Reporting and analysis by Robert Lynch; February 21, 2025
President Donald Trump wasn’t in Tompkins County legislative chambers last Tuesday night. But his shadow was.
After a nearly hour-long debate over a matter that wasn’t even expected to have been talked about, the Tompkins County Legislature voted 10-3 along strict party lines to adopt the “Institutionalizing Equity Report,” a dense, reticularly-scripted, DEI-centric diversity roadmap heralded to become the “foundational document for embedding equity within all levels of County government” according to the words of the resolution that gave it power.
Charlene Holmes, Tompkins County’s Chief Equity and Diversity Officer (CEDO) since mid-2023, claimed credit for authorship. We’re told the 52-page, data-driven document took her two years to compile. Its text was not made part of the meeting’s published agenda, but instead hitched to it through a hard-to-find data link. The report will eventually be made “publicly accessible” on the Tompkins County website, the adopted resolution promises.
The County Legislature has long proclaimed its embrace of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI). “Inclusion through Diversity” occupies a prominent position of honor as the footer of Tompkins County’s letterhead. Tompkins County was a first among upstate New York counties to recruit a Chief Equity and Diversity Officer. Its newly-hired County Administrator is African-American. So is its Commissioner of Personnel.
But with DEI having become the newly- targeted bad boy of the freshly-minted Trump Administration, the voluminous report that a majority of Tompkins’ legislators gleefully adopted Tuesday could also paint a bright, MAGA-generated bullseye on everything Tompkins County says or does. It may even cost us money.
Still, Tompkins County’s progressive Democrats eagerly raced to their battle stations February 18th to defend what CEDO Holmes had proudly and methodically written. What’s more, some lawmakers came close to tarring any colleague who might critique the report, accusing them of being someone at the inside periphery of racially-unacceptable thought.
Each of the Legislature’s three Republicans; Newfield-Enfield’s Randy Brown, Lansing’s Mike Sigler, and Groton’s Lee Shurtleff, voted against the report’s adoption. All ten Democrats voted their approval. (Ulysses’ Anne Koreman didn’t attend.)
“I’m not comfortable voting for this because I really don’t understand it,” a diffident, bewildered Randy Brown stated as he launched the marathon discussion after having pulled the report’s authorizing resolution from a multi-measure “consent agenda.” Had it languished there, lawmakers would likely have routinely ushered it to adoption without a whisper.
As the 52-minute debate dragged on, partisans threw some of the sharpest rhetorical elbows witnessed of late. Sparring started when Mike Sigler acknowledged he’d opposed creating the CEDO’s job in the first place, back in 2019.
“I took a lot of heat for that,” Sigler acknowledged about opposing creating the job that Holmes now administers. Sigler said his present concern is akin to what it was back then. “What is the metric of success?” Sigler asked. “How successful have we been when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusiveness?”
The Ithaca Town’s Amanda Champion, one of the report’s—and Charlene Holmes’—strongest defenders, insisted the number-driven document is a success metric in itself.
“It’s pretty clear,” said Champion, “that the goal is to collect data and to find out where we’re helping people, where we’re not helping people, where departments are helping people, where departments could do better, look at some of the challenges that departments are having and help them; that’s the goal.”
To Champion, process—process alone—can gauge success. Some may demand more meat on those DEI bones.
The resolution that legislators adopted February 18th lauds the Institutionalizing Equity Report as, “a comprehensive framework to advance and embed equity across County operations,” a framework “utilizing data-driven indicators” to do so. Yes, the document too often reads like a doctoral thesis.
“Our approach to embedding and institutionalizing equity within Tompkins County’s operations is guided by a comprehensive methodology that integrates strategic planning, equity indicators, and the Equity Mindedness Framework (EMF),” page 16 of Holmes’ work product states.
And one might ask, what exactly does an “Equity Mindedness Framework” entail? Holmes defines it:
“EMF provides a comprehensive framework for organizations to institutionalize equity by using evidence to inform targeted interventions, prioritizing the needs of marginalized groups, embedding equity into institutional practices, dismantling harmful systemic structures, and continuously improving their equity efforts. This structured approach helps organizations create lasting and meaningful change towards achieving equity across all aspects of their operations and impact within their communities.”
Hmmm. Good luck to Highway Director Jeff Smith in explaining that word salad to the typical snow plow driver at the department’s next diversity training seminar. Smith shouldn’t have to explain. It’s academic circumlocution; shredded lettuce dressed up and imitate intelligent insight. (Sadly, there is no “Plain language” version.)
As Tuesday’s debate wandered on, emotions heightened, and reality crept in from the edges.
“Diversity and inclusion, I think are fairly agreed-upon concepts,” Ithaca’s Rich John remarked. “It’s the ‘equity’ word that people struggle with,” he observed, “And what does that mean? And it can mean basic fairness. But it also can support that we’re going to try to do something to address past wrongs and rebalance as a result of that… and I don’t know how we can do that, frankly.”
Rich John then drew his argument more to the point,
“We also have to recognize in the last election that there are lots of people in our community all around us that voted for the Administration that is in place right now. They’re here. They’re our neighbors. And part of what drove them to vote as they did, I believe, is a deep skepticism about DEI,” Rich John maintained. “They don’t understand it. They think it’s doing things that shouldn’t be done.”
“So I don’t think there’s truly a consensus in Tompkins County,” John posited. John, himself, doesn’t see the report as “threatening or bad,” but he fears many others do. “And I think that’s on us that we need to bring our community along on this,” he said. “I don’t think we can say there is a consensus. Sadly, there isn’t.”
Rich John called for delaying the Legislature’s vote. Delay didn’t happen.
Liberals, Democrats like Shawna Black, exuded profound unease, maybe sensing that Trump—or at least Trump-ism—had somehow stolen into legislative chambers that night.
“God, I honestly don’t even know where to begin,” Black, the Legislature’s former chair, reacted in distress; disbelief. “I (Whew) feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone right now.” Black seemed to lose her train of thought. “It’s crazy times right now,” she remarked.
“We know what our community wants, it’s loud and clear,” Black continued. There’s no question where we need to go and how we need to vote on this… I feel we’re going back to the Dark Ages even debating this.”
Legislator Travis Brooks, African American, said he’s felt the sting of prejudicial preconceptions himself. His name on a job application suggests one kind of person; his showing up for the interview reveals another. Brooks said interviewers might expect at viewing his name to hear country music. Instead they see dreadlocks and tattoos.
“When you have people that don’t look like you, when you have different backgrounds, it enriches wherever you work, and it creates diversity, it creates thought, it creates a better product for the community that you serve,” Brooks asserted.
Mike Sigler took a second turn at the mic. Sigler sensed a mood in the room he didn’t like.
“I’m a little disappointed, frankly, in some of the things that my colleagues have said, because what they’re doing is they’re making this into ‘if you don’t vote the way that I believe you should vote, that you are on the other side and don’t believe in these things.’” Sigler stated. He said that’s wrong.
The Republican lawmaker insisted the issue is not about Trump. He said he opposed the CEDO position’s creation long before the current Administration took office. And Sigler insisted that most Americans still oppose racism.
“Are there racists in the country? Yes,” Sigler acknowledged. “Have they died off? No, they haven’t… Is it pre-Civil Rights era? No. That is an unbelievable statement, frankly, to say that we’ve made no progress in the last 70 years. That takes me aback.”
As to the DEI report, Sigler said, “Í think we can fight racism, yes, without this. I’m sorry. I thought that five years ago. I think that now.”
What’s more, Sigler continued, DEI should not confine itself to people of color. What about Asians, a minority whose percentage within Tompkins County, statistics reveal, outnumber that of blacks.
“Are we going out and actively recruiting the Asian community to the positions within the county?” Sigler questioned. “These are the kind of metrics I’m talking about.”
To the best of this writer’s knowledge, no Asian heads a top-level Tompkins County department directly answerable to the County Legislature.
“So Mike, you want data about who we’re actively recruiting,” Champion responded , peeved he would ask. “That’s what this report does,” Holmes’ most ardent defender emphasized.
Amanda Champion grew louder, increasingly animated. She looked directly Mike Sigler’s way.
About the report: “It’s all about who we are hiring; who are we not hiring. Are they men? Are they women? How do they identify? That’s what the whole thing is; it’s data!” Champion exclaimed. “And if you’re scared of the data because it doesn’t look the way you want it to look, then you’re the one with the problem.”
“And I do not think that it’s fair for you to say that it’s not fair to you,” Champion retorted, tossing out a feminist barb along the path that everyone’s female ancestors, including Sigler’s, had been “put in their place for eons.”
One other issue, less contentious, crept into the discussion that night. Groton’s Shurtleff noted that CEDO Holmes had buried on page 48 of her report her aspiration to expand her own position to become an entire County government office this year, presumably with added staff and expenses. Shurtleff couldn’t support such an expansion.
Charlene Holmes conceded she’d reached a trifle.
“You have to put it out there,” Holmes said of her CEDO Office initiative. “I put it out there; I took a chance,,, I just took what you guys already had and I put it in a pretty bow, and I said look at what we could do if we were to take what we’ve already done and enhance the work.”
Government always grows that way. Charlene Holmes’ report survived, but her position’s expansion will probably not, at least not this year. Money is tight.
****
“Looking forward, the ongoing evaluation of our efforts through tools like the climate survey, bias reporting structure, and regular progress updates will ensure that the County’s commitment to equity remains dynamic and responsive,” Tompkins County’s newly-adopted Institutionalizing Equity Report states in its concluding paragraph. “These efforts, grounded in transparency, accountability, and continuous learning, will drive Tompkins County toward an inclusive future where all individuals are empowered to thrive.”
Enjoy the word salad. Some in government choose to write that way. For Charlene Holmes sake, let’s hope President Trump isn’t sampling the lettuce.
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Also from the Legislature:
“There’s a Time for These Things”
Mike Lane, longest-tenured T.C. Legislator, to retire
by Robert Lynch; February 18, 2025
If the Tompkins County Legislature can be said to have one statesman—more than just a mere politician—that man of elevated stature is Mike Lane. And at the end of this year, Mike Lane will be gone.
Mike Lane’s served in the Legislature longer than has anyone else now there.
Saving his announcement for the ornate venue of legislative chambers, where he sits at the end-most seat of the oval, nearest the chairperson’s podium, Mike Lane invoked a Biblical passage from Ecclesiastes Tuesday night as the centrist Democrat revealed his plans not to seek reelection this fall representing Dryden in the seat he’s held off-and-on since 1993.
“It’s the Bible that teaches us that for everything there is a season; a season to reap and a season to sow. And that’s true of public service and elective office,” Lane began his somber, measured, three-minute announcement.
“But everything has a season,” Lane continued, “and at this point I think the season is for me to say tonight that I don’t intend to seek reelection to the Legislature this fall.”
“There’s a time for these things,” a reflective Mike Lane reckoned.
After he delivered his message to a hushed legislative chamber, lawmakers, administrators, and guests provided Mike Lane a standing ovation.
“All the institutional memory is leaving,” texted one seasoned hand of Tompkins County government upon being informed of Lane’s agonizing verdict. “Sorry, but not surprised,” was that retiree’s reaction.
As incumbent Tompkins County legislators have, one-by-one—sometimes in groups—announced their reelection or retirement plans in recent weeks, a process dating back to before Christmas, Mike Lane remained mum. He’s served in the Legislature for seven, four-year terms. It marks continuous service for more than 30 years, excepting one election cycle when a Republican ousted Lane from office.
Mike Lane is now in his mid-70’s. We’ve been told he’s winding down his law practice. Some have suspected this might be the moment he’d choose to step aside. They were right.
“I’ve had the distinct honor and privilege to serve the people of the Village of Freeville, the Village of Dryden, and the area surrounding them in the Town of Dryden,” Lane took note in Tuesday’s remarks. “I’ve done my very best for them,” he asserted.
“I’ve never shied from taking stands that I thought were appropriate and in their best interest,” the retiring incumbent continued. “I listened to them. I learned from them. Sometimes I went against what I personally thought because I felt that being a representative meant that I should try to represent the views of my constituents, and of Tompkins County as a whole,” Lane observed.
And as he spoke—at times choking back emotion—Lane attempted a lighthearted departure. He quipped that “if all things were equal,” he’d serve, voters willing, “until they carried me out feet first.” A keen observer could understand how that might, indeed, have been the case. Mike Lane always made clear he loved his job, his legislative service.
Mike Lane is the second-to-last of the 14 current Tompkins County legislators to reveal his or her reelection intentions. Only first-term Republican Lee Shurtleff of Groton has not announced his plans. And Shurtleff declined to tip his hand Tuesday during his own speaking privileges on the Legislature’s floor.
Only this week did news widely circulate that another long-time legislative Democrat, Rich John of Ithaca, would, like Lane, decline to compete this election cycle. In a broadcast interview January 31st, which got little coverage beyond its Friday morning airing, John told WHCU, “I really think it’s time for me to go on to another opportunity, and frankly for somebody else to come in with new ideas and energy and give it a shot.”
Because of redistricting, which will only begin to alter legislative lines this fall, John, had he run, would have found himself in a primary contest against first-term progressive Democrat Veronica Pillar. With Pillar planning to run—and now, Rich John not running—prospects of a primary in that Ithaca City district diminish.
By recent experience, incumbent legislators in relatively “safe” party-favored districts have run, and then won, unopposed.
Mike Lane’s district, eastern Dryden, however, has proven different; much more evenly drawn between the two major parties. In his last election, in 2021, Lane beat Republican Thomas Corey by a mere eight votes. The final tally was a cliff-hanger.
And with veteran Lane’s planned departure, one can envision another competitive match-up this year. Lack of a popular incumbent could even bring a GOP pickup.
Currently, Republicans hold only three of Tompkins County’s 14 legislative seats. A redistricting plan adopted by the County Legislature in 2022 will raise next year’s number of legislators to 16.
Next year’s crop of fresh faces will be among the largest in recent memory. Not only will two new seats crowd the oval. Lane’s announcement means that at least seven incumbents will be stepping off. Nine new legislators would make nearly three-fifths of Tompkins County’s lawmakers’ newcomers. There’ll be a steep learning curve.
One of the imminent retirees, Rich John, recalled at Tuesday’s meeting how when he first planned to seek county office, he drove out to Dryden and spoke with Mike Lane.
“He was really generous with his time to just explain the Legislature to me and give me some idea of what I was getting into,” John remembered. “And that was not an anomaly,” John added. Lane’s shared advice many times since, John said. “And in terms of an institutional source of knowledge; the history that he carries around with him, that’s really going to be sorely missed,” John forewarned colleagues.
If Mike Lane has a passion, it may best be stated in terms of his defense of democracy, a passion often reaching far beyond Tompkins County’s borders.
Of any legislator, Lane has been the strongest defender of Ukraine’s fight to remain a free nation. Lane’s spoken of it often on the legislative floor. And the long-time display of that embattled nation’s flag in legislative chambers was Lane’s doing more than anyone else’s.
Democracy lights a fire in Mike Lane’s heart. And as he disclosed his political plans Tuesday night, it did so once again.
“For the next ten-and-a-half months… I will continue to do my utmost to represent (constituents) to the best of my ability and to keep my oath of office, which is to preserve, defend and protect the Constitution of the United States,” Lane promised.
At that point, as his statement drew to its close, the “big-D” Democrat in Mike Lane’s political conscience showed itself.
“Yes, I’m a lower-level elected official,” Lane acknowledged. “But representing our people under our Constitution is so terribly important to me.”
“And in these dark days”—his closest reference to the Trump Administration—“when the Constitution sometimes seems extremely in jeopardy, each of us has to step forward and make that commitment.”
Mike Lane, of course, will be stepping back. Others, no doubt, will step forward in the days ahead to inherit his legislative seat—maybe to push it to the Left or the Right.. Party petitioning begins at month’s end.
[In its business Tuesday, the Tompkins County Legislature unanimously endorsed an Enfield-encouraged measure toward expanding the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency through state legislation. The Legislature also supported a long-shot state initiative to force manufacturers to pay to recycle the plastic they produce. More on these stories will be posted here later. / RL]
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Why I Still Pledge
This Councilperson, Robert Lynch, speaking after requesting and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the Enfield Town Board’s monthly meeting, February 12, 2025:
Board:
“I’ve just joined this Enfield Town Board in the Pledge of Allegiance. I’ve done so for most every monthly meeting I’ve attended since I first joined this Board five years ago. I recognize that a majority of my colleagues don’t accompany me; they remain seated. One member generally stands, but declines to recite the words. That is your prerogative. The Constitution guarantees you that right. I defend your freedom to exercise your choice, just as you should always respect my decision to exercise my own within the rules of this Board.
“Much has changed in America since we last met. Some of us in this politically blended community of Enfield may welcome the change. Others may question if the United States of today remains the same country they’ve always known, respected and loved.
“And because of that concern, some of you, our residents, may now refuse to stand, hand-over-heart, and pledge to our flag. I regret that you’ve made that choice.
“The American flag I pledge to represents freedom, patriotism and love: Love for our Constitution, our Rule of Law, our resilient institutions, and our nearly 250-year heritage as a—yes, sometimes flawed, but always evolving and self-correcting—democracy. We express our love for the dedicated public servants in uniform and in civilian service. And yes, we express our love for the citizens—or non-citizens—whom we sometimes leave behind, but later reach down and pull up to join in our unique American experiment.
“Nowhere in the words I recite is there a demand of allegiance to one man—or to one woman—or to one office. We pledge allegiance to a principle, to a nation, and to a concept of liberty and justice for all that our Constitution commands we embrace.
“And if they ever rewrite the Pledge of Allegiance to demand obedience to a particular leader, I will be among the first to stop standing and requesting we recite those words.
“One thing more: I assure you that the winds of change that have buffeted our nation have not dislodged Enfield from its foundation. Enfield’s strength, its resilience, and the generosity, compassion and determination of its people remain as rock-solid as ever. I’m glad I live here and serve here. Thank you.”
[Our meeting continued.]
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Enfield Outraces a Filing-Day Flood
Town Board hustles toward first-ever Flood Law as deadline looms
by Councilperson Robert Lynch; February 10, 2025
The common phrase is “Hurry up and wait.” But in Enfield’s case, as it addresses a new state agency mandate, it’s best to flip that adage around: “First wait, but then please hurry up.”
For the first time in its history, outsiders have found that the Town of Enfield is a place where floods may happen.
Preliminary mapping, published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) just over a year ago, has identified small slivers of livable land along Enfield Creek—and only along Enfield Creek—as lying in a newly-designated flood plain. They’re locations where floods might occur maybe only once in 100 years. Quite simply, FEMA had never bothered to look at Enfield before now.
A week before Christmas, FEMA finally made its flood maps final.
Whenever a flood plain is found, FEMA will refuse to let a town like Enfield join the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) unless it first writes regulations to limit property-owner risks in identified flood plains. And unless and until Enfield joins the NFIP, resident homeowners cannot buy federally-backed flood insurance. And for those living in the flood zone, unless they buy flood insurance, bankers will not lend money or keep existing federally-backed mortgages valid, FEMA staff advised the Enfield Town Board last year.
Moreover, New York State rules take it one nanny-state step further. Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) regulations require Enfield to become an NFIP participant—and impose the land use controls—whether or not the town wants homeowner access to the insurance program.
FEMA’s Thomas Song and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation’s Brienna Wirley made their case to the Enfield Town Board at its meeting in February 2024. They instructed Enfield to write its first-ever Flood Damage Prevention Law by a then-unspecified future deadline. Ours would be a local ordinance defining what can and cannot be built in Enfield’s tiny bit of a flood plain. Yes, to the few who may own land there, it looks a lot like zoning.
“It probably behooves us to get working on at least through the Planning Board process and through the Town, whatever we have to do to become an NFIP member, sooner rather than after the thing is adopted because no doubt it will be adopted,” this writer, Councilperson Robert Lynch, told Thomas Song and the DEC’s Wirley as they Zoomed into last February’s meeting.
“Is there a reason that we have to wait for the adoption to move forward?” Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond asked.
“So you don’t have to if you want to work through that process, but you would have to then go through a revision to your ordinance at the time that the maps are finalized,” Wirley cautioned the Town Board that night. “So if you were to adopt an ordinance now, you would be adopting it based on preliminary maps which would then have to be revised at the time that the maps are finalized….”
So Enfield waited. That was then. This is now.
On January 13th of this year, Brad Wenskoski, Environmental Program Specialist with the DEC, advised Enfield that the maps are now final, that the clock is now ticking, and that Enfield must submit a draft “floodplain management ordinance” for its agency’s review by March 20th; in other words, little more than two months later. Supervisor Redmond forwarded Wenskoski’s instructions to the Town Board on February 5th. The matter was placed on the Town Board’s agenda for its monthly meeting, February 12.
Given the suddenly-sprung mid-March deadline, the Town Board has only its February and March meetings to cobble something together. Statutes constructed in haste too often mature into bad law.
“You don’t know how angry FEMA’s suddenly-imposed deadlines have made me,” this Councilperson replied to the Supervisor and to fellow Councilpersons the day the DEC official’s instructions were forwarded. “And I am not prepared to push some new regulation through our town’s government just to satisfy them.”
“We have procedures in Enfield,” this Councilperson, Lynch, continued. “Any model local law should first face review by our Planning Board, and then by the Town Board. If that remains proper procedure, then the Planning Board should review these documents as soon as tonight. If not, we should take our time, miss the FEMA/DEC-set deadline, and do this right.”
This writer copied Planning Board members with his reply. And a wise move that was. The Town Planning Board was set to meet that night. And after about three-quarters of an hour of fast-paced review, the Planning Board, by consensus, endorsed a 20-page draft law that the DEC had presented to us. Planners added a few additional provisions of their own, and forwarded their work product to the Town Board. First step accomplished.
In satisfying state and federal deadlines, Enfield holds a disadvantage. Every other town in Tompkins County has before stood where we stand for the first time. They’ve had flood zones identified previously and been under federal or state mandates to write flood laws. Their flood rules will need tweaking, to be sure. But unlike Enfield, places like Ithaca won’t need to start from scratch. Enfield does.
The only reason Enfield finds itself not in total befuddlement is because the DEC forwarded it a multi-page local law template that the town has used as a starting point. So far, the Planning Board, by necessity, has clung quite tightly to the DEC model law. And of five recommended add-on’s to the draft document that DEC provided—provisions that would toughen flood plain protections beyond the bare minimum—the Planning Board endorsed four of them. The only option the Planning Board did not add involved levees or “high hazard dams,” of which Enfield, quite frankly, has none.
While the recommended restrictions may trample upon liberty to some, Enfield enjoys the luxury of geographic restriction. Unlike the City of Ithaca, in which wide swaths of the municipality were newly-placed at flood risk, the Enfield Creek lowlands that FEMA maps now designate—and in which the new rules would regulate development—remain quite tiny.
Town officials last year placed only about 20-25 residences in the preliminary (now final) Enfield flood plain. Many of them are modular homes quartered at the Sandy Creek mobile home park. They stand at a point where the nearby creek babbles with little more ferocity than would a farmer’s ditch.
The Enfield Planning Board lacked time to review the DEC’s draft flood law at its leisure. But Wednesday, February 5th planners exercised their best-attempted due diligence to scrutinize its provisions and pass along something meaningful to the Town Board. Reflective of their haste, they never bothered to take a formal vote.
“I think we need the law,” Board Chairman Dan Walker told planners. “It will protect the town residents,” Walker concluded. “I’m comfortable with it.”
“What do we have to do, and what do we want to do?” Planning Board member Mike Carpenter asked. What Carpenter learned is that what the DEC had drafted constitutes the bare minimum regulation. On at least one key point, planners reached beyond the minimum.
The state agency flood rules require the first floor of any new residence in a flood plain be raised to the height that waters might rise in a so-called “100-year flood” plus two feet more.
“Pilings, columns (posts and piers), or shear walls parallel to the flow of the water” could be employed to hold the new flood-prone residence up, the DEC draft says. The Planning Board did not dwell on it, but Walker said that building a house on stilts didn’t sound like a very good idea; presumably not safe. The Town’s current draft would ban homebuilding in flood plains altogether.
Similarly, with manufactured homes, state rules allow them to be placed within a flood plain so long as they’re elevated and anchored. The Enfield draft with prohibit new mobile home placements, altogether, but allow improvements that increase that home’s value more than 50 per cent, providing the owner follows the state rules.
“For some who don’t know what they’re doing,” this is a good thing, Planning Board member Rich Teeter remarked of the regulations.
Some communities join to enforce flood regulations intermunicipally. Enfield will likely assign policing to Code Enforcement Officer Alan Teeter. To anyone’s best knowledge, Tompkins County lacks any kind of Code Enforcement Office that could coordinate the work.
“I think we should keep in local anyway,” Carpenter told colleagues.
“The only cost the town would have would be administration and enforcement,” Chairman Walker observed.
“Does he get paid extra for it?” Carpenter asked, pointing Alan Teeter’s way. The code officer shook his head in doubt. Teeter’s pay is set by the Town Board.
Walker claimed some Enfield residents have already begun asking about flood insurance. But he cautioned, “It’s not cheap.”
A DEC representative on a conference call the next day insisted that a flood insurer cannot deny coverage to a homeowner once the rules are in place, even if the insured location stands likely to flood. Yet one Planning Board member remarked he’d already been turned down for flood insurance to cover a cottage he owns along Seneca Lake.
In Enfield, creeks tumble through narrow gullies and ravines. And that presents risks the FEMA flood mappers never bothered to consider when they surveyed the town with a broad brush in 2017. That piqued Mike Carpenter’s curiosity.
“Is there liability for the Town if we do it?” Carpenter asked concerning the regulations. ”What if someone gets flooded out in a place that the maps didn’t identify? If you don’t say anything, it’s a lot easier to not get in trouble than if you say something.”
Carpenter may gain comfort to know that a “Disclaimer of Liability” in the draft law offered by DEC officials qualifies that the “local law shall not create liability” on the part of Enfield “for any flood damages that result from reliance” on it, and that the law “does not imply that land outside the area of special flood hazards or uses permitted within such areas will be free from flooding or flood damages.”
Of course, trial lawyers are paid handsomely to circumvent disclaimers like that. Then, again, nothing in the law prevents the fearful homeowner from buying insurance regardless of his exclusion.
“This law is a living document,” the draft Enfield document states at its close, a home-grown addition this Councilperson proposed to acknowledge the limited reach of the protections accorded by what’ll be placed on the Town Board’s table this week.
“And it remains the intent of the Town of Enfield through its Town Board to amend this local law for Flood Damage Prevention from time to time as the community’s knowledge of potential flood risk expands and as the community identifies additional areas of the Town that either by experience or expectation deserves protection by the cloak of these regulations,” that closing addendum states.
****
Enfield has floods, and not always in the places that FEMA and DEC think it does. But bureaucrats compartmentalize, often arbitrarily. Rules are rules, and deadlines are deadlines.
State conservation officials demand a draft law by March 20. Enfield must provide it. A Public Hearing will likely come later, sometime in the spring. DEC wants the law adopted by May 19th. Its drop-dead implementation date comes one month later.
I know, why they couldn’t have told us this a year ago? As it’s said, statutes constructed in haste….
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Posted Previously:
A Fire House, Not a Party House
Gunning, EVFC split on room rental prospects
by Robert Lynch; February 7, 2025
A scab got scraped open this week in Enfield. It had covered a wound that’s hung around for maybe the past 37 years, but has never, ever quite healed. Maybe it never will.
To some, it’s a matter of opportunity lost.
Town taxpayers, albeit indirectly, built the current Enfield Volunteer Fire Company (EVFC) fire station in 1988. To the left of its modern, multi-bay apparatus room stands a spacious meeting hall. It may be larger than necessary. About the only time any outsider sees it filled is at the annual Christmastime banquet. Fair enough. It’s already built. And better it be a bit too large than not large enough.
But the meeting room sees little use outside of EVFC meeting and training events. The Fire Company senses no need—and shows no interest—in renting out the meeting facilities to outsiders. And for the newest member of the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners, that’s a problem. Donald Gunning is the man who last Tuesday night scratched the scab open.
“We can’t use the space… We can’t rent it out,” Gunning, elected Commissioner last December on a taxpayer-partial platform, said of the fire station’s meeting facilities.
Though he’s a man of few words, Gunning cast the lone dissent February 4th as the Board of Fire Commissioners approved a continuing, one-year lease of the EVFC-owned fire station for use by the Enfield Fire District, the legal entity that the commissioners now oversee. It marked Gunning’s first dissenting vote since he took office two meetings earlier.
Under a Town Board restructuring of the fire service in 2023, the Fire District and its commissioners now serve as the bridge between the building-owning Fire Company and the Enfield taxpayer.
Two nights later, Thursday, February 6th, Fire Company membership approved the lease unanimously.
“While this may not be perfect, we need someplace where to operate out of and where to park our trucks,” Board of Fire Commissioners Chair Greg Stevenson said regarding the lease prior to the Board’s Tuesday night approval.
Commissioners’ approval of the lease was expected to have been routine. A nearly-identical lease was authorized one year ago without controversy. The Fire District paid the Fire Company $72,000 for rental of the station during 2024. This year it’s paying $75,000, an approximate four per cent increase.
The $75,000 estimate had been placed into the district’s budget last fall. Meeting after meeting for the past several months, Commissioners had planned to act on the lease only to be told that attorneys for the two parties had not yet met to nitpick the agreement’s fine points. Nobody had expected problems.
“It is what it is,” Commissioner Barry “Buddy” Rollins, who doubles as Enfield’s Highway Superintendent, said of the new lease the night of the commissioners’ vote. “But $23,000 is a lot for what the mortgage is.”
Rollins was speaking of the difference between what the Fire District will pay this year to rent the building and the annual mortgage payment its owner, the EVFC, must pay the bank. Stevenson reports the mortgage charge this year is just under $52,000.
Rollins, like Gunning, has been a critic of the Fire Company and how the EVFC spends its money.
Famously, Rollins had faulted the EVFC for taking the $76,000 proceeds from sale of an offloaded fire engine in 2023 and putting it into a “firemen’s fund” to cover everyday expenses rather than crediting the money to the cost of a new, much more expensive pumper that the company—and later the Fire District— bought to replace it.
“We have to build up some sort of reserve account,” EVFC President Dennis Hubbell told commissioners, Hubbell directing his comments mostly at Rollins and Gunning. And even though the District now owns most of the trucks, hoses and related apparatus that fight Enfield’s fires, incidental costs crop up, he said. For example, Hubbell fears the building’s boiler may fail.
The company president noted that just that night he’d reported to Commissioners his need to spend more than $6,000 on a new, replacement Internet server to make the fire station’s Wi-Fi work. Hubbell requested that the Fire District shoulder a portion of that cost. It hasn’t decided whether to do so yet.
“We had to borrow money from the firemen’s account to make it through this year,” Hubbell advised Commissioners.
But although Rollins, perhaps grudgingly, joined the majority in authorizing the new building lease, Gunning held out, remaining adamant about the loss of revenue that outside rentals might bring in.
“The fire company chose not to be in the hall rental business,” Stevenson told Gunning and others at the February 4th meeting. What’s more, Stevenson said, renting out the meeting room now would place firefighters in direct competition with the Enfield Community Council, which rents out its “Great Room,” the one-time sanctuary in the former church it bought, to host celebrations like wedding receptions and craft fairs.
And both Hubbell and Stevenson made it clear that building rentals don’t come without cost. The fire station needs to be managed were outside parties to use the building, they said. Volunteers would need to be present. Fire records warrant protection.
Hubbell, a local firefighter since the 1970’s, has a long memory of when the former fire station—now the Enfield Courthouse, Town Board meeting room, and Food Pantry—used to be the EVFC’s headquarters and was then made available to others.
Stuff was “always damaged,” Hubbell said. There was extra use of heat; bathrooms. “Nobody in the Fire Company wants to be a renter,” the president insisted.
Moreover, Hubbell said, there were competitive turf wars. “I used to catch crap from the Grange,” Hubbell remembered. “Now we’ve got two hammering us,” Hubbell said, likely referring to both the Enfield Valley Grange and the Community Council, each renters of space.
“We’re here to fight fires and train and not in the rental business,” Hubbell reiterated.
Why Enfield never demanded its fire service rent out its big, new meeting room for cash—or for that matter, move Town Board meetings over there—brings from those then present a variety of answers. One explanation holds that the Town Board was too frugal to authorize a deeper excavation for parts of the new building to prevent the spread of fire truck chemicals into meeting space. It became a codes compliance issue.
Some say the split centered on insurance coverage. And the simplest argument of all equates to strength of will. The fire company simply doesn’t want to let others into its building.
Town Board minutes at the time (1987-1988) provide little insight as to how the Town and its fire company chose to walk their separate paths.
But the issue of fire hall access nearly came to a head just last month. That’s when it briefly appeared that the Community Council and the Tompkins County Board of Elections would part ways and not renew their long-standing contract for use of the Enfield Community Center as the community’s voting location. The issue was settled and the contract renewed. But before it was, some considered the fire station as an alternate polling spot. Told later, fire officials were surprised that it was.
“We had a hall designed as a community center, and the Town Board shot it down with blazing guns,” Dennis Hubbell recalled as to the late-80’s buried-in-time standoff as he spoke just before Commissioners ratified the current agreement, 4-1.
After the meeting, Chair Stevenson said he’ll strive for a more “comprehensive” building lease the next time around. The chairman held out the possibility of a multi-year agreement and one written with greater precision.
And although attorneys have recommended against it, nothing stops the Enfield Fire District from going out on its own and building its own station, perhaps next to the Town’s current Highway Garage down the road. But the $1 Million-plus investment could prove prohibitive, especially with commissioners like Don Gunning seeking to pinch pennies.
But were such a bold move to occur, it would leave the EVFC with a four-decade old building that lacks a clear purpose. And that would include, of course, its meeting room.
###
Posted Previously:
Squeezing the Big Red Bear… and More
ICSD Board scours for funds in newly-found places
by Robert Lynch; February 2, 2025
It could prove as futile as searching for lost change under the couch. Then, again, it could still prove worthwhile if you’re looking for it in the living room mansion of Ithaca’s rich Uncle Ezra. That quest for extra cash from Ithaca’s most opulent employer was what drove the Ithaca Board of Education as it invested nearly an hour of its time last Tuesday night pursuing both new revenue sources and potential cost savings.
“This isn’t something we can control,” Board member Jill Tripp cautioned colleagues at the outset of members’ lengthy discussion over whether the Ithaca City School District could entice, persuade—but probably never compel—Cornell University to contribute more than its current $650,000 annually toward underwriting the ICSD’s yearly budget, now approaching $170 Million.
“We can’t control whether it happens, and it would require negotiations and possibly a campaign to engage Cornell in the negotiations,” Tripp, one of the ICSD’s most taxpayer-conscious board members, conceded.
Jill Tripp chairs the “Revenue Generation Advisory Council,” created last year as the Ithaca School Board struggled with financial challenges complicated by overwhelming voter rejection of its first-submitted district budget. The request for an “increased donation from Cornell University” was but one of four revenue-enhancing options Tripp presented the Board of Education January 28th for its review.
The council’s other three options included: 1) the sale or lease of district property; 2) enactment of an excise tax on utilities; and 3) reducing costs by “closing school buildings” or sharing services and expenses through “consolidation” with neighboring school districts.
At the discussion’s outset, Tripp had sought a straw poll to gauge members’ relative support. She never really got one, at least nothing equating to a rise of hands. What came forth, instead, was random praise or criticism as each option was discussed one by one.
Evident to any observer, the reconsideration of a utility tax—last contemplated around 2019 and 2020, but then rejected as a revenue generator—drew the least support. Sale or lease of surplus land or buildings brought measured acceptance. But leaning more heavily on Cornell, the revenue source holding the largest financial windfall for local schools, drew the evening’s predominant focus.
Employ a time management technique as a benchmark for interest. Members debated seeking a heightened university contribution for a full half-hour. Sale or lease of buildings warranted just eight minutes’ discussion; the utility tax, ten; closings and consolidation, only five.
“This is actually my favorite option,” Tripp said of the Ithaca district shedding itself of unused buildings and the under-utilized land that surrounds some of the structures still needed. Board president Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell, in particular, mentioned as a candidate the mothballed Danby Elementary School, which hasn’t taught a kid since maybe the late-1970’s, . Eversley Bradwell also referenced the “17-20 acres” adjacent to Enfield Elementary School.
“I like the idea of a slimmer operation where it’s possible and where it increases efficiency, so that’s my take,” Tripp said in favor of intelligent offloads.
Yet some members grew hesitant. No one called for a vote. And on the prospect of property liquidation, consensus directed members toward first seeking a study into where the school system will grow, where it will shrink, and how the district’s approximately 20 structures would fit into that vision.
Í don’t feel comfortable doing a straw poll at this point because there’s still some missing links here with all of these,” Board member Karen Yearwood cautioned.
The council’s second option, a utility tax on communication services and maybe other utilities, served as a destined-to-reject alternative raised seemingly only for the purpose of knocking it down. Those with long memories recalled public resistance when the idea was last broached near the turn of the decade.
A utility tax “would be very unpopular with our community,” Tripp admitted. “Nobody likes to hear about new taxes,” she said.
“This came up in my six-year tenure, and it’s really contentious,” Erin Croyle remembered. “I don’t think it would be very popular, and it’s a regressive tax,” Croyle stated.
A utility tax supposedly spreads the school funding burden beyond the property owner. Some taxpayers may like that idea. And it could raise a half-Million to $2 Million a year. Tripp claimed that perhaps 40 school districts in the state impose such a tax. The tax might raise monthly bills by 2.5 to 7.5 per cent.
But critics like Croyle maintain a utility tax places disproportionate burden on the less-affluent. And renters still pay hidden school taxes through the rent checks they write, she asserted. A cell phone tax, to Croyle, becomes a “double tax.”
“I don’t hear anyone screaming out for additional exploration,” Jill Tripp said of the utility tax option. “It’s unpopular for a reason, and I don’t see any point for us to pursue it at this point.”
Board President Eversley Bradwell qualified that he favored “exploring” the utility tax option, but only to “gather more information.” The evening’s discussion moved on.
Cornell University’s current annual gift to the Ithaca City School District, $650,000, as anyone could plausibly postulate that night, compensates the ICSD for educating the children of graduate students who reside in tax-exempt university housing. That rationale may or not be true. But Tripp’s Advisory Council would like to raise support much higher, perhaps to $10 Million a year. Cornell’s critics assert it’s a level more in line with what other Ivy League universities pay.
But asking is not receiving. And much of the time board members consumed Tuesday involved plotting strategy. Should the ICSD seek only a continued “voluntary contribution” or press for a legally-enforceable contract? And to achieve either, how best could the district proceed?
“Not all money is good money,” School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown reminded the board, recalling his father’s advice.
“When I see a number like $10 Million, and if it’s going to be a ‘voluntary contribution,’ we need to know that that could go away one day pretty quickly, and then what does that leave our folks?” Brown asked.
Dr. Brown recommended a negotiated agreement, one that reduces uncertainty and establishes binding expectations.
“When folks give you this kind of money, they’re going to ask for something in return,” the Superintendent cautioned. “So what is it that we’re prepared to give up?” he questioned.
Of any member of the Ithaca Board of Education, Garrick Blalock—himself a Cornell professor—assigned to the university that night the most uncompromising transactional greed. To Blalock, Cornell acts only out of hard-hearted self-interest, never kind-spirited altruism.
“I don’t think there’s a sentiment at Cornell that a voluntary contribution is something it should or will do above what they see as their direct receipt of services,” Blalock predicted.
“They don’t pay the City of Ithaca to be nice, because they want the City to prosper per se” Blalock stated bluntly. Rather, it’s “because every time someone pulls a fire alarm in one of the Cornell dormitories, a city truck rolls out. There’s a cost associated with that, and the voluntary payment is meant to be in response to service provided,” Blalock reasoned.
Well, sort of. Reporting memory bends that argument even further in a transactional direction. Under a 2023-renegotiated, inflation-adjusted, multi-year agreement, Cornell currently pays the City of Ithaca $4 Million a year. And for two decades before that, the annual payment was $1.6 Million. Why Cornell paid Ithaca anything at all, memory has it, was that Ithaca held Cornell over a barrel. The city reportedly threatened not to sign off on campus building permits unless it was handsomely compensated. The ploy worked.
But the Ithaca City School District cannot refuse to educate grad students’ kids. So any comparable leverage for the ICSD is lost. Or is it?
Cornell needs to attract and retain top academic talent, Blalock brought to everyone’s attention. No alternative private school exits. So pure self-interest, he said, should motivate the university to prop up Ithaca’s public schools as a hiring incentive.
“So the idea of some zero-sum money flowing from the top of the hill to the bottom of the hill, I just don’t think is maybe the best approach to this,” Blalock told board colleagues. “I’d move away from words like ‘donation,’ and look towards like ‘shared success,’ and try to engage Cornell in a collaborative discussion that would raise both boats.”
Erin Croyle countered that Cornell should not just consider its highly-paid professors, but also its lesser-rewarded staff; “the people at the bottom of the hill historically getting the scraps from the castle,” she analogized.
“I think it would be a really beautiful thing if Cornell could also consider all the other employees that work here, whose children go to school here, who are struggling to get by and buy them soccer cleats,” Croyle said. Increased university contribution, she concluded, would help “take a load off of the community” for people like them.
But Blalock put himself in the Board of Trustees’ position: “Our job is not to do X, Y, and Z,” he said. “Our job is to further the objectives of the university.” That’s why, to Blalock, a self-interest incentive would sell best to decision-makers on East Hill.
“That (it) will have more traction,” Croyle recognized, “It doesn’t mean that it’s right.”
Now, how the proceed: Board members that night initially tasked Superintendent Brown to contact university administrators. One or more board members may eventually join him. By the Superintendent’s preference, the effort will likely seek a commitment that’s binding. Blalock even suggested enlisting persuasive muscle through an appeal to the Faculty Senate.
“We’ve got a plan,” Jill Tripp concluded. “We’ll come back with the specifics and Dr. Brown will continue to share his thoughts about who he wants with him and how we might go about this.”
****
“Gosh, it’s getting late,” Tripp said as the clock passed Nine and her four-point presentation finally wound down. And because of that presumed collective fatigue, board members spent little effort analyzing the most sweeping—yet challenging—alternative of all: consolidation and redistricting.
Disruptive it would be. Tripp admitted it. And perhaps to stay on the safe side of controversy, her PowerPoint slide and the discussion surrounding it never wandered from generalities to specifics. Consolidation could shutter an additional building or two. And “regionalization,” as some termed it, could “reduce costs by sharing services (and/or) costs of programs and administration with neighboring school districts”
New York State likes such things, board members acknowledged. But those living or running schools within Ithaca or its adjacent districts could have a tough time of it.
“I am clearly against the idea of consolidation,” Board President Eversley Bradwell asserted. “With that being said, I am not against doing research… to figure out what the feasibility is, and it’s probably time for a feasibility study.”
Were “regionalization” to come about, the Board President predicted, the Ithaca schools would likely become the region’s “hub.”
Closing more schools like long-vacant Danby’s or farming out tasks to places like Trumansburg or Newfield stood clearly beyond what the Ithaca School Board chose to put on its plate last Tuesday night. Whatever might come later will surface in the months ahead.
But in any school district’s incremental, sluggishly slow, yet progressive evolution, change blossoms from tiny seeds planted during discussions that some might find too boring to assign much weight. Wrong they’d be. If Cornell is to cough up more money, or if a building or two is to be listed with Warren Real Estate, Jill Tripp’s presentation from the Revenue Generation Advisory Council during an otherwise dull meeting in the last week of January is where those initiatives began. Watch for next steps.
###
Posted previously:
Redmond broaches light-limiting local law
“I don’t want flood lights on all over town all the time. I find that really obnoxious and really unhealthy for the environment and human health.”
Enfield Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, Jan. 8.
Reporting and Commentary by Councilperson Robert Lynch; January 28, 2025
Don’t give her words more weight than they warrant. They may hold a half-life of five minutes and no longer. Yet words carry meaning. Words stated by elected officials at public meetings carry meaning. And if taken at her word, Enfield Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, speaking near the end of our Town Board’s January 8th monthly meeting, warns you of this: Your beloved, bright and beaming, dusk-to-dawn outdoor security light may live on borrowed time. Redmond would ban it from Enfield in the name of neighborhood comity and a PC-powered drive to keep the dark night sky just that… dark.
“So recently, at least over the last decade, there’s been a lot of discussion about light pollution and how it affects migration, how it affects breeding patterns of everything from insects to bats to anything nocturnal,” Redmond stated as she guided the Town Board into its latest chapter of a more than year-long, multi-meeting review of Enfield’s Subdivision Regulations.
“And I don’t know about you guys, but if I were to have a neighbor that had one of those giant floodlights and kept it on 24/7, I would definitely take a BB gun…” Redmond submitted, trailing off her sentence with a muted chuckle. “I don’t know that I can handle it. I would have a really hard time having, like, a massive light on all the time as my neighbor,” the Supervisor insisted.
So just that you know, Enfield’s Planning Board completed its own, initial rewrite of the Town’s 2014 Subdivision Regulations and handed it to the Town Board in September 2023. The Town Board hasn’t finished its off-and-on wander through that 38-page document quite yet.
And at the January meeting, Redmond had stumbled upon an obscure, assuredly inapt-for-Enfield paragraph that someone long ago had lifted from a law better suited for a more urbanized place and thoughtlessly buried it near the back of our town’s own document. It’s lain dormant for a decade.
That heretofore-unnoticed third paragraph of “Section 276.1” states: “Lighting facilities shall be in conformance with the lighting system of the Town.” The directive supposedly confines itself to “High Density Subdivisions,” of which Enfield, quite literally, has none. To put matters into perspective, the paragraph before it micromanages the placement of fire hydrants.
To this Councilperson’s knowledge, no one’s ever talked seriously about us having a lighting control law in Enfield. But Stephanie Redmond appears to be talking about having one now. And judging from the impromptu reaction from others at the Town Board’s table that night, she may find an ally or two.
“It’s something to think about,” Councilperson Cassandra Hinkle said. Hinkle voiced concern about light pollution along hiking trails the Town may soon construct. She noted how Finger Lakes State Parks’ officials bowed to ornithological activists last April and postponed the nighttime illumination of Taughannock Falls so as not to disrupt the nesting of Peregrine falcons.
“I’d be in favor of something that limited that,” Councilperson Jude Lemke concurred regarding some kind of light-restricting ordinance.
Redmond, Hinkle, and Lemke: That’s a majority of three; enough to adopt some kind of law.
As the January discussion continued, the Supervisor indicated she’d contact Attorney for the Town Guy Krogh to get legal guidance. He or she might also start “looking into what other towns have done” regarding light control, the Supervisor said.
The closest Enfield’s ever come in recent years to tackling light pollution happened at a Planning Board meeting last October. It became only a brief detour from the agenda. Greg Hutnik, Enfield’s Planning Board alternate and Deputy Town Supervisor, brought to planners’ attention the newly-constructed Ithaca Storage Units facility off Teeter Road. (Full disclosure; this writer-Councilperson rents space there.)
“The lighting is horrible. It’s lit all night, and it shines into the trees,” Hutnik told Planning Board colleagues. “It’s disrupting the birds and animals.”
“It’s like a small city there,” came the observation.
Planning Board member Mike Carpenter speculated that if you lived in the nearby home “with the lights off, you could read.”
“If I were owning my house, I would be raising a much bigger stink,” Hutnik, a renter some ways away, said.
Owners of Ithaca Storage Units say they installed the night-long lighting in large part to keep buildings and patrons safe.
Lighting laws, “we don’t have any,” Planning Board Chair Dan Walker took note that night. The Board carried Hutnik’s concerns no farther.
Buried in the pile of bills the New York State Legislature considers each year— but then never adopts—is one that’s on point: Downstate Senator, Brad Hoylman-Sigal has advanced legislation during the last couple of sessions to shine a beam on nighttime lighting control. Ithaca Assemblymember Anna Kelles became the measure’s co-sponsor last term in Albany’s lower house.
It was called the “Dark Skies Protection Act.” Hoylman-Sigal’s bill received fleeting attention last year as the senator tried to piggy-back it onto companion legislation after New York City’s media-idolized hoot-of-a-hero, Flaco the owl, released from the Central Park Zoo by vandals, took flight headlong into a windowed Manhattan high rise. Flaco died. Gotham cried. And the Senator pleaded for a statewide light-abatement law to spare migratory birds. Legislative records show that Hoylman-Sigal’s bill never got out of committees in either house last year. It has yet to be reintroduced this session.
But had the Legislature enacted the Dark Skies Protection Act, no outdoor light anywhere in the state could have remained illuminated between 11 PM and sunrise unless it was either shielded from the sky or controlled by a motion detector. And for that matter, the detector could not have kept the light on for longer than 15 minutes at a time. The law would have reached as far as sports arenas—that is, unless a game was actually commenced before 11 and continued beyond that hour.
The Hoylman-Sigal/Kelles measure would have affected lights at “residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal buildings and structures.” One can infer that unless there was an emergency, even fire houses and police stations would need to comply.
“Around 80 percent of migrating birds move at night. but light pollution can disrupt a bird’s natural sense of their environment, drawing them into urban areas and disorienting them, causing them to fly into buildings, windows, and other structures,” Hoylman-Sigal’s office said in a February 2024 news release. “Light pollution has also been shown to be harmful to human health and mental well-being,” the statement continued. It urged the lighting bill’s enactment. No luck.
Back to Enfield and to the Town Board’s January 8th meeting, Supervisor Redmond acknowledged she’d accept motion-detected illumination, but not lights that remained on all night.
“I don’t want flood lights on all over town all the time. I find that really obnoxious and really unhealthy for the environment and human health,” Redmond said.
Of course, at some point, this writer, Councilperson, Robert Lynch, had to enter the debate.
“But you’ve got an issue of security, too,” this Councilperson said. “A lot of people—and I’ll tell you, I’m one of them—like a big light outside because it deters crime.”
“I have a big quartz light in my driveway,” I informed the Supervisor.
Supervisor Redmond had questions. I supplied answers.
Is the light on 24/7? No, it’s illuminated only at night. All night long? Yes. And don’t you want to put a motion detector on it? Nope. Dusk-to-dawn lights don’t work that way. And the ancient ancestor to what I now have anchored to a tree predated motion technology by decades.
“Well, if I were your neighbor, I’d be taking that thing down. Sorry,” Redmond said in a playful yet censorious scold.
“That gets to a point that I want to make here,” this Councilperson answered firmly. “We are generally a libertarian town. And we like our freedom. And if it’s my land—“
I took the moment to remind Supervisor Redmond of the heated discussion we’d had at a meeting last July during which she’d defended a dog owner’s right to exempt from liability a canine’s conduct on its owner’s own property even should it kill a neighborhood cat that wandered there.
“The same principle applies, OK,” I insisted. “That it’s my land. I pay my taxes on it. And darn it, I’m not hurting anybody else. But I want to have that flood light on!”
“OK, but your neighbor also pays the taxes for their property,” Redmond responded. “And your light is infecting their property, or affecting their sleep, or affecting the animals that live on their property. And it’s a communal resource. Our space that is around us is, the air we breathe, the water we drink, all of it is a communal resource, and you cannot inflict your own views on your neighbor without having some pushback. And so, yeah, you’re not keeping your light on your own property, so that’s not appropriate.”
To some of us, Charlton Heston’s immortal words, “…when you pry it from my cold, dead hands” comes to mind. Remembered phrases hold their opportune moments for application.
Councilperson Jude Lemke intervened. She reminded everyone of the “High Density Subdivision” restriction, and that no one in Enfield lives in such a place “This is where houses are very close to one another,” Lemke said.
“And I think in that sense, it is a problem if a light is shining into someone else’s bedroom,” Lemke qualified.
“It’s awful; it’s just awful. It’s so rude,” the Supervisor reacted with over-dramatized outrage at the thought of a Phillips-branded Peeping Tom peering between her blinds.
While acknowledging the textual specificity of what’s on the books, Supervisor Redmond wouldn’t leave the law there.
“But I also think that we should consider it town-wide,” Redmond encouraged. “I don’t think it’s appropriate, especially with the education that is out there now that people should have access to, that you can inflict your own self on your neighbors inappropriately. It’s just not appropriate. It’s rude.”
“If your neighbors don’t mind, that’s fine,” the Supervisor continued. “But if they are saying, ‘Hey, this is not appropriate, I don’t like this,’ then you should be considerate of your neighbors. It’s just like if you had a neighbor that had a dog that was barking all the time, day and night, really loudly, right next to your bedroom window…”
Point missed. It’s one thing for neighbors to settle differences over the hedge fence. It’s quite another when compulsion comes through the long arm of a nanny-state law.
You may find it tough placing Stephanie Redmond’s vision of the future alongside the Enfield of yesterday or today as we who live here have grown to know it and love it. Enfield is not a Cayuga Heights with cows, nor a hyper-regulated, pretentious, picture-book place like Skaneateles or the Hamptons.
We are Enfield. And we do not dictate to our residents when to mow their lawns or what colors to paint their houses. Maybe Stephanie Redmond would prefer us to mimic those suffocating places. Sorry, we don’t live there. Based on the people I’ve met traveling this town, we cherish our freedom and defend our independence fiercely. Should Enfield have evolved, many of us have yet to feel it.
At the close of our January 8th meeting, Marcus Gingerich asked to address us. He attends many of our meetings. I wish more people followed his example.
“Where do you draw the line?” Gingerich asked, referring to our discussion of a light-limit law. “We got to do this carefully,” he observed. “Yes, we’re living in communities, but I don’t know. We’re just about killing ourselves with overregulation, too. Just a word of caution. And think carefully.”
A breath of fresh air blown in from outside of Enfield’s political bubble; it always refreshes.
“Think carefully,” he said. Our Supervisor’s out-of-nowhere idea may, indeed, hold a half-life of just five minutes.
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Posted Previously:
County gives heightened salt mine scrutiny tempered treatment
by Robert Lynch; January 22, 2025; revised January 23, 2025
Enfield Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond was there to be sure. Redmond prominently wears two hats; one as leader of Enfield’s government, the other as program manager of an activist group that vows to close the Cargill salt mine under Cayuga Lake.
At the start of Tuesday night’s meeting of the Tompkins County Legislature, Redmond joined several others in calling for the Legislature to endorse an intermunicipal resolution critical of the easy treatment state environmental officials have given a controversial plan by Cargill Incorporated to flood an under-the-lake portion of its Lansing mine, a move those like Redmond fear could endanger the lake and lakeside land for centuries.
The Legislature gave the Supervisor and fellow activists most of what they wanted… but just barely.
By a vote of eight-to-three—the bare minimum number of affirmative votes to pass—lawmakers backed a call for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to either “deny Cargill’s permit application” or else “rescind (DEC’s) Negative Declaration and require the preparation of a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to assess all potential environmental risks associated with the proposed activities.”
The “Negative Declaration” DEC has currently assigned the application is a confusing, double-negative term that unless overridden would speed the Cargill application toward its approval.
Tuesday’s County-adopted Resolution stands similar to one passed January 8 by a three-to-one vote of the Enfield Town Board (with Supervisor Redmond abstaining). Reportedly seven other Tompkins County towns have also adopted similar resolutions.
“I think the Cargill salt mine is sort of out-of-sight, out-of-mind,” Redmond began her statement to the Legislature. Its underground labyrinth of caverns, she maintained, is “the size of the Town of Enfield.” It’s been there for 50 years. It’s controlled by Billionaires, Redmond continued. Nonetheless, she complained, not once has there been the kind of public hearing that an Environmental Impact Statement would command Cargill to conduct.
Redmond predicted, “I think that if we actually did have a public hearing, that you might find that a lot of people locally do not think that we should jeopardize our water resources for the sake of an out-of-state corporation to get more money for a Billionaire family to have more profits; they should not be profiting from our communal resources.”
But Cargill also employs people, local people, as many as 350 by one legislator’s calculation. And the risk of Cargill’s shutting down and going away, leaving countless locals out-of-work and placing another black mark on the industrial economy, troubled some at the Legislature’s table that night.
“I want to tell you Cargill represents many jobs in my district,” Groton’s Lee Shurtleff reminded colleagues during the half-hour of debate they took place later in the meeting preceding a final vote. “Cargill has been a well-paying, livable wage-paying employer and benefits a lot of families in my district,” he said. “I simply can’t support this,” Shurtleff concluded.
Shurtleff opposed the Cargill-critical Resolution. So did fellow Republican Mike Sigler of Lansing and Democrat Mike Lane of Dryden.
Newfield-Enfield Republican Randy Brown supported the Cargill-related measure. For reasons never completely explained, Enfield’s other representative, Anne Koreman, though a resolution co-sponsor, Zoomed into Tuesday’s meeting but was unable to vote. Two other Democratic legislators were also excused, making an eight-vote majority hard to muster. Tuesday’s vote count barely met the eight-member threshold required for passage
What persuasive power Tuesday’s Resolution actually holds remains unclear. When Enfield’s Town Board acted, DEC officials had advised that comments in the Cargill proceeding were due by January 19th, two days before the County Legislature’s latest meeting. The activist group Redmond represents, Cayuga Lake Environmental Action Now (“CLEAN”) had the same 01/19 deadline posted on its website the morning after the Legislature met. So what Tompkins’ lawmakers did Tuesday may find itself tardy in reaching the DEC’s door.
”[S]ignificant concerns have been raised regarding the adequacy of Cargill’s application, including compliance with the Mined Land Reclamation Law, monitoring and treatment of waste materials, the potential for groundwater pollution, the stability of the mine, and the long-term reclamation of the affected areas,” the copycat Enfield and Tompkins County resolutions state.
The resolutions decline to address head-on the prospect of an actual “collapse” at the Cayuga Salt Mine, although the County’s resolution references the 1994 Retsof Mine collapse in western New York. In her remarks, Redmond raised the scenario of a Cayuga Mine collapse maybe “20 years down the road.” Lansing legislator Deborah Dawson raised that doomsday prospect as well.
“I’m not saying that it’s highly likely that the mine could collapse,” Dawson said. But “It’s not impossible,” she cautiously qualified. “And the problem is that the low probability is more than offset by the catastrophic results that a collapse could have.” Dawson continued, “All I’m doing is seeking transparency and an open Environmental Impact Study.”
What Tompkins legislators stripped away from their resolution before their final vote effectively weakened its persuasive punch. At Mike Sigler’s urging, and by a second 8-3 vote, the Legislature removed late-added language, words that Enfield’s adopted counterpart had lacked.
The removed clause in Tompkins County’s version would have held that “the ongoing operations of the mine conflict with Tompkins County’s commitment to sustainability, environmental stewardship, and mitigating climate change impacts as outlined in the County’s Comprehensive Plan and environmental policies.”
“I don’t believe that is true,” Sigler responded to the clause’s purported assertion. “The mine has no impact on climate change per se,” he insisted. “As for ‘environmental stewardship,’ there’s never been any evidence that the mine harms the environment.”
“Cargill in Lansing is one of the few places we can get road salt,” Randy Brown recalled the County’s Highway Director having told him recently. The only other available mine, Brown was informed, can’t meet its orders. “Road salt also protects people on roads so we can drive in this kind of weather, and there are safety issues with that,” Brown reminded legislators, as they convened with zero-degree temperatures outside.
Both Supervisor Redmond’s comments and the County Legislature’s final language referenced the mine’s local workforce and the need for its retraining should the Cayuga Salt Mine close.
“We talk about workforce development programs, economic transition assistance. Yeah, I mean, it’s all B.S, frankly,” Sigler asserted. “None of that’s going to happen.”
The Lansing Republican reminded colleagues of when New York State, through then-Governor Andrew Cuomo and environmental activists, pressured his town’s Cayuga Power Plant to cycle away from burning coal, only to thwart its transition to natural gas, and eventually to close. Jobs disappeared; tax revenues evaporated.
“You had the cleanest coal-fired power plant in the country… one of two left in the state,” Sigler recalled. State regulations shut it down. “Seventy-five people and their spouses lost their jobs; there was no retraining,” Sigler grumbled. “I think Lansing got $50,000 from the state as like an offset for a $160 Million assessed value power plant,” he stated,. “And why? So that we can buy that power from Pennsylvania.”
Mike Sigler wasn’t the only legislator who saw an ulterior motive at work that night. Mike Lane did as well.
“I’m just worried that what’s being proposed here is a precursor to asking for the mine to close,” Lane suspected. “This is part of our economic development,” Lane said in defense of the Cayuga Mine. “It’s real jobs; real, good-paying jobs in Tompkins County,” he added. “Everyone wants us to spend a lot of money on social services and other things, which we do. But we can’t do it unless we have the taxation available. And people need to have jobs in order to pay the taxes.”
Ithaca’s Rich John—who normally sits beside Lane, but that night was Zooming-in, nursing an obvious cold—echoed his colleague, but only to a point.
“We should be good partners with Cargill, but Cargill should be a good partner with us, too,” John said.
Anticipating what’s to come if an impact statement is indeed required and a hearing mandated, Rich John added, “I anticipate if there’s a public hearing, there’ll be a lot of people that’ll come out and say terrible things about Cargill and say the mine should be closed. But they’re entitled to say that, and they should have that opportunity given the public nature of the resource being used here.”
Local lawmakers have a propensity to over-value the importance of their own pronouncements. And this may be another instance. What Tompkins County—or Enfield—says to the Department of Environmental Conservation may not matter a whit. Time will tell. And the snail’s-pace progress of bureaucratic review will, without a doubt, drag on for months, if not for longer. But the issue gained its public airing Tuesday night in the County Legislature’s chambers, just as it has in similar sessions in numerous town halls these recent weeks, including in Enfield. That is, for whatever good it may do.
“It seems like the main difference between (what’s already been required of Cargill) and a full EIS is public comment,” Sigler remarked before he voted his dissent. “And frankly, public comment’s open right now, and people are commenting. I’m seeing the letters. I don’t think there’s been a lack of public comment when it comes to the Cayuga Mine… It’s not like it’s been hidden. The State of New York has it, and has published it.”
But environmental advocates like Supervisor Redmond may feel better for what Enfield’s Town Board and now the County Legislature have now done. All of us can now see where all this goes from here.
Correction: An initial version of this story had reported the Enfield Town Board’s January 8th vote on the Cargill Resolution as four-to-one, having failed to recognize Supervisor Stephanie Redmond’s abstention for an alleged conflict-of-interest. Redmond, nonetheless, spoke in the measure’s favor.
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