From T-Burg kid to Health Commissioner

Jennie Sutcliffe appointed; vows to guard against Trump-Kennedy cuts

by Robert Lynch; June 18, 2025

You’ll never accuse Jennie Sutcliffe of backing down in a fight.  At least that’s the lasting impression one got from hearing the Trumansburg native’s acceptance speech June 17 after the Tompkins County Legislature unanimously appointed the animated, highly-credentialed policy advocate as its newest Commissioner of Whole Health.

“(It’s) what I’ve sort of been calling meeting the political moment,” Sutcliffe told the Legislature as she embraced her appointment Tuesday.  “We need to be playing defense to really defend the work that we’re doing and prove why it is important, but also to play offense,” Sutcliffe said.

The new administrative hire explained why a defensive posture requires offense as well..

“It feels a little bit silly to think that it’s important to be forward-looking right now,” Sutcliffe acknowledged.  “But if there are systems that are dismantled and if we lose funding, and programs have to stop someday, we will have the chance to rebuild those again, and we don’t want to be caught flat-footed when that happens,” she explained.  “So I think it’s important to be thinking defensively, but also a little bit offensively in this moment as well.”

Jennie Sutcliffe was one, but not the only Tompkins County department head the Legislature appointed Tuesday. 

With much less fanfare, and relegated to the end of a four-hour meeting—which included an hour-long Executive Session—legislators promoted Deputy Finance Director Darrel Tuttle to become Director of Finance.  Tuttle succeeds Lorrie Scarrott in leading the funding-focused department.  Scarrott is retiring following two years as Finance Director.

Both Jennie Sutcliffe and Darrel Tuttle will assume their new positions July 7.

In her three-minute address to the Legislature, during which she showcased her administrative priorities, Jennie Sutcliffe never mentioned the two federal officials whose take-no-prisoners policies  hold the greatest impact over local health services delivery, namely President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.  Though not named, the collective shadows of Trump and Kennedy loomed over Sutcliffe’s words.  Change must be expected became the appointee’s overarching message.  Ill-advised reforms should be resisted when possible; but then services once lost can be restored and enhanced when political skies brighten.

Two other goals the newly-hired commissioner has set for herself, she said, are “building trust” among staff, decision-makers, and the larger community; and “supporting our resilient workforce,” people within her department.

“You know, I understand that this is a time where being in government isn’t the same as it used to be,” Sutcliffe admitted to the Legislature.  “So we really need to do a really good job and continue to do a good job of demonstrating our value and what we bring to our community, both here in Ithaca and in Tompkins County as a whole.”

Jennie Sutcliffe is no stranger here.  But like many who claim Tompkins County as their anchor, the woman who grew up as a girl in Trumansburg, left for a while to pursue her career in larger places.  And then she returned.

“I can say without a shadow of a doubt that we chose an incredible candidate,” legislator Shawna Black proclaimed as she put Sutcliffe’s name into nomination to become Commissioner of Whole Health.

Giving prominence to their collective pride in choosing a person with such impressive credentials, legislators elevated Sutcliffe’s appointment to near the top of Tuesday’s agenda.

“Ms. Sutcliffe brings over a decade of robust experience in public health leadership, emergency preparedness, health policy, and cross-sector collaboration,” a news release posted the following morning by Tompkins County’s Communications Director stated. 

“Since 2018, she has served as a Senior Advisor in the Office of Emergency Preparedness and Response at the New York City Health Department,” the release said of Sutcliffe’s credentials.  “In that role, she led the strategic planning and implementation of the department’s Response Ready initiative and served in leadership positions during multiple public health emergencies, including directing quarantine and isolation operations during the Mpox response and leading COVID-19 incident command initiatives such as vaccine operations and personal protective equipment distribution,” the release stated.

Jennie Sutcliffe’s resume also includes her serving as a Senior Policy Analyst in the New York City Health Department’s First Deputy Commissioner’s Office.  In that position, the news release touted, Sutcliffe “influenced Medicaid and healthcare policy and led multimillion-dollar pilot projects focused on social determinants of health.”

A former Fulbright Research Scholar who studied in Italy, Sutcliffe holds a Master of Science in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.  Before taking the position in New York City, the newly-hired Whole Health Commissioner held positions in Chicago, including serving as a Health Justice Policy Specialist under Illinois’ then-Governor, her task “focusing on Affordable Care Act and Medicaid implementation for justice-impacted populations,” Tompkins County’s news release stated.

Maybe that last-stated effort stood out more than anything else in getting Jennie Sutcliffe her job.

“The one thing that was very clear during her speech to us was that she has a real vision for our department, and her focus on health equity was something that I think is going to be really important for our community,” legislator Shawna Black said in moving Sutcliffe’s appointment.

Jennie Sutcliffe steps into a hybrid administrative structure that may look better in theory than it works in practice.

In 2023, after four years of study that began pre-pandemic, the Tompkins County Legislature merged the Tompkins County Health and Mental Health departments into the Department of Whole Health.   The Public Health Department deals with physical illnesses, dog bites, vaccinations, and tasks as mundane as septic system approvals.  Mental Health addresses, as its name implies, mental illnesses. 

The 2023 merger saved hiring a separate administrator.  But Health and Mental Health occupy different buildings, their locations widely-separated.  And New York State administers the divisions separately, such that their combination required special consent.  In some respects, as the state views it, Whole Health is an administrative oddity.

Even though Tompkins County’s Board of Health and the (Mental Health) Community Services Board had each affirmed the appointment prior to Tuesday’s legislative vote, Sutcliffe’s confirmation “is currently pending final approval from the New York State Department of Health for her designation as Director of Public Health,” the Communications Director’s release states. 

Expect Albany’s ratification to stand as a formality.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Health Department side of the subsequently-merged administration, gained stature—lots of it—as the County Legislature reserved former Health Commissioner Frank Kruppa ample speaking time at each, twice-monthly Legislature meeting to update lawmakers on COVID case numbers, testing protocols, and vaccination opportunities.

In mid-January of this year, Frank Kruppa resigned as Commissioner of Whole Health. He assumed a position with Cayuga Health Systems, the local hospital corporation, as its Assistant Vice President for Community Program Development and Partner Integration.

In accepting her own appointment, Jennie Sutcliffe, noticeably animated and outgoing, expressed excitement about her incoming role in Tompkins County Government.

“I grew up in Tompkins County.  I grew up in Trumansburg,” Sutcliffe said.  “And although I moved back to the area a couple of years ago, my work has remained elsewhere, and so I’m really thrilled  to be able to work in my own community again, and this feels like a real homecoming,” Sutcliffe gushed.

****

Much more subdued was the end-of-meeting appointment of Darrel Tuttle as Tompkins County’s new Director of Finance.

Finance directors lack the public visibility of health commissioners.  They don’t fight disease, but they do keep governments humming—and solvent.  Finance directors monitor sales tax receipts.  They assess budget balances.  And particularly in departing director Lorrie Scarrott’s case, they initiate investment strategies that earn the county cash.

“I want to thank you for the opportunity,” Darrel Tuttle told legislators, after Chairman Dan Klein invited him to speak at meeting’s end.  “This marks my third year working for Tompkins County in a couple of different roles, the appointee, now Deputy Finance Director, said. 

“I look forward to better serving the Legislature, the County, and serving with my staff as I go into the new role as Director of Finance,” Tuttle concluded.

Tompkins County took strides Tuesday to close its longer-than-usual list of administrative vacancies.  But the gap-closing remains far from finished. 

Shortly after Health Commissioner Kruppa tendered his resignation, Kit Kephart in January revealed her plans to retire this July as Commissioner of Social Services.  Then in early-May, County Highway Director Jeff Smith announced his retirement plans.  The selection process for those pending vacancies continues.

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Down by DeWitt, or Out at the Mall?

Enfield weighs Tompkins’ leaders pitch for a Center of Government

Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; June 16, 2025

Turnout wasn’t great.  County legislators and staff outnumbered attendees.  And as many as half of those who did accept the open invitation were local municipal leaders.  One woman brought her toddler. 

At the Enfield Community Center Thursday, June 12, Tompkins County convened the second of its five, first-round “Community Engagement” sessions to describe and gauge public support for a $50 Million proposed Center of Government, the four-story office building Tompkins County wants to build in Downtown Ithaca, overshadowing DeWitt Park..

That said, perhaps the most telling question asked—and then answered—came not at Thursday’s engagement session, but rather one night earlier.  That’s when Randy Brown, one of Enfield’s two county representatives and chair of the committee that oversees the project, got tossed a question at the Enfield Town Board’s meeting concerning a purported commitment given the pricey building by the County Legislature eight days earlier:

“Do you see the decision made last week as basically irreversible; that we’re going ahead with the building regardless?” this writer/Town Councilperson, Robert Lynch, asked Brown during his legislative update.

“No,” Randy Brown replied quietly, yet firmly.

“That’s reassuring to hear,” this Councilperson responded.  The Center of Government’s cost, its placement, and fiscal worthiness has given this Town Board member jitters since the day it was conceived.

That said, those who promoted the Center of Government at the Enfield Community Center’s session the next night would have preferred us to regard their big, pricey, downtown brick building as a done-deal.  Yet reminded of Brown’s appraisal, and pressed to put facts behind their positive spin, leaders from County Administrator Korsah Akumfi on down acknowledged Thursday that political promises so far have fallen short of the assurances needed to break ground with confidence.

“I’m excited about this project,” Akumfi exclaimed at the engagement session.  Akumfi’s office would be on the building’s third floor.

“We haven’t pulled the trigger yet, but we’re moving in that direction,” Dryden’s Mike Lane, the County Legislature’s longest-tenured member, said of a project.  “We’ve been looking at it for at least 25 years,” 

Arel LeMaro, Tompkins County’s Director of Facilities, equated the Center of Government’s design to a “slow-cooker crock pot.”  How is that analogy drawn? “It smells nice, but it needs that time to simmer,” LeMaro said. “This is the time.”

Maybe… or maybe not.

The Tompkins County Center of Government sometimes resembles a lost commuter that’s passed through too any turnstiles.  It’s done so for two-decades.  

First conceived at the start of the millennium, and then, again, in about 2009, the Center of Government was once judged too expensive to build. 

When former County Administrator Jason Molino and legislators revived the building project from dormancy a couple years pre-pandemic, plans then called for placing the structure a half-block down Tioga Street from the Courthouse.   The building would stand where an orthodontist’s office was removed and a gravel parking lot now blemishes the neighborhood.

In 2021, after two years of Molino-supervised secrecy, Tompkins County walked the building’s footprint closer to the Courthouse.  The County purchased both the former Key Bank at the Buffalo-Tioga Street corner, and the multi-attorney “Professional Building,” best known as Walter Wiggins’ former law office next door.

Since the combined $3 Million purchase, legislators have fixated on putting the Center of Government at the Buffalo-Tioga corner.  The County-owned Board of Elections and Assessment offices—so-called “Building C”—would also be razed to accommodate the new edifice.

Infrequently, though not often—and indeed, less often as time goes by—some lawmakers have mentioned the prospect of siting the Center of Government “in a cornfield, ”as they quip;  that is, on cheaper, vacant land far away from downtown.  Alternatively, they might place it in surplus commercial space, like within Lansing’s increasingly-vacant Shops at Ithaca Mall.  Many who lead us, however, greet that kind of rural-focused fallback option with derision.  They consider it a non-starter.

But Enfield may look at choices differently.  At least it seemed that way this past week.  It could be that the farther one ventures from the courthouse block to Tompkins County’ rural reaches, the more one’s mind expands to embrace the ideas that others would discard.

“Go with the mall,” Supervisor Stephanie Redmond exclaimed, as the Enfield Town Board discussed Center of Government siting at the end of its monthly meeting June 11.  “Everybody show up.  Tell them you want them at the mall,” Redmond encouraged those who’d listen.   In this instance, the Supervisor might be new to the issue, yet quick to direct action.

“I agree with you; I’ve been pushing this for a year,” this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, informed the Supervisor.  “Unfortunately, it falls on a lot of deaf ears.”

One night later, at the community engagement session, Redmond reiterated her position; though later backed away from it a bit.

“I don’t want to be a wet blanket here,” Redmond cautioned meeting organizers, those who clearly favor a downtown location.  But “we have a mall that is dying and falling apart,” Redmond observed of the Ithaca Mall’s ghost town persona.  “What’s going to happen there?’ the Supervisor asked.  “I hate to see excess space.”

“From my point of view, downtown property is very high value,” Redmond appraised real estate reality.  It makes more sense, she argued, to locate at the mall “and give a life to a space that is dying.”

And to that comment, Tompkins County officials regrouped.  They countered with an argument that holds some weight, yet only when taken no farther than it deserves to go.

Criminal prosecutors, defense attorneys, and all sorts of legal staff need to locate close to the Courthouse, County officials reminded Redmond.  The District Attorney’s Office should remain only a brisk walk from the courtroom, they said.  So should the office for Assigned Counsel.  The County Clerk’s Office benefits from being handy to those accessing records or filing papers, the argument continued.  Close proximity supports the case for downtown co-location, they maintained,

Upon hearing the counter-argument, Redmond altered course.

“You made a good case about why it has to be down by the Courthouse,” Enfield’s Supervisor acknowledged.  She confined her remaining inquiries to topics more restricted, such as whether Tompkins County should reserve some visitor parking spaces for expectant mothers or those with young children, or whether building construction would demand a “local labor component.”

Given that the Ithaca Commons was reconstructed largely by out-of-area workers, Redmond said, “It makes it almost a mandate to use local labor.”

“We can look at that,” Enfield’s second Tompkins County legislator, Anne Koreman, told the Supervisor.

While Supervisor Redmond may have retreated from her out-from-downtown preference, this writer, Councilperson Lynch, the only other Enfield Town Board member in attendance that night, held firm.

The state may have served Courthouse eviction notices to the District Attorney and County Clerk, this Councilperson acknowledged, but nearby alternatives exist for them to relocate.  There’s the Old Jail next door.  There’s Building C, or maybe one of the structures Tompkins County purchased four years ago and would otherwise “deconstruct” to accommodate the new building.

As many as 13 Tompkins County offices would relocate to the Center of Government.  Most require no Courthouse proximity.

For example, Human Resources would relocate in the new building.  That sounds like a wise move.  Yet remember that many employees will remain scattered elsewhere.  A Highway laborer headquartered off Bostwick Road or a Health Department nurse based near the airport may find a personnel office quartered downtown a pain to visit, not more convenient.

And some Center of Government relocations may be downright inappropriate.

Tompkins County’s Office for the Aging would move from its storefront location at State and Albany Streets to the Center of Government.   Legislator Brown singles out that relocation as particularly inapt, unsuited for older adults challenged in their pursuit for downtown parking.

“My biggest concern is access for constituents, how it impacts rural people,” Randy Brown told the Enfield Town Board.  “How important it is for the residents in Newfield and Enfield to park there,” to have access, especially to “front-facing” services like the Office for the Aging.

In evaluating opinions among the 13 people who now represent Tompkins County in our Legislature, Randy Brown’s objections stand out.  Here’s why. 

Brown chairs the Downtown Facilities Special Committee, the committee that oversees the Center of Government project.  On the morning of June third, Brown joined all other committee members in recommending County Government “commit” to the project and also, presumably, to fund it.  But that evening, only a few hours later, Brown joined other legislative Republicans and Ithaca Democrat Travis Brooks to oppose a similarly-worded Resolution on the Legislature’s floor.

It wasn’t a flip-flop, Brown explained to the Enfield Town Board eight nights later.  It was only that he believed the full Legislature needed to decide the matter.  His committee support took it there.

“I don’t feel comfortable with our capital plan,” Brown told the Enfield Board June 11.  And as to the building, he said, “It’s going to raise taxes.  It’s going to happen.”

“I think it should be smaller,” Brown said of the downtown building’s footprint.  “There are all these unknowns.”

“Size of the building is still up in the air,” Brown told the community engagement session one night later. The legislator then quietly left early to give his monthly report to the Newfield Town Board.  (Because of the schedule conflict, Newfield government proved under-represented at the ECC event, even though the meeting was intended to serve all three of our county’s western-most towns.)

“It’s not a done deal yet,” County Administrator Akumfi qualified Thursday as to the project’s status.

Legislative math may back up the administrator’s equivocation.  The “Approval of Funding” commitment resolution cleared the Legislature by a nine-to-four vote June third.  All legislative seats come up for election this November.  A recent resignation has left one current seat vacant.  And the Legislature will expand to 16 members come January.

Randy Brown, Lee Shurtleff, and Travis Brooks, each who voted against the commitment resolution, stand unopposed for reelection.  The fourth objector, Republican Mike Sigler, faces an opponent in the fall, yet still holds the edge to win another term.  They’ll each likely remain onboard into next year.

Meanwhile, among those who voted in the commitment resolution’s favor—all Democrats—only three (legislators Black, Mezey, and Pillar) will likely return.  The remaining six plan to retire.  Nine fresh faces could prompt deference next year to hesitant critics like Brown, Brooks, and Shurtleff.

Back some 16 years ago, when Tompkins County briefly flirted with building a Center of Government on the Old Library site, Joe Mareane served as Tompkins County Administrator.  Mareane famously scuttled talk of a Center of Government with the words “I can’t make a business case for it.”

This Councilperson resurrected the Mareane bottom-line reality check argument at the Enfield Board June 11.

“There’s a good question whether we should build it at all,” I told Town Board members.  “Nobody’s made a business case for it that I can tell.  Nobody’s said, ‘This is how much we save; this is how much it’s going to cost; we would save more than it costs.’”

“Joe was right,” legislator Mike Lane acknowledged the next night at the engagement session. “But things have changed a lot,” Lane insisted.  He sought to blunt the “business case” argument.

“The Great Recession was happening then,” Lane explained.  And since 2009, there is more staff; more programs, he said.  “Joe Mareane had one deputy.  We now have two.  They have to have desks,” Lane countered the fiscal argument of cold-hearted calculation.

Bernard Best, Holt Architects’ Project Manager for the Center of Government, fielded questions about design specifics at the ECC meeting.  Public-facing offices like the County Clerk would be on the ground floor, he said. 

Assessment, the District Attorney, and the Grand Jury room would be one flight above.  The Administrator, the Finance Office, and Human Relations would occupy floor three.  The Planning Department and Information Technology would occupy the top floor.

The project manager emphasized design economies within the 48,000-square foot building, touting the “synergies of shared space.”

Somewhat startling, Bernard Best said there are no plans right now to dig a basement.  He mentioned flood plain concerns.

“All of these have heavy security,” Bernard Best referenced to the floors of offices, citing the District Attorney’s floor in particular. 

But what does “heavy security” actually mean, this Councilperson quizzed the project manager?  Will it be a “buzz-in” system, like several county buildings already have?  Or will there be more intrusive magnetometers and bag searches?   How “user-friendly” will this new building be, Best was asked?  He couldn’t say.  The level of security is under a consultant’s study, was all he cared to state.

At past legislative and committee meetings, Groton’s Lee Shurtleff had warned of a Center of Government finding itself strained for space as soon as it’s built.  With that worry in mind, would the building be built strong enough to hold up a fifth floor, if added later?  The project engineer said it would be.

And what about connecting the new building to the Courthouse, a thought no one’s considered to date?  “There is a thing called winter,” this Councilperson reminded everyone. 

Bernard Best cautioned that historic preservation concerns at the landmark Courthouse argue against an above-ground causeway.  But he then acknowledged that a subsurface tunnel to the Courthouse might work.

Newfield’s Liane DeLong was among the few unelected local residents who attended the engagement session at the ECC.  DeLong raised parking and traffic concerns that continually challenge a downtown location.  She also argued against adding that someday-fifth floor.

“It feels claustrophobic,” DeLong said of Ithaca’s newly-obscured downtown skyline.  “It upsets me now.  I hate it.  So many are taller and taller and taller.  Pretty soon we won’t be able to see the sky.”

Tompkins County has three more Community Engagement meetings scheduled this month to solicit comment on a proposed Center of Government.  A meeting June 16 at the Dryden Village Hall will be followed by a session in Caroline one week later, and then a final forum at County Legislative Chambers June 24.  Only the one in Chambers will be live-streamed.

Two further community meetings—but only to be held downtown—are planned for July and September as project plans advance.  We may see a design sketch by late-summer.

That is, unless plans change abruptly by then, and we all simply head to the mall. But don’t count on it.  Cooks hate to turn off the slow cooker when the soup’s so close to done.

****

Postscript (June 16): Tompkins County held the third of its five Community Engagement meetings on the Center of Government project Monday night, June 16, this time in Dryden.  

As with the earlier session in Enfield, resident turnout was sparse.  County officials again outnumbered public attendees.  But unlike in Enfield, no one in Dryden questioned whether Tompkins County should actually build the $50 Million office complex.   Nor did anyone suggest an alternate site location, such as at the Shops at Ithaca Mall.

Questions posed during the 90-minute Dryden meeting—many from County staff and lawmakers—instead centered on space allocation within in the new building; provisions like bathroom facilities , lactation rooms, and even whether the new building’s windows would open to let in fresh air.

Dryden’s Mike Lane and Greg Mezey represented the County Legislature Monday, the only two from the body to attend.  Both members June third had voted to support the Center of Government.

Mike Lane said he wants a building that “complements, but does not overpower” its neighborhood; “something the whole community can be proud of,” he said.

Project Manager Bernard Best confirmed that architects plan to present three different building design options to the public, thereby giving people the opportunity to pick which one they prefer. / RL

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Two Enfield roads eyed for slower speeds

Town Board also moves Subdivision Regulations off the dime

by Robert Lynch; June 13, 2025

Question:  What’s the quickest route to Newfield or Elmira from Trumansburg—or for that matter, even from Waterloo?  It’s not through traffic-clogged Ithaca. Instead, think Halseyville Road.

Most locals have known that time-saving secret for decades.  And in a way, Halseyville Road knows it too.  The all-so-convenient bypass has suffered the wear and tear of traffic.  This year, the Tompkins County Highway Department will patch the route’s imperfections and give much of Halseyville Road, County Route 170, a new coat of asphalt.  That’s good news.

But what’s not so good news is that better pavement brings higher speeds.  Halseyville Road may masquerade as a state highway, but it’s still a country road.  There are hills, blind spots, and plentiful cross-traffic.  Moreover, the road serves as a favorite nighttime crosswalk for all too many deer. 

Now, the Enfield Town Board has taken notice.

Guided, quite frankly, by an erroneous quirk on Google maps, the Town Board June 11th requested the New York State Department of Transportation conduct a traffic study of Halseyville Road to determine whether its speed limit should be cut from 55 Miles per Hour to 45 or lower.

“I’ve seen children crossing the road to school buses, and hoping to God that (they don’t get hit),” Councilperson Cassandra Hinkle said of Halseyville Road’s dangers Wednesday.

In a second Resolution, the Town Board asked for a similar traffic study on the little-traveled Tucker Road, the gravel-surfaced Town crossway that bisects the Breezy Meadows subdivision, likely soon to see new homes built.

As for Halseyville Road, “The posted speed limit is 55, but if you’re looking at your little phone or at your Google maps, it says 45, so we have some residents that want some clarification there,” Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond said in bringing the speed limit reduction to the Town Board’s attention.

Enfield Planning Board Chair Dan Walker offered an explanation Wednesday of the computer-versus-real world anomaly.  Put simply, it’s because Artificial Intelligence is dumb.

Think about it:  Route 96 at Halseyville Road’s north end is reduced to 45 MPH.  Enfield Main Road, NY Route 327, to which Halseyville becomes at its southern terminus, is also 45.  There’s no speed limit sign anywhere in-between.  So AI assumes Halseyville Road holds the speed restriction as well.

The Town of Enfield lacks authority to set speed limits on its own.  Protocol dictates the Town first go to the Tompkins County Highway Department; and then, if approved locally, on to New York State.

Albany’s resistance has frustrated Enfield in the past.  Following a fatal car-pedestrian accident in 2018, the Town Board asked the Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) for a lowered speed on Hayts Road at a blind hill near the Van Dorn Road intersection.  New York rejected the request.

“NYSDOT professionals determined that lowering the speed limit would not be appropriate at this time,” Scott Bates, Regional Traffic Engineer for the Department of Transportation, wrote the Town in December 2022. 

“Setting the speed limit at the prevailing free-flow speed (55 MPH) decreases conflicts, minimizes crashes, and makes it easier for vehicles and pedestrians to judge the speed of approaching vehicles,” Bates continued.  He never mentioned the limited sight distance that likely caused the pedestrian’s death.

“They were counter-intuitive,” this writer, Councilperson Robert Lynch, said Wednesday of the Hayts Road decision.  “It said it’s safer when people go faster, if you can believe what they said.”

Planning Board Chair Walker explained DOT’s logic differently.  “They do speed monitoring.  If the prevailing speed is over 50-55, they’re not going to reduce it down.  People feel safe traveling at that speed,” Walker stated.

Dan Walker lives on Halseyville Road.  He knows its propensity for deer hits. When it comes to the speed study, the planner quipped, “Make sure they do it during deer activity, because that’s what controls the speed.”

“I have never been too encouraged by the New York State Department of Transportation’s response to us,” Councilperson Lynch remarked, “but certainly it’s worth pursuing.  I hope they grant it.  It would be good because the road deserves to have a slower speed limit.”

Seeking a lowered speed limit on Tucker Road involves more of a leap of faith.  Tucker Road may have some increased traffic now that the adjoining Breezy Meadows residential lots have been sold and buyers prepare to build.  But travel’s still light, and the road’s only gravel-surfaced. 

And when Enfield attempted in 2023 to cut speeds for the arguably better-surfaced Van Ostrand Road, also gravel, located on the Enfield-Newfield Town Line, NYDOT cited standing policy for its rejection.

“NYSDOT follows a practice of not posting speed limits on unpaved roadways,” Regional Engineer Bates wrote the Town that November. “Studies have shown that lowered posted speed limits on gravel roads have negligible impact on improving speeds and operations,” Bates wrote.

“It’s a dirt road, so they’re not going to do anything about it,” Supervisor Redmond lamented about Tucker Road after being reminded of the state policy.  “But let’s submit it and see what they say.”

When the Breezy Meadows subdivision underwent Town Planning Board review in 2023, Enfield Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins determined that Tucker Road stood in adequate shape.  He dismissed calls for having Tucker’s condition improved, perhaps at developer expense.  Rollins similarly this past January resisted prioritizing Tucker Road’s paving, arguing that future home construction would only tear up whatever pavement Rollins’ crew laid down.

****

Amazingly, it was a full 21 months ago that the Enfield Town Planning Board handed up its draft revised Subdivision regulations for Town Board review and adoption.  Wednesday, June 11, the Town Board finally finished its review and forwarded the nearly 30-page document to its attorney.  A public hearing and adoption could occur by late-summer.

For meeting after meeting, perusal of the Subdivision Regulations got relegated to the bottom of long agendas, often postponed by board members either too fatigued or short-handed to wade through them.

As it’s turned out, the Town Board’s current document stands little different from what the Planning Board had initially recommended in September 2023.

Over the course of those many months, ideas got briefly raised and later discarded.  A “right to water” clause, suggested after the Breezy Meadows development controversy, was offered as an amendment, but then rejected, early-on.

Later, the Town Board proposed asserting itself more actively in the approval of larger-scale subdivisions.  But planners then pushed back on the idea and the attorney questioned whether dual-oversight was legal.  The Town Board’s current draft would only empower the Town Board to “recommend approval or denial.” of a subdivision during preliminary review.  It’s a recommendation that the Planning Board would consider as “advisory only.”

The Town Board had also once considered raising minimum lot sizes, but then opted to keep them at one-acre, subject to Health Department approval.  

Most recently, last December, Supervisor Stephanie Redmond had raised the prospect of adding a control of outdoor lighting.  But as its final decision on the regulations this past Wednesday, the Town Board agreed to defer any lighting regulations and consider them only later as a stand-alone law.

“If we want to do something like a Noise Ordnance, or a Light Ordinance, or a Junk Ordinance… we should do it separately,” this writer, Councilperson Lynch, advised the Town Board.  Otherwise, he said, “it could make an otherwise non-controversial set of regulations very controversial.”

In other Town Business June 11:

• The Town Board formally recognized and commended long-time Enfield Food Pantry volunteer Maryanne Berlew on her 80^th birthday.  Berlew’s recognition followed a celebratory gathering hosted by the pantry’s parent organization, Enfield Food Distribution, the previous Sunday.

• The Town Board set a Public Hearing for its July ninth meeting to consider a local law that would opt back into a New York State statute and thus enable the Town of Enfield to directly negotiate, at least in theory, tax abatement agreements with solar farm developers.  Enfield had opted-out of the law during the Black Oak Wind Farm controversy more than a decade ago, but now considers that move a bad idea.  Enfield actually thought it had opted back into the law two years ago, but did so by resolution.  State taxing authorities advised that a local law was instead required.

• The Board set second Public Hearing, this one for August, on what’s become an annual ritual; the override of New York’s penalty-free “tax cap” affecting next year’s Enfield budget.  The state-calculated cap—not yet known for 2026—often restricts tax levy increases to no more than two per cent.  Enfield’s levy  increases in recent years have climbed far above that percentage.  Councilperson Lynch urged the Town Board delay the hearing until the fall, until both Town budget projections and the tax cap are known.  Wait until “necessity dictates an override,” Lynch said.  Supervisor Redmond opposed delay.  “I think necessity dictates an override, no matter what,” Redmond responded.  She cautioned that even despite best efforts to keep tax increases under the cap, “if you go over it, you’re out of compliance.”

• And with little discussion, the Town Board declined Councilperson Lynch’s annual effort to have the Town reclaim for its own purposes the local share of sales tax revenue that Enfield has for more than a decade allowed Tompkins County to keep to reduce its own county tax.  The practice leads to a county tax calculated disproportionately low on residents’ tax bills and a town tax that’s disproportionately high.  But it also inflates the abated tax revenues solar farms pay.  “I’m not going to support that,” Supervisor Redmond said of the sales tax reassignment.  “Make those solar farms pay.”

###

One Big, Burdensome Building

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.

****

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 12^th.

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.

****

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

###

County proposes big EMS expansion; Bangs pushes back

Department proposal would hike a 500k annual program to $3 Million

By Robert Lynch; May 28, 2025

Improving local emergency medical services and speeding ambulance response times, particularly to patients in Tompkins County’s rural areas, has suddenly gotten a lot more complicated.

Two supposedly complimentary—though potentially conflicting—proposals that would increasingly involve Tompkins County Government in the emergency treatment and transport business got their first, individual airings May 27 before the Tompkins County Legislature’s Public Safety Committee.  But after the committee’s 90-minute discussion Tuesday had ended, no clear plan emerged as to in which way emergency medical services (EMS) will actually go.

“We’ve kind of been proceeding on parallel tracks,” committee Chair Rich John observed of those choices even before staff from Tompkins County’s Department of Emergency Response (“DOER”) and Paul Bishop, Project Director of the consulting firm Center for Governmental Research (“CGR”), had taken their respective turns before the committee.

CGR asked only for money and a contract.  Bishop requested County Government spend $48,000 for his Rochester-based firm to study EMS’s problems.  Under his proposal, CGR would make recommendations and then outline available options to the County Legislature by September 30. 

DOER’s proposal is far more concrete—not to mention ambitious.  And its concept has already ruffled a few feathers along the way.  DOER would expand the already existing, but now operationally modest, County-run Rapid Medical Response (RMR) service to become a backup ambulance operation of sorts.

Under DOER’s self-proclaimed “EMS Strategic Vision,” RMR’s annual spending would skyrocket five-fold. 

DOER’s “Strategic Vision” would have Tompkins County buy three ambulances, increase RMR’s full- and part-time medical staff from its current six people to as many as 30 (plus Per Diem help), and grow a $546,828 budget to just over $3 Million.

“We came up with this program to help augment our current transport agencies and not replace them, Joe Milliman, Tompkins County’s EMS Program Manager, informed the committee.  He joined Director of Emergency Response Michael Stitley for the May 27 presentation.

But the Rapid Medical Response program Milliman and Stitley envision to fill perceived needs and to serve its limited purpose is a far cry from how the program began and what it remains at present.

Aside from the multiples of increased cost, RMR would expand from only EMT-level “Basic Life Support” (BLS) to also include “Advanced Life Support,” (ALS), higher-level care that Stitley says requires a trained paramedic to deliver.  Under the “Vision,” one ambulance would run 24/7, the second, daytimes-only.  The existing service currently runs from only 7 AM to 7 PM, weekdays.

RMR was conceived and launched in April of last year after officials sensed a shortage of volunteers, a shortage that had depleted the ranks of local fire department rescue squads, particularly during daytimes.  RMR presently employs Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT’s) only.  It stations them one to a car, and utilizes pickup trucks and SUV’s repurposed from the County Government’s motor pool. 

The current RMR service has no ambulance.  Any new units purchased would provide only basic life support.  DOER budgets them at $150,000 apiece.

Nowhere in its written proposal does DOER specify a start-up date.  Nor was it stated at the meeting.  But one infers that the transformation could take place as soon as 2026.  After the committee adjourned, Director Stitley acknowledged that the service could begin as soon as next year; if not that soon, then in 2027.

The Public Safety Committee took no vote on any of the Emergency Medical Response choices Tuesday, leaving matters very much up in the air.  Instead, Rich John signaled that he’ll offer a so-called “Member-filed Resolution” for the full Legislature to consider, probably in June.  The member initiative would authorize some revised version of the Center for Governmental Research’s initial proposal. 

We will “refine the scope,” John said of the study after the meeting had adjourned.  John suggested the consultant’s fee would likely fall below the $48,000 Bishop had quoted.  The chairman also assured that the study will include DOER’s expansive model among its considered options. 

The Department of Emergency Response’s heretofore undisclosed proposal emerged almost from nowhere.  Its first disclosure came in an attachment to the committee’s online agenda packet, posted on Tompkins County’s meeting portal a few days before the meeting.  Quite likely, some in government didn’t want details publicized ahead of time.

And that reticence could be for good reason. 

As Milliman outlined his department’s initiative, several officers of the privately-owned and Ithaca-based Bangs Ambulance, Tompkins County’s largest transport agency, sat in the gallery.  Invited by Rich John after the presentation to come forth and speak, company president Tim Bangs and Board of Directors member Brian August took polite, though direct hits at the DOER proposal.  They viewed DOER’S plan as being too costly to the taxpayer and too demoralizing to the volunteer rescue squads that have partnered with Bangs for decades to save lives.

Regarding the money, Tim Bangs asked, “For the 80 years that Bangs Ambulance has been providing that service to Ithaca and Tompkins County, what has Tompkins County paid for that?  Nothing.”

“It’s hard for a private service to compete against a public entity,” Brian August stated.  He reminded all that public employees receive lucrative public benefits.  August feared that if RMR were expanded, some Bangs’ staff would quit or downsize to part-time so as to join Tompkins County’s workforce and then reap the benefits.

Tim Bangs advised the committee that when the RMR service launched last year, “the generic staffing level” amounted to “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”  One employer’s gain was another one’s loss given the short supply of EMT’s and paramedics both in Tompkins County and across New York State.

And a critical read of the staffing plan to implement the “EMS Strategic Vision,” suggests that Milliman and Stitley have employed a healthy amount of wishful thinking.

“The biggest question that we get is where are we going to get the staff,” Milliman acknowledged to the committee.

“Tapping into the local colleges,” the EMS program manager mentioned as one idea.  Continuing to work with Tompkins Cortland Community College and Syracuse’s Upstate Medical Center to bring EMS training courses to Tompkins County was another the plan tossed out.

But the major expansion DOER envisions requires not just lower-level EMT’s, but also higher-skilled paramedics.  Tim Bangs claimed that the nearest paramedic training schools require travel to Elmira, Syracuse, or Binghamton.

And then there’s the issue of volunteer morale; the attitudinal adjustment that comes when a firehouse volunteer learns that what he’s doing for free has become a task somebody else is doing for pay.

Tim Bangs said he’d heard the complaints when the RMR program began.  Volunteers would say, “If this call comes out… and I know that the County is getting paid to go to that call, I’m going to sit in the station, and I’m not going to go because I’m not getting paid for it.  I’m a volunteer.  If they’re going to get paid, let them go on the call.”

Tim Bangs’ advice to the committee: “We would love to see instead of slamming the door on these first response agencies, let’s try to rebuild them.”

Yet “doing nothing is not an option,” Dryden Councilperson Dan Lamb stressed when Rich John invited outside comment.  Lamb is among the select few who sit on the Emergency Planning and Preparedness Subcommittee of the Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG).  It was the subcommittee that in separate meetings first tapped Paul Bishop’s advice for EMS restructuring ideas, and then at a second session, heard DOER’s proposal.

This writer, Enfield’s TCCOG representative, attended the early-April session with Bishop, but was then requested by the subcommittee’s chair, Caroline Supervisor Mark Witmer, not to divulge its substance; only to recite  a generalized statement Witmer had dictated.  The later meeting with DOER was even more shrouded.  Not even the full TCCOG membership was made aware of it when TCCOG convened May 22.

Witmer Tuesday defended his decision to keep subcommittee sessions private, arguing that the subcommittee is only a “working group,” exempt from the Open Meetings Law.

But more important than staffing, the key component to EMS’s reimagining is its cost.  How will the bills get paid?  If the Rapid Medical Response service’s budget is to balloon from a half-Million dollars to nearly six times that amount, who will pay the difference?

“New York State is not coming to save us,” Dan Lamb, a leader well-connected to Albany power-politics, cautioned the committee.  “We’ve got to fix this on our own.”  Yet how?

When funding for the current, more modestly-priced RMR program was first discussed, several cost-sharing ideas came forth.  Back then, talk was that Tompkins County would pay a portion, maybe half, of the expense; local municipalities would fund the remainder.  Under one option, the Town of Enfield’s share would exceed $58,000.  That request later fell to $10,000, and still later dropped to zero, but only after a one-time state grant came through to underwrite the expense for 2025.

No similar lifeline will likely come for the year ahead, Director Stitley predicted after the meeting.  Meanwhile, County Administrator Korsah Akumfi implied during the session that municipal cost-sharing remains very much on the table.

“It’s not worth paying for a service or a study (like, for example, Paul Bishop’s consultancy) if there’s no commitment to implement,” Akumfi said. “So we need to have that commitment from all the municipalities that we will buy into the idea so that it can be successful.  Without that commitment, it will not be successful,” the Administrator reasoned.

There’s an elusive, yet pervasive unease one gets from examining DOER’s suddenly-surfaced prescription to Tompkins County’s EMS crisis, if indeed a crisis truly exists.   One perceives a proposal slapped together too fast and founded on too many impulsive assumptions.  And one discerns a plan that grants all-too fleeting consideration to the all-important bottom line:  the money. 

Public Safety Committee members grasped that unease Tuesday.  And the deeper one digs into the Milliman-Stitley vision statement, the more essential Paul Bishop’s more detached perspective may prove advisable.  An experienced consultant may find holes in the plan ready to poke.

Example:  DOER wants Tompkins County to buy three ambulances.  Paul Bishop’s reality check:  “If you were to order an ambulance today… you wouldn’t see it for two, two-and-a-half years, if you wanted a new one.”

Or staffing: “It’s harder to find EMT’s and paramedics than it was even three or four years ago,” Bishop provided.

Sometimes, third-party expertise is worth what you pay for it.  Chairman Rich John and the Public Safety Committee seemed to grasp that concept Tuesday.   

Nevertheless, the Department of Emergency Response’s “EMS Strategic Vision” has its well-placed cheerleaders.  They include Dryden’s Dan Lamb and Trumansburg Mayor Rordan Hart.  Both leaders have professionally-paid municipal ambulance services within their towns, and both sit with Caroline’s Witmer on the TCCOG Emergency Preparedness Subcommittee.

“From the standpoint of the Village of Trumansburg, we strongly, strongly support the notion of the expansion of the RMR program,” Hart emphasized to the Public Safety Committee.  “For me, this is really a public policy question, not an EMS or EMT operational or a structural question,” Hart stated. 

Mayor Hart would have Tompkins County treat EMS like it does law enforcement, consider it a department like that of the Sheriff, and budget the service accordingly.

As many of 26 percent of Trumansburg Ambulance’s calls go to places outside of T-Burg’s service area.  Many gap-fill for Bangs.  And many calls lose money.  That out-of-area rate stands as high as 40 percent in Dryden.

“The thing that we can’t do is wait another year on this,” Dryden’s Lamb told the committee, “because my taxpayers are kicking in about a half-million dollars a year going outside of my town, and that’s a really hard thing for me to justify to the people that I serve.”

That said, equally hard to justify for anyone in Enfield government would be appropriating some large annual sum—maybe in the six-figures—as the local “cost-share” for a County-run, stand-by service that some may say duplicates work of the already well-equipped Enfield Volunteer Fire Company’s Rescue Squad.

But for those who might think that way—perhaps including Tim Bangs—Mayor Hart counters they’re living in the past.

“There isn’t in my opinion a way to make Tompkins County 1985 again, for lack of a better phrase,” Hart told the committee, “and resurrect a volunteer first response situation that simply doesn’t exist anymore.”

Then again, if Mayor Hart stands correct, where does all that new money come from; three million dollars of new money?  No one’s offered that answer yet.

###

The Flood Law leaders like, locals don’t

Enfield regulations impair our freedom, critics charge

by Councilperson Robert Lynch, May 26, 2025

“I don’t think anybody wants flood insurance. What they want is to be able to get a mortgage.”

Enfield Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, Town Board meeting, May 14.

“It seems like a bunch of bull to me.”

Enfield landowner John Rancich, same meeting.

****

Rosanna Carpenter’s and Rodger Linton’s log home lies at the edge of—but just beyond—the newly-designated Enfield flood prevention zone.  You need to cross a private bridge to reach their residence.  Carpenter and Linton maintain that bridge.  They also own land each side of it, vacant fields that could someday sprout new houses, if only government will tell someone it’s OK to build there.

Right now, Carpenter and Linton are angry.  And they brought their discontent to the Enfield Town Board earlier this month.  Others living or owning land in the flood plain did so as well. They didn’t like what the Town Board did that night.

Federal and state authorities last year decided that a narrow strip of lowland along Enfield Creek could someday get flooded, even if no more often than once in 100 years.  And because of that remote risk, state officials successfully strong-armed the Town Board May 14 to enact new, stringent flood plain development controls in what they call the “area of special flood hazard.”  New buildings there could have no basements, and many might need to be built on stilts.

The tighter rules accompany Enfield’s forced participation in the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).  Federally-supported flood insurance will be available to all Enfield homeowners as of mid-June.

People like Carpenter and Linton argue that neither the regulations nor the insurance is needed, and that the government controls smack of first-ever, Enfield zoning.

Flood insurance rates run three-times the average of a homeowner’s policy, Carpenter said at the May 14  Public Hearing called to address the proposed law.   The hearing ran just five minutes short of an hour and filled nearly all the room’s chairs.  “So if you have a $2,500 policy on your home, it’s going to cost you $10,000 a year to take the chance that you might get flooded,” Carpenter estimated.

“Has anyone ever drowned in this town from a flood?” Linton asked rhetorically. “Has anyone even been made sick from a flood, ever?  Can anybody answer that question for the Board?”

This Councilperson said he couldn’t recall any deaths.  The criticism continued.

“My apartment buildings are in the flood plain.  They’ve been there for 35 years, and I’ve not had any floods” John Rancich, Enfield’s best-known landlord, informed hearing attendees.  “I’ve had the creek come up a little bit, but there’s never been a flood.”

“It seems like a bunch of bull to me, and the town doesn’t need flood insurance,” Rancich asserted.

Need it or not, federally-backed flood insurance will soon become available to every Enfield homeowner.  And a few residents may even be forced to buy it. 

The Town Board’s adoption of the controversial regulations May 14 fulfills a federal and state requirement that governmentally-backed—and yes, pricey—flood insurance be made available to everybody in Enfield now that federal and state regulators have identified a flood-prone place in the Town.  That strip along Enfield Creek may be small.  It includes only a handful of houses.  Nonetheless, its existence suffices for the government’s mandate to kick in.

The leverage government holds is that as of mid-June anyone owning property within the flood plain will need to purchase flood insurance to qualify for a new, federally-backed mortgage or to hold onto a mortgage already held.  The mandate covers financing from any bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

The Town Board’s vote to adopt the Flood Damage Prevention Law was four-to-one.  Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) cast the only dissent and took pains to explain why he’d done so.

“There wasn’t one person at this meeting tonight, at the public hearing, who said they want to buy flood insurance, not one” Lynch took note.  “And I didn’t hear any person who said, ‘I’ve got a federally-backed mortgage and I need to buy flood insurance.’  I didn’t hear that either.” 

Instead, Lynch said, “I heard people saying if I’ve got a federally-backed mortgage, and I’m required to buy flood insurance, I’m going to get financing somewhere else.  That’s what they’re saying.  I’ve gotta’ listen to what the public says.”

Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond took a different view. “I don’t think anybody wants flood insurance,” the Supervisor asserted.  “What they want is to be able to get a mortgage.  That’s the reality of it.  It’s hinging on a mortgage.”

But the public’s mood of the night was anger. Quite plainly, what came from the visitors’ gallery was defiance.

“You’re condemning people’s property,” Roger Linton asserted.  He zeroed-in on a stronger-than-state-requirement that Enfield had initially proposed—but later in the meeting withdrew from the law—that would have banned any new residential construction within the flood zone.  “You’re making their property worthless,” Linton admonished the Town Board.

“I’ve not heard anything here or what I’ve read that’s going to help anybody in this town,” Marie Vandemark, whose family owns Sandy Creek Mobile Home Park, said.  Some of Sandy Creek’s manufactured homes rest within the flood plain.

“Look, boilerplate or not, you do have some power here; you do have a small voice, and I would love to see you all, individually or as a collective group, say, ‘Look, State of New York, or whoever you’re talking to, this isn’t really suited to our town.  We have a very small population, and a small group of residents that are going to be affected,’” Vandemark said. 

Other voices joined her.  “Now they’re going to pass a law about flood insurance that I’m going to have to buy that I don’t need,” landlord Rancich lamented.  “It’s no big deal to me. I’ll just raise my rent.  And so, once again, there’ll be more cost to people that are renting my apartments, because the Town wants flood insurance that they don’t need.”

“We’re asking you to fight for us,” resident Donald Head instructed the Town Board.

“There’s nobody here in favor of this,” Linton informed Enfield’s lawmakers.  “I haven’t heard one single person speak in favor of this.  They don’t want it… Stand against it.”

“Go into violation,” Rancich dared the Town.

“If we don’t adopt the law, then the Attorney General of New York can come in and force us to adopt the law,” Councilperson Jude Lemke cautioned.  Of anyone that evening, Lemke offered the harshest prediction of state retribution.  A lawyer herself, Lemke relayed advice from the attorney for the Town, Guy Krogh.

A plain reading of statute, on the other hand, provides a more benign interpretation of potential punishment.  True, New York Environmental Conservation Law does prescribe that a town like Enfield, newly-designated with a flood hazard area, must “promptly… apply for and complete all requirements for participation in the national flood insurance program.”

But the “sanctions” meted out for non-compliance under that same article of conservation law fall short of the draconian punishments Lemke quoted from attorney Krogh.  Statutory sanctions, the text states, limit themselves to the inability for residents to secure FDIC-backed mortgages, and, the law states, “in areas of special flood hazard, ineligibility for flood disaster aid.” 

Obvious to many, Councilperson Lemke attempted to read the penalties more expansively, implying a wider, town-wide impact.  At one point, she inaccurately warned that failure to adopt the Enfield law could place everyone’s home mortgage at risk of cancelation.  Lemke later corrected herself.

“We as a Town and the residents of the Town will not be able to apply for federal funds if there’s a presidential disaster declared that we will not be able to participate in and get funds from the federal government, not just for floods, but for any federal disaster,” Lemke said. 

The lawyer-Councilperson relied heavily upon an email circulated to Board members only hours before the meeting and signed by Kelli Higgins-Roche, New York State Coordinator for the NFIP.  Some Town Board members (including this writer) had not read Higgins-Roche’s letter.  But a careful reading of that letter afterward suggests some meeting night exaggeration.  The NFIP coordinator’s admonitions confine themselves to mortgage availability and to grants and disaster aid specific to “identified flood hazard areas” or to municipal flood prevention in general.

In many ways, a healthy dose of misinformation circulated about the meeting room that Wednesday night. 

“People who are in the flood hazard zone will be required to purchase the flood insurance,” Councilperson Lemke stated at the hearing’s start.

Not so.  No property owner in the flood zone, including Stoney Brook Townhouses’ owner John Rancich, will be required to buy flood insurance, unless he or she holds a federally-backed mortgage, one that the bank is forced by the feds to insure.

“This has an impact on the Town as a whole,” Lemke continued.  “It will limit our ability to receive any funds from the federal government.”

Any funds?  That’s an ambiguous assumption.  Higgins-Roche’s letter does not state such a categorical denial, unless the funding relates to flood relief and mitigation.

Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond cautioned that failure to adopt the regulations could imperil an already-awarded grant to a near million-dollar culvert project for Bostwick Road, and also to a forthcoming application to replace a second culvert, its location under Rumsey Hill Road.  Still, the Bostwick Road replacement is state-funded, not federal.

“There are no direct fines imposed on the communities for not complying with [Article 36 of Environmental Conservation Law],” Higgins-Roche conceded, “but there may be other grants at a state and federal level that the Town would be ineligible for due to lack of NFIP participation.”  She did not specify the endangered state grants.

Let’s “strip this law down to its skivvies,” this Councilperson indelicately stated.  Before its final vote, the Town Board adopted two, separate amendments to the Flood Damage Prevention Law.  First, it removed the absolute prohibition on new residential dwellings in “areas of special flood hazard.” Then, the board similarly excised a prohibition on placing new manufactured homes in flood zones.  As amended, the Enfield law stands no more restrictive than New York State’s model ordinance.

The number of properties within Enfield’s flood zone varies based on whom you ask. The NFIP coordinator puts the number at “about 20.”  A Tompkins County Planning Department spreadsheet lists only six.  Town Clerk Mary Cornell said she’d notified about eight people.

“The public is not fully informed about what you guys are doing,” Carpenter complained.  “No one knew anything about this law,” she alleged, after having gone door-to-door.  “You can’t pass a law that they don’t even know about,” Carpenter scolded the Town Board.

Town-wide flood insurance availability and the individual mortgage protections that hinge upon it became central arguments to flood law supporters during board member debate.

“Anybody in this town can buy flood insurance, if we participate in this program, whether they’re in the flood zone or not,” Lemke stressed as she promoted the new law.  If the Town declines participation, flood protection policies won’t be available to those on high ground or low, she said. 

“They haven’t been able to buy flood insurance now, before the designation, because we weren’t an NFIP member,” this Councilperson reminded his colleague.  So nothing much would change for most people.

“So if anybody was close to a flood plain and wanted to buy flood insurance, they would not be able to unless we adopt this,” Lemke answered.

“And I don’t hear anybody saying they want to buy flood insurance,” Lynch rebutted.  “But I’m hearing a lot of people say we don’t want the regulations.”

Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond was home ill, but she zoomed in to participate minimally and to vote. Redmond directed her concerns to the mortgages, and her pointed criticism to this writer-Councilperson.

The Supervisor worried about people in the flood zone who hadn’t known of the hearing, about those who might suffer unplanned hardship and later need a mortgage they couldn’t then secure for lack of insurance; and about those whose relative may die and force a home’s sudden sale.

“And I’m sorry, but people aren’t walking around with like $300,000 of cash on hand,” Redmond said.

“Yeah, I understand why people don’t want to all of a sudden, you know, be in a flood zone, but the reality is they are in a flood zone… and there’s nothing this Town Board is going to do to make it not a flood-zone,” the  laryngitis-stricken Supervisor said with what little voice she could draw forth.

“But where are they tonight?” this Councilperson, Lynch, queried.  “They aren’t in this room.  None of them are here.  The people who were here say we don’t want the regulations.”

“But we have an obligation to all the residents of the Town, and we have an obligation to uphold the state law,” Lemke interjected.

More than an hour after the hearing had ended, and after the Town Board’s own 20-minute discussion had run its course, the clerk called the roll, and Councilperson Cassandra Hinkle, quiet through most of what had transpired, waived off casting the first vote.  Only after Supervisor Redmond had voted her own affirmation did Hinkle do so as well.

“Honestly, I hate this too,” Hinkle said of New York’s strong-arm mandate.  “It is the state coming down on us for it.  So what could we do as an alternative?  Fight it as Enfield?  No.  To what end?”

“Freedom!  Property Rights!” two voices erupted from the gallery.

“People are going to lose their house.  They’re going to lose their mortgage and lose their house,” Redmond reacted from her virtual perch on the big screen.  “That’s no freedom.  That’s unhoused.”

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Posted Previously:

Jill Tripp ousted by ICSD voters

Ithaca Budget passes; reformers struggle

by Robert Lynch; May 20, 2025; expanded coverage May 21, 2025

This year was not last year. And results from Tuesday’s Ithaca City School District (ICSD) school board elections show a return to what might be called the predictable:  Budgets pass by wide margins; and candidates endorsed by the teachers union gain the advantage over those who weren’t.

Updated, official results posted late Wednesday on the ICSD’s website, not significantly different from earlier preliminary numbers, show newcomer Jacob Shiffrin, incumbents Karen Yearwood and Erin Croyle, plus another newcomer, Madeline Cardona, finishing in sequential order for the four school board seats open in this year’s election.

Shiffrin, Yearwood, Croyle, and Cardona were endorsed by the Ithaca Teachers Association, the district’s influential instructional union.

The only incumbent who lost stands notable by her defeat.  Jill Tripp, regarded by many as a budget hawk and the taxpayer’s friend, lost the election, coming in fifth and falling 113 votes behind Cardona.

The proposed $169 Million 2025-26 district budget, meanwhile, breezed to approval, as did a proposition to appropriate money for school buses and building improvements.

The proposed budget won voters’ support, 3,756 votes (77.7%) to 1,078 votes (22.3%) opposed.

The bus and building expenditures secured almost identical support; 3,733 votes (77.4%) in favor; 1,089 votes (22.6%) opposed.

Tuesday’s results may signal that taxpayer frustration, which propelled a massive budget defeat in first round voting last year, may have now subsided.  This year’s results more closely mirror the comfortable ICSD budget approval margins of earlier years.

The top three vote-getters in the May 20 ICSD election—Shiffrin, Yearwood, and Croyle—will each assume new, three-year terms beginning in July.  Fourth-Place finisher Cardona will serve the remaining one-year of a board vacancy, and would need to run again next year to keep her seat.

In the latter days of this year’s Ithaca School Board campaign, three of the newcomers, Shiffrin, Scott Jahnke, and David McMurray, formed a coalition slate and marketed themselves as reformers.   Of the three, only union-endorsed Shiffrin won.

Updated, official tallies placed Jacob Shiffrin in the lead with 3,492 votes; Karen Yearwood securing second place with 2,932 votes, followed by Erin Croyle with 2,709 votes, and Madeline Cardona with 2,351 votes.

Jill Tripp fell out of the running with 2,238 votes, followed by Scott Jahnke with 2,019 votes, and David McMurry with 1,960 votes.

The Ithaca Board of Education unanimously certified the election results the following night, Wednesday, May 21.  The meeting took less than a minute. Jill Tripp seconded the motion that confirmed her defeat.

Newfield, like Ithaca, dodged the budgetary bullet Tuesday.  As in Ithaca, Newfield’s school budget failed in its first presentation to the voters last year.  But the Newfield budget, like Ithaca’s, comfortably won in this more welcoming of election years.

The Newfield budget passed, 342 votes (68%) to 159 (32%).  A separate proposition to buy one wheelchair-accommodating school bus passed 381 votes to 120.  A second proposition to buy an electric school bus proved much closer, passing by a mere 13 votes, 257 to 244.

In a crowded, seven-way contest for the Newfield Board of Education, George Taylor, Christina Ward, and Antwane Lynch prevailed.  Taylor got 297 votes, Ward 251 votes, and Lynch 248 votes.

In the Trumansburg district, the school budget passed by a lopsided 528 to 101 margin.  A Vehicle and Equipment Capital Reserve Fund Proposition secured voter passage, 533 votes to 93.  Suzanne Organ, Jim Mielty and James Kemmerer won election to the school board there.

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Madeline Cardona has become this year’s freshest new face to grace local school politics, given her Tuesday win for a seat on the Ithaca Board of Education.  Cardona drives for Uber, holds only a High School degree, and moved to Pennsylvania from Puerto Rico at the age of 16.  A single mom, Madeline has two teenagers who attend Ithaca High School.

Cardona will become the only Latinx on the Ithaca School Board, either this coming year or at any time in recent history.

“I’m running for the Board to give a chance to families like mine; somebody who cares and works hard as a single mom.” Cardona proudly told a candidates’ forum May 15 at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School.  It was the only occasion all seven candidates met together on the same stage.

And that night, Cardona was the only candidate who declined to say how she’d vote on the proposed school budget.  (All others said they’d support it.)

I’m “not fully educated” on the budget, Cardona candidly informed attendees.  Instead, she said, “I come as a single mom,” and then promised, “If elected, I do plan to get educated and become familiar with the budget.”

Some might have viewed Cardona’s acknowledged fiscal ignorance as a gaffe, as a disqualifier, and assigned it the only misstep during the two-hour debate.  But district voters may not have seen it that way.  In the election, voters awarded the newcomer the opportunity to serve, if only, initially, for a single year.

Madeline Cardona had other opinions to share that evening.

“I don’t believe that law enforcement should be in our schools,” the soon-to-be member-elect said when the issue of immigration officers entering school buildings came up.  “A lot of our children do not feel safe in our schools,” Cardona responded when candidates were later asked whether New York’s newly-imposed ban on student cell phone use might compromise pupil safety.

It’s said campaign cash buys votes.  Perhaps it does some times.  But in the Ithaca School Board contest it didn’t buy enough of them.  Candidates Jacob Shiffrin, Scott Jahnke, and David McMurry joined forces to purchase yard signs and to mail a slick, oversized postcard to voters’ mailboxes.  For many, it was the only contact they had with any candidate.

In the election, Jacob Shiffrin came in first.  But Jahnke and McMurry fell to the back of the pack.  The trio’s wildly-divergent political fortunes may be explained by the fact that Shiffrin won the teachers union’s endorsement, and the other two did not.

Karen Yearwood’s victory ensured the continued presence of two African-Americans—she and Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell—on the Ithaca Board of Education.  Meanwhile, third-place victor Erin Croyle, who’ll commence her third, three-year term this summer, provides the school board a continued voice for disabled students’ rights.

Raising—and educating—a child with Down syndrome “changed my entire life,” Croyle told the May 15 candidates’ forum.  At board meetings, Croyle has advocated for main-streaming learning disabled students.  She’s also fought for higher budgets and heightened educational funding.  Consider Croyle perhaps the ICSD board’s most liberal member.

How does Erin Croyle view the state of Ithaca school finances, amidst recent efforts to reduce the funding she’d prefer get spent?  “The pandemic hit, and we’ve been in triage ever since,” Croyle told candidates’ forum attendees.

It may be the  cruelest of ironies that the relatively stable 2025-26 Ithaca School Budget that Jill Tripp worked hard to engineer may have been what cost her the election. 

Last year, amid skyrocketing residential assessments and what was initially proposed as a 12 per cent hike in the tax levy, Ithaca district voters had a taxpayer tantrum.  Seven out of ten of them rejected the first proposed budget put in front of them.  They later ratified a revised spending plan only after Tripp had led the effort to trim spending back.

But this year the (now-approved) $169 Million budget grew the tax levy by only 3.76 percent—a number tied to this year’s state-calculated “tax cap.  Because of Tripp’s efforts, the broader electorate may have shrugged, have become complacent.  It’s been reported just one person showed up for a mid-May budget hearing.

Meanwhile, last year’s spending cuts, dictated by frugality, have taken their bite out of school programs, cancelling at least one language offering at Ithaca High School and reducing administrative and teaching staff through attrition.

This was a year for Ithaca teachers and some parents to vent their anger in a different way. Unionized instructors are also angling for a pay raise larger than what district administrators have offered so far.

“I’m frustrated as a parent and a taxpayer,” second-to-last-place finisher Scott Jahnke had told the candidates’ forum last week.  Jahnke complained that as many as six schools—including Enfield Elementary and both of Ithaca’s middle schools—have been cited by New York State for poor academic performance.

“We need a change now; we need to see that the community gets what it needs,” Jahnke had said.

But what is that need?  Neither runaway budgets nor schools placed in detention study hall by their Albany taskmaster seem to have propelled the outcome of this year’s Ithaca City School District elections.  Other issues were put in play; other speakers stood on the soap box, what little they did   This was not Scott Jahnke’s year.  Nor was it Jill Tripp’s.

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Enfield Board to Trump: Obey the Constitution

by Robert Lynch; May 19, 2025

In what some may argue strays way beyond its pay grade, the Enfield Town Board this month adopted a strongly-worded Resolution that implores President Donald Trump to follow due process, respect the judiciary, and above all else, obey the Constitution.

Town Board action Wednesday, May 14 came near the end of a full agenda that also saw adoption of a Flood Damage Prevention Law over public objections, and affirmation of earlier, informal consent given a Westchester County business to locate a cannabis farm and processing facility within the Breezy Meadows subdivision. (Separate stories will be posted.)

“Resolved, that, being that these are tumultuous times, it is our charge and responsibility as elected officials to represent our constituents, to uphold the core tenets of democracy and the U.S. Constitution, in order to prevent our nation from slipping into dangerous and authoritarian chaos,” Enfield’s 20-paragraph, 800-word messaging statement asserted.

Adopted by a four-to-one vote, the Town Board’s decidedly anti-Trump admonition will be mailed to as many as eleven federal and state elected or appointed officials, including to President Donald J. Trump, himself.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, New York A.G. Letitia James and New York’s Governor, Kathy Hochul, will also be served.

Paradoxically, given the issue addressed, Enfield’s “Request… to Defend the Constitution and Constitutional Rights of Citizens,” was itself an immigrant crossing the border.  Its language wandered its way across Cayuga Lake from Lansing, where the Town Board there had adopted nearly-identical language, but with little controversy, April 16. 

Lansing Town Supervisor Ruth Groff subsequently forwarded her board’s resolution to other town supervisors in hopes they’d encourage similar adoption.  Supervisor Stephanie Redmond emailed Groff’s request to other Enfield Town Board members in late-April, at which time at least two other board members expressed their eager support.

Whether Groff’s Town Board constructed the resolution itself or imported its content from other sources—perhaps in bits and pieces—remains unclear.

“As elected officials sworn to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States of America, we are increasingly alarmed by actions we are seeing that violate fundamental constitutionally protected rights,” the Lansing and Enfield resolutions begin.

“Currently, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is unilaterally revoking visas and deporting people without judicial review or due process,” the resolutions continue. “We recognize that due process is not an obstacle to justice; it is a constitutionally guaranteed right for a person accused to see what they are accused of and to present contrary evidence,” the resolutions state.

The towns’ position statement cites the Trump Administration’s alleged defiance of Federal Judge’s James Boasberg’s orders to return detained migrants from a prison in El Salvador, as well as the Administration’s alleged retribution against major law firms “that employed his perceived political opponents.”

When the messaging resolution debuted April 16 in Lansing, it gained minimal notice.  Councilperson Joseph Wetmore had introduced the measure before an almost-empty room that night.  Supervisor Groff called for discussion, but got none.  After a few seconds of silence, the Town Board voted. 

Democrat Groff, Wetmore, and a second Lansing Councilperson, Christine Montague, supported the measure. Given the video replay’s less-than-perfect audio, Councilperson Judy Drake, an Independent, was heard uttering a quiet response that could have been taken as a dissent, but was recorded as an abstention.  (A fourth Councilperson, Laurie Hemmings, didn’t attend that night.)  The Lansing Board embraced the matter in just under a minute. The resolution never got a full reading.

In Enfield, nearly one month later, the issue found a different reception.  Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, at home, nursing a bad cold, declined to get involved, apart from casting her affirmative vote.  Councilpersons Jude Lemke, Cassandra Hinkle, and Melissa Millspaugh joined to endorse the Trump-critical statement. 

As in Lansing, the resolution could have breezed toward quiet approval had not the fifth beard member, Robert Lynch (this writer) spoken up.

“I may as a person, as an individual, support every last word in this resolution.  Or I may not.  It doesn’t matter,” Councilperson Lynch began.

“When I walk into this room and I sit down at this table, I am… no longer representing just myself.  I’m representing three-thousand, six-hundred some people of the Town of Enfield,” Lynch stated, in a message he took three minutes to complete.  “And like it or not, this is a blended community.  There are people with different opinions.  And there are some members of this community who will staunchly support the policies that this resolution condemns.  And I must respect their opinion diversity.”

Were the Town Board to embrace the resolution—which it subsequently did—the message to Trump supporters would be “you don’t represent me anymore,” this writer told fellow board members.  “And I can’t do that.  I can’t in good conscience put my vote to something that I know some people in this town are going to so resent and is really going to have minimal impact, if any.”

The only Town Board member to answer the criticism was Councilperson Lemke.

“I don’t have a strong feeling one way or another about sending this.  But I would say that what it’s asking us to request isn’t all that controversial,” Lemke maintained. 

“We’re asking them to follow the Constitution and respect the rule of law, and uphold the core tenets of democracy and the U.S. Constitution,” Lemke said.  “They’re required to do that by their oath, anyway, so I don’t see that is all that controversial.”

At the Enfield Town Board’s earlier, April ninth meeting, Lemke had introduced a measure, which the board adopted over Lynch’s objection, to post on the Town website what amounts to a statement of detainees’ rights.  Lemke said its words came from a leaflet passed out at an Ithaca protest rally she’d attended the weekend before.

“It’s just a list of what happens if you’re stopped by ICE (‘Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’), or if ICE comes to the house, and you’re arrested; what are your legal rights,” Lemke explained words from the handout she’d gotten, a flyer printed in both English and Spanish.

“As elected officials, our ability to create and maintain a safe and stable community is undermined when our residents live in fear of being rounded up by the federal agents and deported at any moment” the Enfield Town Board’s adopted May 14^th resolution states. 

“As elected officials, we implore our federal and state representatives to take any and all appropriate legal actions to ensure that all members of the federal government follow the Constitution and respect the rule of law,” the resolution continues.

When it travels to Washington and Albany, the Enfield Resolution on constitutional liberties may be seen by some that its Lansing counterpart will not. 

Before adopting the final measure, the Enfield board—at Lynch’s urging—broadened the list of recipients to include not only Democratic Party lawmakers and New York officials, but also President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, and Republican Congressional leaders Mike Johnson and Senator John Thune.

The Town of Lansing “was fairly timid,” Lynch asserted.  “They just sent it to friendly ears,” he said of the Lasing resolution.  But as for Enfield, “Those who vote for this Resolution tonight, whoever they are, should be able to stand behind it and basically look the President and his Attorney General in the eye.  And without that, this resolution is meaningless.”

As adopted, the Enfield admonition will go all the way to the top.

Much less politically-charged, though still imported from the same Lansing Town Board April meeting, the Enfield Board also adopted a second resolution May 14, this one urging federal budget negotiators not to end the long-held income tax exemption granted interest earnings from municipal bonds.

“An advisor to President Trump recently floated the idea of taxing municipal bonds,” the Enfield and Lansing resolutions stated, never specifically citing the advisor in question or the probability of the  change’s enactment. 

“As elected officials, we implore our federal and state representatives to take any and all appropriate legal actions to ensure that all municipal bonds continue to enjoy their tax-exempt status,” the towns’ resolution states.  It passed both the Enfield and Lansing Town Boards without opposition.

“This has a quantifiable financial impact on Enfield,” Councilperson Lynch stated at the meeting, differentiating his support for this second messaging resolution from his opposition to the one prior.  “If we remove the tax-exempt status of municipal bonds, those bonds will cost more money for towns like ours, and it will impact our taxpayers negatively,” he stated.

No other Enfield Town Board members offered comment.

The Kiplinger financial website cites Stephen Moore, whom it describes as “an informal advisor” to President Trump, as a key driver behind taxing municipal bond interest.  Kiplinger reports Moore believes that taxing those bonds’ interest “aligns with Republican goals of ‘widening the tax base’ and is ‘politically feasible’ because it primarily affects high-income investors who benefit most from the exemption.”

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