open for everyone to see, maybe the Found in Ithaca Antique Mall is precisely the worst building for our county to buy. But buy it we will.
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