Breaking: Jill Tripp ousted at ICSD

Budget passes; reformers struggle

by Robert Lynch; May 20, 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.

Preliminary results posted late Tuesday on the ICSD’s website 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 119 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, 3,721 votes (77.5%) to 1,080 votes (22.5%) opposed.

The bus and building expenditures secured almost identical support; 3,718 votes (77.4%) in favor; 1,087 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.

Preliminary tallies placed Jacob Shiffrin in the lead with 3,491 votes; Karen Yearwood securing second place with 2,931 votes, followed by Erin Croyle with 2,708 votes, and Madeline Cardona with 2,356 votes.

Jill Tripp fell out of the running with 2,237 votes, followed by Scott Jahnke with 2,018 votes, and David McMurry with 1,959 votes.

The Ithaca Board of Education is scheduled to certify the election results Wednesday night, May 21.

School budgets also passed in Newfield and Trumansburg school districts.

In Newfield, the budget passed, 342 votes (68%) to 159 (32%).  George Taylor, Christina Ward, and Antwane Lynch were elected to the school board.

In Trumansburg, the budget passed by a lopsided 528 to 101 margin.  Suzanne Organ, Jim Mielty and James Kemmerer were elected to the school board there.

(Expect more to be posted on this story.)

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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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From Hens to Housing

One Breezy Meadows barn would convert to 24 apartments, developer proposes

by Robert Lynch; May 8, 2025

Decades ago, it sheltered Babcock Poultry Farm’s chickens.  Then, for a short time, it quartered hogs.  Now, if a Ulysses developer realizes his goal, one of those many, long-abandoned, 600-foot long barns within Enfield’s Breezy Meadows subdivision could be chopped into sections and converted into affordable housing, 24 units in all.

Developer Jordan Bonafede, accompanied by his attorney, Charles Wolff, brought their initial “sketch plan” to the Enfield Town Planning Board Wednesday, May 7^th.  Admittedly, Bonafede’s concept has a long way to go before it becomes reality.  He said he doesn’t even yet own the land.

“We haven’t even put in an offer,” Bonafede told the Planning Board.

Enfield residents have rightful reason to be surprised that a long-dormant, 24,000-square foot, long, low-slung, former laying barn could become an apartment house.  Deed covenants that the one-time farm’s initial developers, New York Land & Lakes Development, LLC, had attached to the lots it sold—and promised to the Planning Board that they would limit Breezy Meadows’ growth—were supposed to restrict each  lot’s development to no more than one, single-family home and one accessory dwelling unit.

But Bonafede told the Planning Board Wednesday that the restriction doesn’t apply to the development he plans.

Bonafede said Land & Lakes allowed a “commercial use” exception to those few, big lots with the long, yellow barns.  And since a multi-unit apartment complex serves a “commercial” purpose, Bonafede said, he can convert the barn into apartments and still remain within deed compliance.

“I don’t remember Land and Lakes asking us any exceptions to the lots,” Planning Board member Mike Carpenter told Bonafede.  And Carpenter followed with this warning:  “Any of your neighbors could sue you.”

Jordan Bonafede would buy so-called “Lot 4” at Breezy Meadows, one of 33 lots New York Land & Lakes created when in 2023 it subdivided the 337-acre former John William Kenney farm between Podunk and Halseyville Roads.

Lot 4 includes as many as three of the longer barns, plus two smaller structures, all at the southernmost side of the Breezy Meadows tract when viewed from the east side of Podunk Road.

To circumvent building code requirements that mandate that large, multiple-residential buildings have sprinkler systems, Bonafede would chop the 600-foot long barn into six sections, placing each piece under the 5,000-square foot threshold. 

Each section would include four modest apartments, one- or two-bedroom dwellings, ranging from 800 to 1,200 square feet.  Just by removing small sections of the existing building’s roof and walls, Bonafede would maintain the fire code’s minimum 12-foot separation between the sections.

“We need more housing,” Planning Board alternate member—and Enfield Deputy Town Supervisor—Greg Hutnik remarked. He said so even though Hutnik, like others on the Planning Board, seemed startled that the authorizations they’d granted Land & Lakes two years ago could lead to such aggressive residential development now.

Bonafede said he’s already accomplished a similar, 20-unit conversion in the Town of Covert.

“As long as you know what you’re getting into,” Planning Board Char Dan Walker cautioned the developer.

Asked what he expects to charge in monthly rent for each unit, Bonafede said he’s talking a “$1,200 price range.”  It’s “affordable housing,” Bonafede acknowledged.

Several steps, important steps, remain to be taken before Bonafede’s proposed barn conversion can go forward.  The Planning Board will undoubtedly demand several review sessions, along with better-detailed drawings and at least one public hearing.  What the developer had readied for the Planning Board Wednesday was no more refined than penciled drawings on graph paper.

After Wednesday’s meeting, Bonafede claimed that the site’s current owner is asking $279,000 to sell the 30-acre tract.  Purchase would require “six-to-eight weeks” time to complete, Bonafede estimated.  After title had been secured, he’d expect to launch the approval process through the Planning Board over the next several months.

And then there’s the question of water.  Water adequacy was a prime concern to neighbors when Breezy Meadows was first proposed two years ago.  Planners at the time brushed aside the water-supply worry, arguing that widely-spaced homes spread out on 33 lots in a 300-plus acre subdivision provided sufficient separation to disperse groundwater demand.  But putting 24 families on just one of those lots few had ever envisioned.

“We’ll have to do an evaluation of the water supply,” Board Chair Walker said during the meeting.

Afterward, Bonafede admitted he may have to install a storage tank.

The developer told planners he’d start small, segmenting and repurposing just one of the barns, the second-removed from the road of the three Bonafede would own.  But he declined to dismiss the prospect of similarly renovating the nearly-identical barn he’d own nearest Podunk.  The farthest one back, Bonafede said, is smaller and in worst shape.  Its roof has collapsed in the middle.

“There’s no way we could afford doing the whole thing at once,” Bonafede conceded of the three-barn complex.

But monkey-see, monkey-do.  Breezy Meadows has as many as thirteen of those long poultry barns scattered amidst the weeds.  They’re in various states of disrepair and owned by different investors.  Their owners may have other plans.  But a profitable adaptive re-use by one developer could prompt copy-cat conversions by others.

Breezy Meadows may have brought to Enfield an idea that opportunists had conceived well before Town fathers (and mothers) had ever imagined it could happen.  Now, it may.

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SHPO Green-lights Downtown Demo

Center of Government site could be cleared by February

by Robert Lynch; May 6, 2025

New York State’s bureaucratic preservations appear no longer an impediment as Tompkins County legislators seek to bulldoze three buildings in the shadow of DeWitt Park to allow construction of a massively expensive downtown Center of Government.

At a legislative committee meeting Tuesday, architects for Tompkins County’s ambitious project put meat on the skeletal bones of an offhand remark County Administrator Korsah Akumfi had made at a County Legislature meeting three weeks earlier:  The New York State Historic Preservation Office (“SHPO,” pronounce it “Shippo”) has ended its year-long objection to removing the three buildings adjacent to the County Courthouse, structures hardly historic, but up until now considered by SHPO as “contributing” to the DeWitt Park Historic District’s character.

“The process with the State Preservation Office has gone much more smoothly than we had anticipated,” Quay Thompson, of Holt Architects, Principal Architect for the Center of Government project, told the Tompkins County Legislature’s Downtown Facilities Special Committee May 6. 

“We basically have the verbal approval from SHPO, and we’re in the process of finalizing the letter of recommendations, as what they call it,” Thompson told the committee.

“I’m glad to see the process go a little faster than all of us, I think, anticipated,” Ulysses-Enfield legislator Anne Koreman responded.

SHPO regulators have dogged Tompkins County for more than a year as lawmakers have sought to fast-track the “deconstruction” of the three buildings: the former Key Bank building at the corner of North Tioga and Buffalo Street, the honeycomb-faced former Wiggins Law Office next to it, and “Building C,” once an Ithaca College TV studio and now home to the Board of Elections and Tompkins County’s Assessment Department.

Although the Historic Office may have no direct veto power over the buildings’ demolition, SHPO regulators could delay either the permit approvals or the grant awards that the new office building might need.

At a meeting of the Tompkins County Legislature April 15, Administrator Akumfi had stated, as part of an otherwise-routine biweekly report, that SHPO had granted “conditional approval to proceed at demolishing the buildings on site with some guidelines.”

Akumfi had said little more at the time about the approval and had never detailed what those “guidelines” might be.

During his presentation to the Downtown Facilities Committee Tuesday, architect Thompson suggested that those SHPO-demanded “mitigating measures,” as he termed them, might be minimal and largely symbolic.  They might require designers to preserve “drawings and photographs” of the demolished buildings and encourage designers’ “creating some sort of historic component in the new building” that “talks about” what was torn down.

With SHPO’s consent essentially now assured, architects and schedulers, with legislators’ full support, intend to move headlong toward deconstruction.  Each building would start being pulled apart this fall, likely sequentially, with full removal planned by the end of winter.

“Schedule-wise, we are looking for the deconstruction to start in September and finish in February ’26,” Bernard Best, Project Manager with Holt Architects, Tompkins County’s design consultant, told the committee.

Most likely the law office would be first to come down, then the former bank, and finally Building C.

Building’s C’s removal poses the biggest obstacle, as it currently houses County Government offices.  The Board of Elections, the Assessment Office and the Information Technology nerve center—complete with its web-server—would all have to move.  Relocation plans have yet to be carved in stone.

In fact, there’s much remaining to be resolved.  And it includes, quite remarkably, the County Legislature’s no-turning-back commitment to proceed with the Center of Government altogether.  Legislators have during the past year or two passed sense-of-the-body resolutions directing planning for the building to proceed.  But they’ve never made a promise they couldn’t retract.

At the close of Tuesday’s two-hour committee session, Administrator Akumfi, on the job for only three-and-a-half months, worried aloud about perceived legislative indecision, with lawmakers “checking boxes” instead of implementing a grand vision.

“We are at a point whereby we need to have a clarity of direction of where we are going with the project,” Akumfi advised the committee. 

“We need to have clarity from the Legislature as we move forward with the project so that we are not derailed in our approach, in our time lines, and also that we are not looking at anything else if this is the commitment,” Akumfi stated.

The Administrator said what’s needed is “clarity that the project is a ‘go,’ and we are doing this.”

That “anything else,” alluded to by Akumfi, would likely entail moving County Government offices out of downtown altogether, placing them on cheaper land, more expansive land, a place with ample, free parking for staff and visitors, real estate maybe out by the airport. 

Most legislators have winced at that out-of-Ithaca prospect, sometimes as they did so disregarding economic logic.  They wince at it still.  “Building in a cornfield,” as one legislator has often derisively termed it, never gained serious consideration during Tuesday’s committee meeting.

The Downtown Facilities Committee took no votes Tuesday on any direction forward.  But members suggested they may put before the full Legislature as soon as in June a departmental assignment plan that would play a pricey game of musical chairs, deciding which offices would go where once the Center of Government gets built.

One of the more challenging choices, both short- and long-term, is where to quarter the Board of Elections.  Holt Architects’ current preferred plan would place the elections office not in the Center of Government, but over at the County-owned Human Services Annex, located at State and Albany Streets, many blocks away.

The Elections Board’s migration would torpedo plans favored by some to vacate the Annex altogether and sell off the building for commercial and residential development.

“I think this is a waste, personally, of some prime dirt and space in the core of the City that is begging for more, and I just think this is a poor use,” Dryden legislator Greg Mezey said of retaining the Human Services Annex for the Board of Elections.  “From a planning perspective, I’m not OK with this.”

Mezey’s Dryden colleague, Mike Lane, took a different view.

“I guess I don’t totally agree with Greg,” Lane responded.  “I don’t think the City needs to have a big box apartment building on every block,” he maintained.  “Yeah, you can generate more money with vertical sprawl, but you also have all the problems that come along with it.”

“I wasn’t the one that said this, but they said the City of Ithaca has lost its soul, and I think it’s true,” Lane opined.

The initial Center of Government construction schedule had called for “Building C” to remain standing until the new building was largely built.  Wreckers would demolish it later.  But that could waste time and money, architect Thompson told the committee.

Instead, to facilitate quicker deconstruction, yet keep computer systems humming, Information Technology would temporarily relocate to the third floor of the Old Jail building.  A $15,000 cable run would string along the street to serve it.  And the third floor’s current occupants, namely County Administration and the County Attorney, would soon be evicted.

Where would the Administrator and County Attorney go?  Most likely they’d migrate to temporarily occupy vacant space in the Mental Health Building on the other side of downtown.  But there’s a problem there as well.  County staff might have nowhere to park.

Dislodging the State Historic Preservation Office’s opposition to deconstructing the trio of buildings on the Center of Government site proves the benefits of successful salesmanship (with maybe a bit of fact-bending along the way.)  Quay Thompson reported to the committee that his firm had first enlisted the help of a Corning-based preservation architect.  They drew up six options for consideration, then gridded them against as many as 19 distinct factors that would weigh in favor or against each choice.  An option’s relative desirability was color-coded in green, yellow, or red (Green, good; Red, bad.) 

“Looking big picture, essentially the process was we submitted a report, a fairly large report, to SHPO,” Thompson said.  “They spent about three weeks reviewing it, and then we met on-site.”

Consultants, County officials, SHPO bureaucrats, and apparently no one else, toured the buildings and then convened in Legislative Chambers.  That meeting, Thompson asserted, proved key.

“At the outcome of that meeting, SHPO was basically supporting our recommendations that it made sense for the three buildings to be decommissioned, deconstructed, and a new building to be built,” the project architect told the committee.

Yet please note that the process largely bypassed the public, those whose members might have raised pointed, critical questions and advanced a contrary narrative.  The process apparently also omitted City of Ithaca leaders, who’ve sought unsuccessfully in the past to block deconstruction.

Last year, the County Legislature employed a questionably-applicable New York court holding to pre-empt Ithaca’s authority in the matter.  City Hall never took the County to court, and has had little involvement since.

Still, some might question the conclusions architects drew in their sales pitch to SHPO.  One of the six options presented regulators was to keep the three buildings intact and just renovate them.  Two more choices would have built a new office building in various forms around the existing structures.  Another alternative would have kept the Key Bank Building, razed the other two, and built the new building attached to the old bank.

Quite plainly, the County’s favored option was to level the site and build a completely new building.  The sixth choice was to build somewhere outside the City.

The all-new Center of Government, kept downtown, and the “Cornfield Option” scored the highest under Holt’s carefully-choreographed, 19-factor grid.  And a couple of the highly-subjective criteria gave downtown the slight edge.

Factors weighed such issues as departmental efficiency, the “flexibility to accommodate change,” access to public transportation, walking, and biking,” and whether the project “maintains and enhances downtown economic vitality,” an argument Holt’s team had told legislators in March should be considered.

On those latter two points, transportation access and economic health, Thompson said it was advantage downtown:

“Another big factor that SHPO was interested in was maintaining and enhancing the downtown community vitality,” the architect advised the committee.  “So this is preserving the vitality of the historic district, but also preserving the vitality of Downtown Ithaca.”

A factor on which Holt assigned downtown and “someplace else” surprisingly equal weight was on whether the office building “meets parking needs and requirements.”  Thompson and Best in committee danced around why downtown earned a passing grade.  Anyone who’s ever tried to find a vacant parking spot may wonder how downtown scored equally with the cornfield.

All along, the Downtown Facilities Special Committee— just like a similarly-named committee before it—has advanced a pre-scripted narrative:  It’s that downtown is best and that a totally-new building is best.  Tuesday’s meeting expanded that theme to convey the message that SHPO regulators have likewise been sold the value of those arguments. 

A new downtown Center of Government is now planned to sprawl upward five stories, expand to nearly 40,000 square feet, contain a cornucopia of government offices ranging from District Attorney, to Planning, to Human Rights, and cost at least $40 Million—some say as high as $60 Million.  And each step along the way always leads to the next.

Boxes get checked, Korsah Akumfi would say.  And now, more likely than ever, those three buildings that stand a stone’s throw from the Courthouse will come down, and will do so sooner rather than later.

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Posted Previously:

Budget Retreat foretells higher taxes; likely cuts

Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; April 30, 2025

A tornado warning came in from the National Weather Service better than halfway into the meeting.  Somebody read it off her computer or phone.  “Take cover now!  Move to a basement or an interior room on the lowest floor of a sturdy building,” the message said.  Attendees had convened in the Rice Conference Room at the Tompkins County Health Department.

“This is pretty good,” Tompkins County Administrator Korsah Akumfi said, evaluating his room’s presumed sturdiness.  The meeting went on.

By best accounts, there was no tornado.  But inside the Rice room that night, especially for Deputy County Administrator Norma Jayne, sitting nearest her boss, a different kind of whirlwind was swirling.  For more than two hours, during a meeting that those in charge would generally prefer people like us not attend, Jayne found herself constantly plugging holes in Administration’s first look at a 2026 Tompkins County Budget. 

Maybe it was best that no one from the downtown media bothered to attend the County Legislature’s little-publicized annual “Budget Retreat” April 29.  It was a challenge for the best of minds to keep thoughts straight or grasp a coherent narrative.  Other than the County Administrator’s daughter, this Enfield Councilperson was the only person in the room not on the County payroll.  There’ll be no video replay.  For many, perhaps, it was a meeting to forget.

But it won’t get forgotten.  News was made.  Legislators left the session learning that if current programs and personnel are left intact, next year’s Tompkins County property tax levy could rise by 7.11 percent.  And should the tax levy increase fall to that of the estimated 3.06 percent state-directed tax cap, administrators and lawmakers would need to make more than $2.2 Million in program and personnel cuts.

“What you’re telling me is we’re over budget at this point,” Lansing Republican legislator Mike Sigler replied to Administrator Akumfi and to the room, reaching for a conclusion that begged to be stated.

Still, don’t be scared away by the ominous prospect of a seven percent tax increase.  It’ll likely never happen. 

For one thing, it’s a legislative election year.  And for another, April warnings of a higher-than-desirable tax increase invariably vanish by October, budget adoption time.  Steep increases generally get whittled away, even if it takes dipping into savings to make that happen.    This year may prove no different.

“Neither of the choices are the one I would pick,” Legislature Chair Dan Klein said Tuesday of Akumfi’s two alternatives, either the one carrying the higher tax increase or the one with the $2.2 Million in cuts.  Klein declined to state where he’d draw the line.

The “Budget Retreat” has become an understated, yearly ritual.  State law demands it be open to the public.  But it’s not an official meeting where actions become binding and minutes are kept.  Legislators meet away from their downtown chambers ostensibly to keep their first look at next-year budget projections as informal as possible.  Their spiriting away also encourages comments be held as private as the law allows.  Few outsiders—or reporters— ever venture out to hear what’s spoken.

At the retreat one year ago, former County Administrator Lisa Holmes had advanced a “Maintenance of Effort” budget that would have carried a 5.9 percent tax levy increase.  Legislators that night balked, casting a series of straw votes that messaged to Holmes a levy increase of no more than two percent.  Keeping it that low would also have required more than $2 Million in cuts to programs. 

Holmes couldn’t stick to the directive, although she tried.  In November, following a summer full of number crunching and department head pushback, legislators settled on a 2.72 per cent levy increase for 2025, exactly equal to the then-calculated tax cap.  Tompkins County’s tax levy increase had been two percent for the prior year; no increase at all for each of the two years before that.

At Tuesday’s most recent budget retreat, there were no straw polls, no haggling, no target tax increases set.  Newly-hired Administrator Akumfi discouraged legislators from early-on goal-setting.  Akumfi would do things differently.

“When you meet with the departments, ask ‘Why do you need this extra item?” Akumfi advised legislators. “You need to justify why the increase is so high,” he’d tell department heads.

It’s actually the County Administrator who first negotiates with heads of departments.  Legislators, themselves, don’t meet with them until autumn.

In essence, the new Administrator has appeared to signal a preference for bottom-up, rather than top-down budgeting.  By his message, Akumfi would first urge departmental austerity, next bundle up whatever fell into his spending basket, and then calculate taxpayer burdens based on what’s within it. 

Tompkins County Government has never done budgeting that way in modern times.  But that’s how Akumfi might want it.  And the approach seemed to throw some legislators a bit off balance.

“Will there be an ‘action item’ when you can come to us and ask us for a comfort level?” the Legislature’s Budget Committee Chair, Mike Lane, a long-tenured legislator, asked Akumfi.

Lacking a response he found sufficiently convincing, Lane requested, and then secured, permission for a second budget retreat sometime this summer, likely in July.

Tompkins County’s procedures require the Administration Department to present a draft 2026 Budget just after Labor Day.  Legislative line-by-line review then follows and consumes numerous meetings in the fall.  The Legislature adopts the final budget in November.

“This is our first conversation about the budget,” legislator Amanda Champion cautioned colleagues.  She appeared to cut the new Administrator some slack.  “We have many, many, many months,” Champion said.

Yes, compared with his predecessors—Lisa Holmes, and before that, Jason Molino—Administrator Korsah Akumfi tackles budgeting differently.  And his unconventional approach at times left Tompkins County’s 14 legislators begging for answers that seemed elusive.  Problems were identified more than directions given.  Akumfi’s thick African accent didn’t help, especially in the Rice room, where the acoustics are downright awful.

Then, there were the missteps; too many of them.

“It’s my error.”  “I apologize.”  “I made a mistake.”  Korsah Akumfi uttered those words at various times during his presentation.  The administrator had prepared a 60-slide PowerPoint and distributed its paper copy to attendees.  Slide number 59, the final one of substance, detailed the tax levy implications, the numbers people care most about.  It almost got forgotten.  Someone had to restart the computer.

“It doesn’t seem like that second line is correct,” Legislature Chair Klein questioned, after Slide 59 finally appeared.  It carried tax increase projections of dollars, percentages, and homeowner impacts.

The presentation’s most glaring error occurred at its worst-possible place: setting the tax levy.  Korsah Akumfi is new.  County Administration’s budget division is understaffed.  And in preparing its numbers, those in charge had committed a major blunder. 

As Deputy Administrator Norma Jayne would need to explain later, $1.3 Million in interest earnings had been misstated.  The corrected error had transformed a 4.74 percent tax levy increase for the “Maintenance of Effort” budget into a 7.11 percent increase.  The slide on the printed page showed the smaller number; the quickly—albeit partially—revised slide on the screen showed the bigger one.  (My mumbled astonishment carried to legislators seated in the row ahead of me.)

Norma Jayne, as Deputy Administrator, found herself fixing numbers on the fly as fast as she could.  She apologized later.  Of course, one bad number in a chain can contaminate everything that comes thereafter.

The preliminary County Budget Administrator Akumfi presented estimates revenues conservatively.  Both sales tax and casino revenues were kept flat between this year and next, even though gaming receipts have slightly exceeded recent budgets.

On the expense side, the Administrator predicted only a three percent employee vacancy rate, even though vacancies presently stand at eight per cent of authorized positions.  (They’d been 12 per cent one year ago.)   Fewer vacancies mean higher payroll.  Legislators questioned why Akumfi thinks vacancies will drop by so much.  He never provided a convincing answer, at least not that I could discern.

Projections of fund balance—Tompkins County’s comfortably-large year-to-year savings account—left some legislators baffled. 

Was that $64 Million General Fund Balance calculated at the start of this year or last, someone asked?  Akumfi needed to explain. 

“Do we have a plan in this budget to refund our fund balance?” legislator Greg Mezey asked.  The Administrator said he did not have such a plan.

Then, there are what may be called the budget “New and Unknowns,” the wild cards; expenses like the new homeless shelter, the continuation and possible expansion of the Rapid Medical Response (“RMR”) program, and application of the new, higher so-called “Living Wage.” 

By past resolution, Tompkins County is a Living Wage Employer.  Its government is supposed to pay employees living wages In late-February, the Tompkins County Workers’ Center grew the calculated Living Wage to $24.82 per hour, up 34.5 percent from its computation of two years ago.

“We had $2.5 Million set aside for Living Wage.  Is that off the table?” Dan Klein asked.

Deputy Administrator Jayne said the number was “closer to $1 Million.”

Legislator Shawna Black, a Living Wage advocate, sought to have all 14 legislators weigh-in on the Living Wage’s application, and perhaps do so as soon as that night’s meeting, late as it then was.  The discussion didn’t happen.  Expect Black to raise the wage issue later.

Emergency Response promoters—including those in Enfield—had hoped the Budget Retreat would provide guidance toward extending, maybe expanding, the RMR program into 2026.  That guidance didn’t come.

“Has the funding ended?” Akumfi asked inquisitively when RMR came up.  Norma Jayne had to inform him that funding runs through this year.  On to the next topic.

****

What’s the message discerned from wading through those laborious 60 PowerPoint slides and listening to what Administrator Akumfi and legislators had to say at the Budget Retreat?  Maybe, that it’s still way too early.

Yes, the 2026 Tompkins County tax levy could rise by 7.11 percent—but probably it won’t.  More importantly, the evening’s two-and-a-half hours spent in a crowded, window-deprived room told one more about the state of County Government than about the cost of County Government.  Some whom we pay handsomely to serve us remain on a learning curve.  Others are scurrying around tirelessly to prop their colleagues up.  And truth be told, it’ll be darned tough to figure out where Tompkins County taxes will be heading until at least the late summer, if not the fall.

###

Posted Previously:

Enfield’s “Pot Lot”

Westchester cannabis grower targets Breezy Meadows

by Robert Lynch; April 22, 2025

An Ossining, NY-based company with a strange sounding name may establish a marijuana farm and processing facility off Halseyville Road within Enfield’s Breezy Meadows subdivision.  And because a majority of the Enfield Town Board has agreed to fast-track the approval process, local residents may have little voice into whether the state should grant the company a license. 

In an email to the Enfield Town Board April 15, Daysi Briones, president of IQ CANNABIS-KHUYAY CORP. (“Iq Cannabis”), requested a “Letter of No Objection” from Town officials, a requirement to secure permission from New York’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) for an” Adult-Use Microbusiness License” at Breezy Meadows.  Briones had requested a response by April 22, just one week later.

Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond confirmed Tuesday, the 22^nd that the Letter of No Objection had been sent based on the majority opinion of Town Board members.  One Enfield Councilperson (this writer) also wrote the applicant that day to clarify that no formal approval vote had actually been taken.

Company president Briones stated in her letter to the Town that Iq Cannabis had purchased Lot 33 in Breezy Meadows which subdivision documents identify as a 5.035-acre parcel, the more northerly of two Breezy Meadows lots which abut the west side of Halseyville Road. (Look for the patch of woods.)

“Our intended use of the land is for agricultural cannabis cultivation, utilizing both outdoor and mixed-light methods,” Briones stated in the company’s email.  “We also plan to conduct agricultural processing activities on-site (including drying and trimming). No on-site retail or public commercial traffic is planned,” she stated.

Briones’ email sent the Town Board provided no further details of the project.

Iq Cannabis’ email caught Town Board members by surprise. 

The time stamp on Daysi Briones’ email indicates it was sent at 7:50 PM on April 15.  In little more than an hour, Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond had shared the message with other Town Board members, asking them to weigh in on the company’s request for a Letter of No Objection.  That letter is apparently all the company needs at the moment to advance its application with the Office of Cannabis Management.

Redmond pointed to Briones’ hurried April 22 deadline for a reply.  The date would come well before the Town Board’s next scheduled meeting on May 14.  And rather than call a special session, Redmond circulated the Iq Cannabis email, asking board members to “weigh in to let me know” if they’d approve her sending the letter. Redmond stated that she, herself, had no objections to the letter being sent.

By the following morning, April 16, Councilpersons Cassandra Hinkle and Melissa Millspaugh had emailed their lack of objections, thereby joining with Redmond to constitute a Town Board majority of three.

Yet Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) weighed in differently. 

“I must respectfully abstain,” Lynch replied in an email that same morning.  “I know too little about what IQ CANNABIS-KHUYAY CORP. proposes for Lot 33 at Breezy Meadows to express my support at this time,” he wrote.  “Those whom we represent may have concerns or objections, and those objections deserve the opportunity to be aired at a timely-called Town Board meeting.”

“I cannot believe that the permitting procedure employed for the requested Adult-Use Microbusiness License did not accord Daysi Briones sufficient time to come before our Town Board at a prior monthly meeting, outline the company’s plans, and receive residents’ inquiries,” Lynch wrote Town Board colleagues.  “As the saying goes, ‘Failure to plan on your part does not create a crisis on my part,’” he stated.

Under parliamentary procedure, an abstention is treated the same as a dissent.

The final and fifth Town Board member, Jude Lemke, had not expressed her opinion on the matter to Town Board colleagues by the morning of the deadline.

Upon learning from Supervisor Redmond that a Letter of No Objection had been sent based on a three-member informal poll, Councilperson Lynch wrote Iq Cannabis his own letter April 22 the clarify the limited nature of the Town Board’s consent.

“In my opinion, writing as one Town Board member, any implied local municipal consent given to the proposed IQ CANNABIS-KHUYAY operation stands premature and has been stated apart from our Town’s customary authorization procedures,” Lynch wrote.  He requested that his comments be incorporated into any communications the company has with the OCM concerting local approval.

Two years ago, New York Land & Lakes, an Oneonta-based real estate developer, purchased the 337-acre John William Kenney farm between Halseyville and Podunk Roads in Enfield and subdivided it into 33 building lots.  News of the subdivision prompted initial neighborhood objections, with critics fearing depletion of their water wells, loss of agricultural land, and damage to Tucker Road, the gravel roadway that transects the former farm.

Despite the objections, the Enfield Town Planning Board approved the Breezy Meadows subdivision that June.  By late-2023, Land & Lakes had sold off most of the lots.  Now, two years later, few parcels have seen development.

Depending on its construction timetable, IQ Cannabis may become among the first purchasers to break ground.

“We believe this use aligns with the protective covenants outlined in the recorded Warranty Deed, which permits agricultural and non-commercial uses,” Briones stated as to the cannabis growing and processing operation.

But the extent to which IQ Cannabis would develop the site, and just what it would put there, remain unclear.

“The company’s plans for ‘agricultural processing activities on-site’ raise issues of whether the Iq Cannabis-khuyay operation borders on an industrial activity,” Councilperson Lynch wrote Town Board colleagues April 16. 

“The Town of Enfield has no zoning law,” Lynch informed Iq Cannabis in his letter April 22.  “All site plan review is conducted by the Town of Enfield Planning Board,” he explained.  “To date, the Planning Board has not considered this development.  To the best of my knowledge, Planning Board members remain unaware of it.  The Planning Board must decide whether our Town’s Site Plan Review Law empowers its oversight of the quasi-industrial operation proposed by your company.”

Iq Cannabis-khuyay Corporation was founded in July 2021, according to corporate records on file with the New York Department of State.  It lists its headquarters as 4 Narragansett Avenue, Ossining, NY, in Westchester County.  No other information about the firm was readily available.

Daysi Briones held out the opportunity to meet with the Enfield Town Board if required to do so and provide the Town additional information.  Lynch urged Board members to accept that opportunity.

“Make no mistake.  I do not necessarily oppose the IQ CANNABIS-KHUYAY Corporation’s proposal.  I just know too little of it,” Lynch wrote the applicant Tuesday.  “In my opinion, the letter submitted your company on our Town’s behalf should only issue following full consideration at a public meeting where public input is both permitted and invited.  Such has not occurred.  And of that shortcoming, the OCM should be made aware.”

###

My Words to the Town Board:

That was then. This is now.

Posted April 16, 2025

Speaking from the heart—no script—this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, addressing the Enfield Town Board Wednesday, April ninth, after leading those willing in the Pledge of Allegiance:

“One of the meager attributes I bring to this Board is a long institutional memory, probably longer than anybody in this room, I dare to say. 

“I covered my first Election Night in Tompkins County in 1969, as a cub radio reporter.  We were down at The Ithaca Journal’s newsroom.  And we brought all the data together, and then we disseminated it to the public, including the town elections. 

“And one thing—and I covered a good many election nights thereafter 1969—And one of the things that sticks in my mind from those days back in the ‘70’s and ‘60’s was that no matter how uphill a climb it was, there was always, usually a full slate of Republicans and a full slate of Democrats who ran for Town office.

“Now I went back today and I looked at the 1969 Enfield elections, back on early-November of ’69.  And here’s how they were:

• Supervisor: Robert Linton, a legend in Enfield, won over Roger Hubbell; Linton, 348, Hubbell, 213.

• For Town Clerk:  Mabel Purdy, a Republican, won over Dorothy Leonard, 439 to 113.

• Highway Superintendent:  Now there the Democrats cross-endorsed Republican Wesley Rolfe; he’s another legend in Enfield.

• Town Justice:  Robert Bock beat Robert Scofield.

• For Town Councilman:  Earl Smith beat Richard Holley; Smith the Republican, Holley the Democrat.

• For Tax Collector:  Edna Palmer, the Republican, beat Marian Lovelace, the Democrat.

“And I bring that up because that was then, and this is now.

“We have Town elections in Enfield this year.  They’ll be this November fourth.  But instead of deciding those elections on the date seven months from now, they were decided last week. And they were decided last week because the only people to petition for reelection to Town offices, including this Town Board, were the incumbents.  Nobody else stepped up.  Nobody else said, ‘I think I can do it better.’  And that’s disappointing to me. 

“And I want to stop here and say I’m not disparaging anybody who’s sitting at the table or at the side table, who may be running, because that’s not the issue.  You may indeed be the best qualified candidates for the office.  And indeed maybe you deserve to win.  But how will we know?  We won’t know because there’s no competition.  The November ballot is more or less set, with one exception, which I’ll bring up in a second. 

“But it disappoints me because we won’t know; we won’t really have a good gauge of where Enfield is heading.

“Now the party petitioning is over with.  But Independents can still petition beginning the 15^th of April through the 27^th of May.  They can circulate petitions, file them with the Board of Elections, and be on the ballot in November.  I don’t know if anybody will.  I’m not too optimistic that that will happen.  But it’s disappointing because an uncontested election really doesn’t tell you a whole lot because it doesn’t say these are the best people who are running.

“And again, I congratulate everybody’s who’s serving now and has agreed to serve for another term.  You’re to be commended, and that’s good.  But we need more people in the mix.

“Now back then, Republicans were the dominant party in Enfield.  And I’m sure that Roger Hubbell, who ran for Supervisor, or Dorothy Leonard, who ran for Town Clerk were a little disappointed the morning after Election Day because they hadn’t won. 

“But you know what?  I bet’cha they were satisfied in the fact that they gave it the Old College Try.  And I look forward to some new faces, people I probably don’t even know, to this year give it that Old College Try.

“Thank you.”

****

Postscript:  A close confidante advises me that those from generations far more recent may not know what “Old College Try” means.  Perhaps they don’t.  So look it up online.  It’s defined there.  Then after you do that, visit the Board of Elections website and learn how you, too, can run for local office.

Robert Lynch, Enfield Councilperson

###

Enfield Dog Law (finally) Passes

Yearlong effort ends amid public grumbles

by Robert Lynch; April 11, 2025

To some, it’s a justifiable response:  “C’mon, it’s only a Dog Law.  Why did it take you a year to pass it?”  Well, it did. And well, it’s also Enfield, where it could be said that the most compelling command to those in power is: “Be careful when you mess with Man’s Best Friend.”

On Wednesday night, April 9^th, the Enfield Town Board adopted its revised, long-discussed “Dog Control and Licensing Local Law and Regulations.”  It runs 16 pages and consumes nearly 8,500 words.  It replaces a pithier, two-page document that an earlier Town Board had passed in 2010.  Quite rightly, critics could call this latest, wordy rendering the product of lawyerly bloat.

The Town Board’s vote was unanimous, “I’m torn by this, but I’m going to vote aye,” Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) stated as Town Clerk Mary Cornell called the roll.  Some two hours later, as the meeting wound to a close, Lynch recanted.  He said he’d made a mistake; upon reflection, he should have opposed the law.  Too late.   It would have passed anyway, of course.

“Have we heard from anybody who actually wants this dog law, other than members of this board and members of the Town administration?” Lynch asked following Wednesday’s close of a two-night public hearing that had spread over two months.  On each of those hearing nights, all comments proved negative.

“In my experience, that when people are happy, they don’t comment,” Supervisor Stephanie Redmond replied.

Town Clerk Cornell said she had been visited by residents who’d requested tighter regulation.

The Enfield Dog Law journey began almost one year earlier from its day of adoption.  On April 10, 2024, the Town Board’s official minutes state, “Clerk Cornell shared that she would like to include a late fee of $10 for dogs that are renewed more than 30 days late.”  The Town Clerk had first only sought a minor change in the fee schedule. That was all.

But the fee schedule was cemented firmly within the 2010 law.  And the Town’s legal counsel, Guy Krogh, said there’d need to be a public hearing to impose the late fee that Cornell had proposed.  At about the same time, Krogh looked at the old law, said it fell short by modern standards, and recommended a rewrite.

By June, the attorney had brought forth the much more comprehensive Dog Law draft, a version almost identical, word-for-word, to what the Town Board would eventually adopt.  In a June 12 memo—a document whose contents must otherwise be considered confidential between the attorney and the Town—Krogh described his draft dog law as a “fully option-loaded Caddy.”  He could downsize it to an “Accord” or an “Impala” should the Town prefer it, Krogh qualified.  But most Enfield leaders opted to stay with the Escalade.

“This is ridiculous.  I’m sorry, but I’m done,” Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond exclaimed in exasperation 44 minutes into an 80-minute Dog Law Public Hearing February 12^th.  Redmond retreated after a trio of residents had pummeled her with critical, sometimes repetitious questions and complaints about the proposed law and its reach into dog owner freedom.  Redmond stepped aside for a time and let Councilperson Lynch take the questions.

“There are so many other things in my opinion that are more important in this town than dog owners,” Hines Road’s Tammy Alling, a multiple dog owner herself, complained.

“My problem is we’re regulating and regulating and regulating,” Alling continued.  “We live in Enfield.  This is not Cayuga Heights.  This is not Dryden.  This is not Lansing.  We’re Enfield, for crying out loud.  We’re the second poverty-stricken area in Tompkins County.  We can’t forget that.”

“Are we fixing something that isn’t broken?” resident Rodger Linton asked, pointing to the proposed law.

“I think we are,” Councilperson Jude Lemke answered, implying that the current law is, indeed, broken, “because there have been situations where our Town Clerk has had people approach about a problem that’s going on with a dog, and we have not had any recourse because our law has not covered those situations as they currently exist.”

It’s an “added layer of protection,” Clerk Cornell described the expanded law.  We don’t want to get a “hoarding situation,” the clerk explained.

The February discussion could have gone long into the winter’s night had the Town Board not adjourned the public hearing for two more months so as to move on to other business.  The hearing resumed this past Wednesday.  It only ran for about a half-hour this time.  But Rodger Linton was back in the gallery.

“What do we need it for?” Linton asked.  “We went to all this work to get an increase of two dollars,” he said, referring to the higher licensing fees.  “But you put a price on the head of dog owners in the town by adopting a whole new bunch of other punishable, finable problems that didn’t exist before.”

“Yes, the initial reason we picked up the law was to look at the fees,” Councilperson Lemke acknowledged.  “But we spent a year on and off talking about the dog law, so things came up as we discussed it… that we thought should be addressed, and we addressed that as we went along.”

In truth, the Town Board made very few revisions from the “Caddy” draft that attorney Krogh had handed board members.  And just as often as not, such as during a somewhat testy, line-by-line review last July 31, substantive modifications were tossed aside, rather than accepted.

“Whose life is better off because of this new law?” Linton asked at the April 9^th hearing.

“The dogs,” multiple Town Board members and Clerk Cornell chimed back. 

“I just don’t see the benefit,” Linton rebutted.  “It benefits nobody except for the coffers of the Town.”

Linton and others sought parallel, though perhaps irreconcilable, goals:  more specificity yet reduced regulation.

“I don’t quite understand,” Supervisor Redmond inquired.  “So you want more definitions, but you want it to be less.  The reason it grew from two pages to 16 pages is we got much more specific.”

One of the Dog Law’s more intrusive new dictates is one that impacts a handful of dog owners who harbor five or more canines, whether for profit or just because they have a big heart.  A five-dog household would newly be considered a “kennel” in the eyes of the law.  Under the dog law’s requirements, food at such “kennels” would need to be “kept under cover and in sealed containers,” and animal waste removed so as “to keep the property sanitary.”

In deliberations just prior to the law’s final adoption—as Councilperson Lynch offered a flurry of proposed amendments, many of which never got adopted—the Town Board softened the kennel waste removal requirement from its initial stipulation that “waste be removed daily from the premises in tightly covered containers.”

Clerk Cornell told the meeting that while 29 households harbor three dogs, only three homes harbor between five and nine dogs.  That’s apart from the additional five registered purebred breeders, according to the clerk’s licensing data.

One Lynch amendment that did not survive the night was to strip from the proposed law its “Section 13” regulations for “Designated Off-Leash Areas and Dog Parks.” 

Enfield does not have a dog park.  Supervisor Redmond made clear that no such park is planned.  If one were proposed, it would require a separate public hearing.  And meeting attendees made it clear they would not want a dog park… ever.

“The dog parks are not working out,” one speaker commented, referencing the dog park in Ithaca. 

“I have seen dogs kill other dogs.  I have seen people fighting over their dogs,” the commenter claimed. “I have picked up I don’t know how many dead dogs and given them back to their owners.”

Section 13 was apparently boilerplate; language the attorney had cut and pasted from a draft law far more applicable to some other, more urbanized place.  Nevertheless, despite the provision’s inapplicability and the public opposition to dog parks in general, the motion to delete the section never moved to a vote for lack of a second.  Redmond said she’d prefer keeping options open for a possible dog park in the long-distant future.

Similarly rejected was Lynch’s call for stripping down the bloated law to its barest of bones; slicing away all the surplus regulations and appending the fee changes Clerk Cornell had sought to the old, 2010 law.

And as a final failed amendment, revisiting a provision that had raised emotions at last July’s contentious review session, yet has received scant attention since, the Town Board failed to second and thus cast aside Lynch’s effort to clarify liability rules.  The amendment would have made clear that even though the law would provide an “affirmative defense” to a dog owner whose animal attacks another animal—such as a cat—when it trespasses onto the dog owner’s own property, the allowance would not preclude the victim pet’s owner from suing for damages in court.

“I don’t make mistakes often, but I think earlier tonight I did make a mistake, and that was to vote for the Dog Law,” this writer, Councilperson Lynch, said, at the close of Wednesday’s meeting, nearly four hours after the session had begun. 

“It would have passed anyway,” Lynch said of the law, “but I thought there had to be additional protections for people who own other domestic animals who may be harmed by a predatory dog.”

After the meeting, Councilperson Lemke, an attorney, emailed this Town Board member to assert that the affirmative defense posture taken within the new law reflects New York case law.   Any higher, “strict liability” standard for dog liability, she argued, the courts will not accept. 

“I maintain that the law we adopted last night reinforces a “Castle Doctrine” approach to dog ownership, one that goes beyond the legal interpretations of the New York Courts,” Lynch stated in reply to Lemke.  “The Board majority appears to accept this position.  I do not.”

###

Coronation, Not Competition

Party filings propel Enfield incumbents toward reelection; prospects for primaries, fall face-offs dim

by Robert Lynch; April 3, 2025

Unless one or more independent candidates suddenly emerge from the political thicket, this November’s elections in Enfield—and for that matter, in much of Tompkins County—could prove not worth the bother.  As it stands now, with party petitioning completed and documents filed, all incumbents now holding Enfield Town office would win reelection unopposed.

What’s more, in the two Tompkins County Legislature races Enfield voters get to decide, in neither instance would any voter be given a choice. 

Republican Randy Brown faces no Democratic or intra-party competition in the district that represents Enfield’s southern half.  Ulysses political newcomer Rachel Ostlund confronts neither a primary challenger nor a Republican rival in her bid to succeed the retiring incumbent, Anne Koreman, who represents Enfield’s northern neighborhoods on the Legislature.

Thursday, April third marked the state-dictated deadline for party Designating Petitions to be filed.

In Enfield, incumbent three-term Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond was the only party designee, Democrat or Republican, to file for the office she now holds.  Redmond’s fellow Democrats Jude Lemke and Cassandra Hinkle filed unimpeded for new terms as well. 

No Republicans petitioned to challenge the incumbent Democrats on the Enfield Town Board.  And no other Democrats petitioned to challenge Redmond, Lemke or Hinkle either.

Similarly, no political drama has emerged in races for other Enfield town offices.

Republican Barry “Buddy” Rollins has petitioned for this, his ninth consecutive term as Highway Superintendent.  Rollins was first elected to oversee Enfield’s roads in 2009.  Two years ago, Rollins faced a challenge from within his party.  But opponent Chris Willis lost that race badly.  This year, neither Willis nor anyone else from either party has chosen to run against Rollins.

Likewise, Town Clerk Mary Cornell appears headed toward easy reelection.  Only Cornell petitioned for Town Clerk, an office she’s held since her appointment in 2021 to fill a sudden vacancy.

In the repeat of a procedure that equates to “I’ll scratch your back, if you’ll scratch mine,” Enfield Democrats and Republicans have cross-endorsed Republican Rollins and Democrat Cornell for re-election.  The parties had employed the same practice two years ago.

And this time, Republicans also cross-endorsed Jude Lemke for Councilperson.  The GOP did not provide a similar cross-endorsement for Supervisor Redmond or Councilperson Hinkle.

An important change affecting several Enfield offices takes hold this cycle.  Some terms of office will carry extended length. 

Voters last year approved extending future terms for Enfield Supervisor, Highway Superintendent and Town Clerk from two years to four.  Under normal circumstances, that would mean candidates elected to those positions this fall would serve through 2029.  However, a state law aimed at conforming most local elections to even-numbered years, the same as for the President or Governor, will force a one-time shortening of the new terms to just three years. 

The state law enacting the change faces a legal challenge.  The case is currently before New York’s highest Court.

The petition filing completed Thursday assures there’ll be no Enfield political primary this June 24^th.  And while the party designations just filed point to an off-year Enfield election that would become little more than a coronation of the incumbents, what occurs within the next few weeks could lessen that certainty.

Any Enfield registered voter—Democrat, Republican or Independent—can petition for an independent line on the November ballot.  The separate, later petitioning process bypasses a party primary and also enables unaffiliated voters—those not registered under any party banner—to participate in the political process. 

Independent petitioning begins April 15 and concludes May 27.  The Tompkins County Board of Election’s website indicates that 67 valid petition signatures will get an Enfield candidate onto the November 4^th General Election ballot.

In neighboring Newfield, at least on the Republican side, a spark of political life exists.  Three Republicans, incumbent Christine Seamon, and challengers Michael Corbett and Christopher Hyer Jr., have petitioned for two seats on the Newfield Town Board.  There’ll need to be a primary.

Enfield stands not alone in demonstrating an inherent lack of candidate fervor at this point in the off-year cycle.  In the race for Tompkins County Legislature, to be newly-expanded to 16 members, as many as 13 of those seats will see no competition this year, either in the June primary or later in the General Election.

In only one district, that representing northern Lansing, is a Republican-Democrat match-up assured.  In that district, Lansing Republican Mike Sigler, on tap to become the Legislature’s longest-serving member, faces a Democratic challenger, James Perkins.

One Ithaca City district, the one held until recent days by Democrat Susan Currey, faces a two-way primary contest for the Democratic nomination.  But it has no Republican contest in the fall. 

The Caroline-Danby district to be vacated by the Legislature’s current chairman, Dan Klein, faces the fiercest intra-party battle.  Three Democrats, Irene Weiser, Kyle Emily Erikson, and Matt Sullivan, have filed to represent Klein’s newly-numbered District 13.  Still, no Republican has petitioned for the legislative seat there.

Thursday’s petition filings confirmed one heretofore unreported fact.  One-term Republican County Legislator Lee Shurtleff will seek a second term in his Groton-based District 9.  To date, Shurtleff had been silent as to his reelection intentions.  His district is perhaps the most ruby-red of any in Tompkins County.

With long-time legislator Mike Lane’s planned retirement at years end, one could speculate about the prospects for a Republican pick-up in Lane’s eastern Dryden district.  But unless a Republican runs as an independent this year, it will not happen.

In 2021, his most recent re-election run, Democrat Lane won by a mere eight votes in a nail-biter of a contest.  It ended with a count of absentee ballots.  With Lane now departing and with District 10 ripe for picking, one would expect Republicans to compete fiercely.  But Thursday’s filings revealed that only Democrat Dan Wakeman will seek to become Mike Lane’s successor.  Wakeman faces no challenge.

Indeed, based on party petitioning alone, Republicans hold no hope for expanding their meager minority status on the Tompkins County Legislature.  Only current incumbents Sigler, Shurtleff, and Randy Brown filed petitions to secure GOP ballot lines.  Republican influence would weaken further by the fact that the Legislature will expand from 14 to 16 members next year.  Add to that the reality that Sigler must hold back a Democratic challenge in the fall.

Thursday’s political filings left one bit of unfinished business:  Who will represent Legislative District twelve?

No candidate, Republican or Democrat, has filed a designating petition for the County Legislature in District 12, situated in the southeastern corner of the Town of Ithaca.  One presumes an independent candidate will file for the seat during subsequent petitioning.  If not, the seat would head into the fall unfilled.

 But back to Enfield:  Unless something unexpected occurs these next two months—either an independent candidate emerges, or some last-minute write-in candidacy takes flight—the 2025 off-year elections may find themselves tempting to ignore.  There’d be no debates, no yard signs, and no candidates knocking at one’s door.  Those on the ballot would have no need to do so. They could coast.

Some may find that kind of a respite from politics a welcome relief.  But elections are held for a purpose; to compare and contrast; to make meaningful choices, to chart a community’s future direction.  Again, unless something changes, expect little of that to happen this time around.

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ICSD hits brakes on electric bus-buying

School Board mulls budget; names new IHS Principal

by Robert Lynch; March 29, 2025

The Ithaca City School District (ICSD) will ask voters in about six weeks to buy eleven new school buses, part of an annual replacement and upgrading of the fleet.  But unlike last year—and flying in the face of an eventual state mandate—not a single one of those buses will be electric.

The Ithaca Board of Education’s decision March 25^th to delay further fleet electrification accompanied the board’s first, all-member review of School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown’s $169 Million proposed budget.  Members also appointed long-time elementary principal and teacher Caren Arnold as Ithaca High School Principal, and heard more than a half-dozen ICSD faculty fault the district for offering raises too small during ongoing contract talks.

Hitting pause on electric bus purchases, according to ICSD officials, is not a matter of choice, but one of necessity.  The needed electricity to energize those buses simply isn’t available.

“We know right now that whether or not ICSD was ready for electric buses, our infrastructure—and not just the ICSD’s infrastructure, (but also) the power grid—would not support us at this point in time being able to get electric buses,” Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell explained in support of  the board’s self-imposed purchase moratorium. 

Last year, the board first asked Ithaca district voters to buy four electric buses, part of an eight-bus transportation purchase.  After an angry electorate rejected the initial request, doing so along with every other spending proposition on the ballot, the school board sliced the transportation request in half, voters approved the trimmed package, and two electric buses were bought.  

But buying an electric bus does not necessarily bring to that bus the electricity it needs.  Nor does it assure administrators and the public that a bus that runs on batteries will hold the stamina to finish its route.  On both points, Ithaca finds the drive toward meeting the state’s electrification mandate an uphill climb.

Governor Kathy Hochul has ordered that beginning in 2027, all new school buses purchased in New York State must be electric-powered.   And she’s ordered that a decade from now, every school bus must be zero-emission.  Easy to dictate from the Governor’s mansion.  Tough to implement in the field.

“At this point in time, the Governor’s mandate stands,” Eversley Bradwell cautioned the board.  “There’s debate about whether that will continue, but by 2035, the entire ICSD fleet—(indeed) every public school district in the New York State’s bus fleet—needs to be full of zero-emission buses.”

At last count, the ICSD runs 88 buses.  Only eight of them are now electric.  The district maintains a ten-year replacement cycle.  So on average, it needs to buy eight or nine buses every year.  If the mandate holds, buying absolutely no electrics this year would prompt a latter-day game of catch-up.

Still, the nearly $2.27 Million spending proposition board members put onto the ballot this past Tuesday moves about as close to a Green New Fleet as practicality seems possible. 

Each of the eleven new buses proposed for purchase would be an “ultra-low emission propane bus.”  Six would be 70-passenger buses for “long range travel.”  Three would be 30-passenger buses.  Two more would be 66-passenger buses equipped for wheelchairs.

“Even if the district wanted to go all-electric, it takes some long-term planning,” Eversley Bradwell admitted.

“We will not be able to do our entire fleet electric,” a transportation official advised the board that night.  “It’s just an impossibility at this point.”

Batteries that power electric buses are getting better, the transportation official told the board.  But they’re still not good enough to enable every bus to finish its task without grinding to a halt.  Under current technology, the official estimated, only “sixty percent” of buses could be electric.

Listed as “Proposition 2,” the proposed $2.27 Million capital appropriation would also include amounts for renovations at Cayuga Heights Elementary School “to include gymnasium dividers, exterior door repairs, and floor repairs.”

Prop. 2 spending would come from capital reserves, not new taxation.  The spending will be decided in the May 20^th referendum.  Proposition 1 on that ballot will be the district budget.  Budget figures will likely become final in early-April.

Specifics as to which kinds of buses the district would buy weren’t added to the school board’s agenda until the day of the meeting.   Therefore, environmental activists had no time to organize opposition.  The matter drew no public comment at the meeting.  The board president acknowledges it could draw fire at future sessions.

What’s more, school board members spent little time discussing the electric bus decision that night.  The proposition’s authorization came as part of a routine resolution that set the date, times, and polling locations for the May 20^th referendum.  Emily Workman was seen abstaining from the authorization, but she never explained why she did.

Board member Karen Yearwood reported that those on ICSD’s student-based Climate Justice Alliance have already registered concerns.

“The student group was disheartened that we as a board of the school district are not moving ahead and purchasing electric buses,” Yearwood informed her colleagues.  “And I reminded them that the community said that we need to slow down, and we listened to the community last year,” Yearwood stated.

Critics have faulted electric school buses over time for lots of reasons: their unreliability, an inadequate charging infrastructure, the risk of catastrophic fires, and of no small consequence, their cost.  Each electric school bus costs close to a half-million dollars, about twice that of a standard diesel bus.

And the unspoken question always hangs out there:  Is it better to invest scarce resources to marginally help the planet or to substantively teach a kid?

School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown, Assistant Superintendent for Business Dominick Lisi, and a flock of four fellow administrators officially presented the school board the administration’s proposed next-year’s budget March 25^th.  Aside from its slightly reduced total, little had changed from a draft budget presented the board two weeks earlier.

The 2025-26 budget the Superintendent now proposes, totals $169,031,619.  That’s up 3.69 percent from the finally-approved budget of the current fiscal year, yet down from the nearly $171 Million budget that Dr. Brown had initially proposed for 2024-25, but which the school board—and then the voters—had demanded be reduced.

But less noticed, the new budget’s proposed spending has fallen almost $780,000 from the $169.8 Million draft budget presented the school board at an earlier session March 11.  The change never drew discussion at the latest meeting.  Yet a spreadsheet comparison reveals that a $500,000 reduction from a line labeled only as “Other Central Services” accounts for most of the difference.

Year-to-year, the Administration’s revised budget:

• Sets total spending at $169,031,619, up 3.69 percent (it had risen 4.17% two weeks earlier);
• Sets the total Tax Levy at $115,031,984, up 3.76 percent;
• Raises the projected Tax Rate from $14.80 to $15.20 per thousand, a 2.7 percent increase.
• Signals the district would tap nearly $6.8 Million from fund balances and reserves to moderate the tax levy. (For the current year, the budget drew upon fund balances by just over $7 Million.)

“We have needed to use our reserves and fund balances to plug budget gaps and budget holes,” Superintendent Brown admitted.  He doesn’t like that practice.  “We are using our savings account to fund operational things in a way we should not be doing,” Brown said.

When the draft budget got its unveiling a fortnight earlier, only five board members had attended the meeting.  Todd Fox, elected last year as a watchdog conservative, was absent then.  So was Erin Croyle, a perceived liberal defender of a vibrant curriculum.  But both sat at the table March 25th.  Fox spoke little.  But Croyle spoke much.

“We’re not looking at any cuts, but we’re also not looking at adding anything back that we had,” Croyle captiously asked of the Superintendent, Croyle referring to voter-demanded austerity measures imposed last summer that had canceled courses and downsized teaching staff.

Brown replied that he’d plan to keep “the same ratios and formulas” as were imposed last year, including a minimum 15-student class size.  “That was a tough move and a difficult and challenging move for us last spring,” Brown conceded.  “We’re getting used to that new approach to staffing;” but to Croyle’s point, “not a restoration.”

Disheartened by what she’d just heard, Erin Croyle pressed the superintendent further.

“Being a community member with three students in our district, I hear concerns about the programs we have being cut, things that are seemingly extras” Croyle cautioned.  “People are really concerned that they’re going to have to be fighting to keep some of those things that feel like extras that really aren’t.”  Could such programs “be on the chopping block,” Croyle asked?

“What we have right now will stay,” Superintendent Brown assured Croyle.  “There are no recommended reductions in programs, period,” he insisted.  Still, he qualified that changes in “enrollment patterns” and student interest could always affect what’s offered in the fall

Of course, that’s the superintendent’s intent.  First the school board—and then the voters—must have their say.  Another budget planning session could come as soon as April first.  Discussion will definitely come at a meeting on April 8.

Add to the fiscal uncertainty the wild card of still-unresolved contract negotiations with unionized teachers. 

As many as eight members of the Ithaca Teachers Association addressed the Board of Education at the start of its meeting.  Most read from prepared statements—speakers willingly acknowledging a coordinated union campaign—each teacher calling upon the Ithaca District to elevate its salary offer from the current 4.59 percent annual increase to a much-larger 7.5 percent raise for each of the next four years.

Elizabeth Crawford, a high school instructor in advanced writing, said she’s needed to visit a food pantry and access public assistance.  Sam Trechter, a teacher at Caroline Elementary, claimed he could earn $10,000 more annually by working in a neighboring district.  Northeast Elementary School’s Meg Burke claimed she works three jobs and argued teachers shouldn’t need to work “side hustles,” in her case, cleaning houses, to make ends meet.  Burke called her salary “barely survivable.”

“ICSD is located in an Ivy League town,” Burke observed, reading from the union’s script.  “Tompkins County has one of the highest median incomes in upstate New York.  ICSD administrators are paid above the New York State average. This is a community that appears affluent by every measure except when it comes to retaining teachers.”

“If these are some of our most valuable educators, I just wonder what direction we can go to pay people what they’re worth,” Erin Croyle later questioned.

But then, again, what would happen if whatever budget the Board of Education hands up gets rejected at the polls this May similar to what happened last year?   Board President Eversley-Bradwell wants a back-up plan.  The president asked administrators to draw us a bare-bones “Contingency Budget” just in case.

Buses, budgets and teacher pay aside, what may carry the longest-lasting impact on Ithaca’s students came almost matter-of-fact, sandwiched between money items at an all-too-busy monthly meeting.  Without discussion, the board elevated three-decade Ithaca teacher and administrator Caren Arnold to become the new Principal at Ithaca High School.

Arnold first joined the district as a teacher in 1993.  She currently serves as principal at Caroline Elementary.  Effective June 15^th, Arnold will transfer to IHS, succeeding the retiring Jason Trumble, who’d served as IHS Principal since 2015.

Superintendent Luvelle Brown commended Arnold as “the best teacher I’ve ever seen; the most loving person I’ve ever seen.”

“Caroline Elementary is thriving because of her leadership,” Brown said of Arnold.  “And she knew that we needed somebody at the High School, and she stood up and said, ‘Send me.’”

“Thank you for your support, Caren Arnold responded from the visitor’s gallery at York Lecture Hall.  “I have really big shoes to fill.”

“I hope to show that we can all work together,” the High School’s principal-designee commented. “We have an opportunity to really bring our community together.”

Most recently, Vice Principal Martha Hardesty has overseen Ithaca High while Trumble has been on leave.

Superintendent Brown took the moment to commend departing principal Trumble as well.

“He has a High School he can say he served as Principal of for a decade that has been recognized as one of the best high schools in the nation,” Brown remarked.  “The hardest job in this community… is being Principal in the High School,” the Superintendent asserted.  And of Trumble:   “I know what the toughest job is.  And I know how long he works.  And he did it well, and I love him.”

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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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