Designers, lawmakers agonize, tangle over Center of Government
“They’d (his constituents) said very clear they’d prefer to go to the mall.”
Newfield/Enfield Legislator Randy Brown, Center of Government debate, June 16.
“Well, the mall’s not going to be an option.”
Legislature Chair Shawna Black, same meeting.
Reporting and analysis by Robert Lynch; June 20, 2026
Yes, it would have showers; changing rooms too. Why would an office worker need to bathe and dress on the job? Good question. Oh wait, the architect wants us to ride our bikes to work, instead of drive. Wise idea, since there wouldn’t be many places to park.
Welcome to Tompkins County’s newly-shrunk—yet quite politically correct—Downtown Center of Government.
For nearly an hour last Tuesday night, the Tompkins County Legislature listened—and reacted—as Holt Architects’ Quay Thompson, the Center of Government’s lead designer, detailed the latest changes his firm has made to the ambitious project, including its centerpiece jewel, the 45,000-square foot office building at the corner of North Tioga and East Buffalo Streets in downtown Ithaca. His were changes made by necessity. They’d contain the project to within a $50 Million budget, a price cap that’s supposedly hard and fast.
Gone is the building’s fourth floor (well, kind-of). Its ground footprint is pulled in a trifle, both at the side and the rear. Yet holding true to its Green New Deal bona fides, the structure would remain framed of wood timbers, not steel. It would treat windows with “bird-friendly glazing.” It would heat, cool, and power everything only with electricity (of course). And there’d be geothermal, too.
But with all that said, Holt has pared the structure to the point that the County Administrator wouldn’t be able to work there.
That face-only-a-mother-could-love façade, a hybrid of brick and stone, would remain the same as it was when unveiled last December. And so would those annoying third-floor sunshades across every window, shades that hauntingly resemble fake eye lashes. Street side, you’d hardly notice a difference from December’s rendering. Municipality names would remain tacked along the side, if for no apparent reason. And no, there wouldn’t be a basement.
“I think you came up with something pleasant and nice, and I think it fits the bill,” Dryden representative Greg Mezey said approvingly of Thompson’s redesign. He gave Holt’s redo the most praise of anyone.
But even Mezey didn’t welcome everything. A plainly-faced, penthouse-sized smidgen of a fourth floor—that’s where the showers would be—remains in the plan. Of that, the Dryden lawmaker said, “It looks kind of like a trailer plopped on top of a beautiful government building.”
Cast adrift by a pair of deadlocked votes at their meeting March 3, Tompkins County legislators have defaulted to a pledge they’d made last year to build a Center of Government no larger than 45,000 square feet and costing no more than $50 Million.
And for Holt Architects, that promise posed a problem. During their six months of architectural refinement between last June and December, designers came to realize they’d need as much as 57,000 square feet to shelter all of the departments Tompkins County wanted to put in the center. And the bigger the building got, the more it would cost. Estimates of $60 Million or more got tossed about.
Cutting corners became Holt’s big challenge these past three months.
“I’m going to show the one thing that sort of solves this entire problem,” Thompson told legislators in his freshened, June 16 presentation. “We made the Center of Government smaller by taking County Administration, Human Resources, and Planning out of the new building.” he said.
The revisions Thompson shared that night were the same ones he’d described to a sub-set of legislators at a committee meeting May 21. They sounded odd then. They still do. Why target these three departments? Their culling sounds ill-conceived.
If the Center of Government is truly a place where most Tompkins County office staffers do their day’s labor, doesn’t it make sense to have the big boss there in the building, maybe sitting in a top-floor corner office? Shouldn’t the personnel administrator be in the building as well? And Planning is a department whose tentacles reach out to overlap many others.
There’s a sense of randomness to the departmental shuffle Quay Thompson has advanced, apparently with the blessing of County Administrator Korsah Akumfi.
“Who’s decided who’s going to be in this building?” Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown asked Akumfi. “Is this a proposal, or are you telling us this is the way it’s going to be?”
“This is a proposal,” Akumfi answered. “This building is being built to be very flexible,” he explained. Akumfi and Thompson indicated that departmental placements could change even before the building is finished three years from now.
“I think it’s really important to know definitely who’s going to be in the (building) when you design it,” Brown rebutted.
To shrink the new building down to its mandated size, Akumfi’s department, Administration, as well as Human Resources, would return to the Old Jail, a building that until recently had housed both those departments for decades,. Planning would remain on the Legislature building’s first floor. Gone is any talk of spilling significant legislative space onto that ground floor of legislative chambers, the Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins Building, and putting conference rooms and legislator offices there.
Meanwhile, Tompkins County’s Office for the Aging (COFA), soon to move temporarily to an office park in Lansing, would become a Center of Government ground floor resident. Designers doggedly place COFA’s foot inside the new building, even though legislator Brown says it makes no sense.
“These are people, elderly people, that really come to visit,” Brown said of Office for the Aging patrons. “And they don’t want to come down here,” he said of seniors visiting downtown.
Brown recalled that at a Newfield Town Hall meeting, older constituents were “all on me” to make their case. They want accessibility, Brown said. “I don’t see a lot of access here,” he said of the Center of Government site. “I’m worried about that.”
“Item number one should be accessibility for constituents,” Brown stated emphatically. “And this does not address that.”
Tompkins County’s march toward a Center of Government has always resembled that of a healthy, 50-year old scheduling his first colonoscopy. There’s desire to get the job done, but also a temptation to postpone the inevitable. Fear of the consequences prompts anxiety and encourages delay.
The corner lot on which the $50 Million building would sit was purchased nearly five years ago. Secret negotiations to buy the pair of properties actually commenced a couple of years before that. Since 2021, there’ve been endless design meetings, bureaucratic impediments, indecision, and snail’s pace progress.
In a key legislative decision in September 2023, leaders voted overwhelmingly “to proceed with Space, Architectural, and Engineering Plans for a Center of Government.” Lawmakers reaffirmed and sharpened their commitment in June of last year, setting both the projected 45,000 square foot size limit and the $50 Million cost ceiling.
Yet when they voted last summer, Akumfi acknowledged that the vision the Legislature had set for the project was “not a binding document,” but “just a direction from all of you to tell us that there is a commitment for us to move the project forward.”
Then this past March, when Thompson and team realized they couldn’t pack all the departments our county wanted into a building so small and priced so low, legislators looked anew, yet failed to change course. They voted down making the building larger and more expensive than before. They also defeated a second resolution that would have made it smaller and cheaper.
Resulting from the March impasse, a $50 Million, 45,000 square foot building survived as the default, Goldilocks choice. It’s constrained the architects ever since.
But there’s little time for continued delay. If timetables hold, construction contracts will go to bid around Halloween. Legislators will award bids near the turn of the year. Work will commence shortly thereafter.
And dragging things out brings only pain. With construction expenses rising at 4.75 percent annually, Thompson warned that every extra month adds $200,000 to the cost. That’s $2.4 Million in a year.
Legislators cast no votes on the Center of Government project June 16. And the majority showed little desire to retreat from prior commitments. Randy Brown proved the exception.
The Republican from Newfield took on the project from several fronts. He faulted its location and its operational priorities. And when he did, it put Brown squarely at odds with Legislature Chair Shawna Black, a Center of Government supporter, albeit a cautious one. Theirs produced the evening’s most riveting exchanges.
Brown objected to placing “front-facing” departments, like COFA and Assessment, in the building. “I think it should be administrative focused,” he said. Cluster departments that “work closer together,” Brown advocated. And if you attempt “to bring people downtown who don’t want to come downtown, they’re not going to come.”
“That is going to be an operations decision and Korsah will make that decision,” Black said of departmental placement. Even though the Legislature is Akumfi’s boss, Black would delegate to the Administrator the operational power otherwise accorded to an elected County Executive. “It shouldn’t be 16 legislators being lobbied by different departments” as to whether they’d be in the building or not, Black insisted.
“That just doesn’t make sense,” Brown said of leaving office assignments for Akumfi to decide. “I want to see logic. There’s no logic to this,” he observed.
”We respect our department heads, right? And their opinions,” Brown challenged the chairwoman. “And they gave it to us and we go, ‘You know, we don’t care about that because we’re going to leave it, the decision, to somebody else.’”
The project would reduce the supply of parking, yet increase its demand, of course, The nearby Seneca Street ramp has closed permanently. And the Center of Government, once built, would cut on-site employee spaces from 104 to 93, a reduction that understates the true squeeze, since many of the slots are always reserved for State Court’s employees.
“I just don’t get it,” an animated Randy Brown continued. “My constituents have made it loud and clear. Enfield did a Resolution to say, please, we don’t want to come down there.”
“I’m not sure your Newfield people would want to go anywhere outside of Newfield, right?” an impatient and annoyed Shawna Black tossed back the argument.
“That’s not fair,” Brown rebounded. “They’ve said very clear they’d prefer to go to the mall. They’ve said that very clearly.”
“Well the mall’s not going to be an option. We voted against the mall,” Shawna Black reminded her critic.
But have they? To the best recollection, legislators have never cast a stand-alone, up or down vote on whether to relocate governmental offices to Lansing’s vastly-ghosted Shops at Ithaca Mall, at least not in public session. One can only infer rejection from other votes taken to double-down on downtown.
Nor has the Legislature formally and publicly dismissed another fallback option; quartering departments in modern, low-slung buildings at the Cornell Business Park. They’re nearby the airport and begging for a buyer. Black, Akumfi and others would like us to believe the business park’s been tossed aside as well.
But has it? Listen to our Legislature’s Chair:
“We’re looking at a situation at the airport that I think most of you know about,” Shawna Black remarked at the meeting, her enigmatic message directed to insiders’ ears only. “We don’t know if that’s going to pan out,” she piqued curiosity. “If it pans out, it moves people everywhere. And so we have a lot of balls in the air.”
Black did not reveal more. But we do know that the bank which had foreclosed on the Business Park developer’s mortgage would love to sell us some buildings. Those many closed sessions that legislators hold after public business is done hold a purpose. Remember Black’s words.
Many of those you’d expect to speak during the June 16 Center of Government discussions remained silent. And those who did offer opinions usually stuck to a congratulatory script or else turned to the superfluous stuff—like those employee showers.
“As a runner, I can say it’s also nice to have showers so you could run on your lunch break and then go back,” freshman legislator Iris Packman remarked.
In fact, Packman would go one step beyond and install “a small gym” with a couple of workout machines, “something for people on very cold, icy days,” she said.
“Anything is possible,” Quay Thompson answered her.
Veronica Pillar also liked the shower idea. She reiterated her call for public restrooms and an outside drinking fountain.
But as Greg Mezey saw it, at some point the change orders—big or small—must stop.
“I think it’s very important to my colleagues that we lock and load, and we trust, and we figure it out, and we dial in whatever project we’re going to move forward with,” Mezey asserted. “Because if we keep throwing change curveballs in the process, it’s going to get so expensive, and $50 Million can go out the door very quickly.”
“We can have some minor debate,” Mezey admitted. “But really the big debate is over.”
Greg Mezey might like to believe it. But is it true?
A mere four months before the Center of Government bid documents hit the table, a nervous unease still pervades the process. Critics like Randy Brown continue to pepper leadership with questions tough to answer. Office placement remains a game of musical chairs. Competing visions fight for attention. And what about that “situation at the airport,” tossed out to tease us?
Meanwhile, costs escalate. And because they do, no one can predict how high those bids will come in. They could break the bank or kill the project.
“So here’s the issue moving forward,” Shawna Black laid plain as she pushed back on Randy Brown’s go-to-the-mall alternative. “We’re committed to doing a $50 Million building. We’re not going to let our employees dictate where they want to be. We are going to listen to our constituents. And everything that Quay is proposing here, he said this is not our final presentation,” Black cautioned.
“So I would ask that people calm down. We’re going to figure this out,” the Legislature’s Chair sought to assure us. (Did she?) “You know, I think we have a lot of growing to do. And I don’t want to get wrapped up in who’s going where right now, because we have a lot of moving pieces.”
Yes, when it comes to the Center of Government, the Tompkins County Legislature is, indeed, that 50 year old who never books his colonoscopy. And to Randy Brown: Yes, it would be so simple—and likely cheaper—to just go to the mall… or to someplace else. You can even put the showers and treadmill there.
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Board hastens big-bucks buy at Rollins’ urging
Enfield wrap-up: Town leaders renew call to save lives at Applegate Corners
by Robert Lynch; June 16, 2026
When the Enfield Town Board convened to conduct its monthly business June 10, none of its five members knew that they’d be spending more than $200,000 that night to buy a big, new dump truck. But that’s what they did.
In a sudden move that prompted on-the-fly budget math, a desperate call to the town bookkeeper, and a pointed dissent from one board member, Enfield leaders last Wednesday accelerated by a full year their planned purchase of the 10-wheeler, all because Enfield Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins said he wanted it.
In most any newsroom, the purchase of a dump truck—even by a smaller community where such spending can strangle a budget—prompts rolled eyes and open-mouthed yawns from editors. “Who cares?” they’d ask.
Some may posit the same question here. But in Enfield, last week’s action opens a window into how today’s Town Board majority conducts business, especially when addressing impromptu spending appeals by the Highway Superintendent, a man Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond bends over backwards to please.
At meeting’s start June 10, Redmond closed off attempts to read into the record a constituent’s correspondence critical of Rollins’ department’s ditch management practices on Tucker Road. Also that night, she deflected criticism of the superintendents’ latest tree-cutting dispute, this time involving a resident complaint on Buck Hill Road.
Two months ago, the Supervisor had defended Rollins and peeved an Enfield Center resident in the process when that person and her partner came to allege that the Highway Superintendent’s inaction had worsened damage to their property during a March 31 flash flood. Rollins had exited the April 8 meeting early and angry.
“You’re off base. You’re wrong, both of you. You’re out of line,” Rollins had blurted out to the complainants, defensively denouncing their allegations of supposed inaction.
“I totally appreciate all the work that you did,” Supervisor Redmond complimented Rollins after the fiery exchange, speaking as she also cut off the accusers and sought to restore order. “I appreciate the work that you were doing. Thank you so much,” the Supervisor repeated to Rollins moments before he left.
Barry Rollins never stayed around to give his own departmental report to the Town Board that April night. In May, Redmond said Rollins had been excused from attending for reasons never explained.
So by the June 10 meeting, the Highway Superintendent had business to transact. For him, perhaps, it was a request long overdue. But for board members, it came as a complete surprise.
“One thing I wanted to bring up,” Rollins stated during his Superintendent’s report, 47 minutes into the June 10 meeting. “We’re supposed to replace another ten-wheeler in 2028. And they’re telling me trucks are two years out to build,” he said. “So I’m wantin’ to ask about buying a truck this year.”
“And how that works now,” Rollins explained, “is you’ve got to buy the cab and chassis and pay for that, but the equipment you don’t have to pay for it until it’s put on the truck.”
Eighteen minutes after Barry Rollins said those words, the Town Board, voting four to one, bought the cab and chassis. A formal resolution was never written. A precise dollar figure was never assigned, although a range of $190,000 to $220,000 was tossed around at one point. Even the exact model number of the Western Star frame was based on the Superintendent’s best recollection.
“I cannot vote for it tonight because it’s hasty decision making,” Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) stated before casting the board’s lone dissent. “I can’t spend $200,000 with only maybe five-to-ten minutes’ discussion. That’s not responsible budgeting, so I will be voting no.”
“You should be supporting me instead of fighting me,” Rollins later told Lynch, rebuking him when the topic later turned to Lynch’s reporting the Buck Hill Road constituent’s complaint about tree cutting. “Don’t criticize me for doing my job. You should be thanking us for doing our job,” Rollins insisted.
Between the Highway Superintendents appeal for purchasing authority and the Town Board’s final vote, Supervisor Redmond went out of her way to accommodate Rollins’ sudden request.
To be clear, the Town of Enfield intended to buy the ten-wheeler eventually, starting next year. The Town’s Capital Plan, renewed annually, most recently last fall, called for a $200,000 down payment to be made in 2027, with three, annual $73,442 loan payments thereafter. Budget math puts the truck’s total projected cost at $420,336, principal plus interest.
Monthly financial records before the Town Board June 10 suggested a $404,572 balance in equipment reserves, more than enough to speed up a purchase that hadn’t been planned for yet another year. The custodian of those records, Town Bookkeeper Blixy Taetzsch, wasn’t in the room that night. So Redmond texted her at home, invited her into the meeting remotely, and she joined.
“I would say, yes, go for it,” Taetzsch advised the board after giving the balance sheet an ever-so-quick inspection. “If you don’t do this now, you’re not going to have it (the truck) in service when you need it,” she reasoned. “And I do think there’s enough money in the reserves.”
Yet the review was hurried and more than a little unsettling, especially given the magnitude of the outlay. Why Rollins could not have anticipated the supply chain logjam and approached the Town Board a month or two earlier never arose in the discussions.
Two factors drove Superintendent Rollins to seek accelerated purchase of the ten-wheeler, a machine that won’t make its way to the Enfield highway barn for two more years.
First, there’s the business divide between the company that manufactures the truck and the firm that later attaches the needed add-ons like the box and snow plow. The cab and chassis manufacturer finishes the basics within a few months of order, but then the unit sits idle for up to two years awaiting the rest of what’s needed.
Nonetheless, the truck’s manufacturer wants its money up-front. And yes, there’s a waiting list.
Rollins told the board that one truck maker, Freightliner, is already booked for the year. A second manufacturer, Western Star, as of meeting night, had only 19 openings left for the year. By waiting another month, Rollins predicted, those slots would be filled by other buyers.
As for the second reason, Rollins prefers to purchase a current year’s model, not a 2027 truck. Governmental rules will impose new and costly emissions standards next year, he warned. They’d add $20,000 to $30,000 to a truck’s price, he predicted. And untested, they could pose problems.
“I move we postpone this decision for at least a week,” Lynch proposed when the purchase resolution (such as it was) reached the floor. His postponement effort died for lack of a second.
Having failed to give the purchase some breathing room, Lynch then moved to fund the acquisition in part by delaying a budgeted $165,000 mower tractor’s purchase until next year. Buying that tractor has proven controversial in its own right. Again, the motion received no second.
And yet what happened June 10 served as a telling example of how Enfield Highway Department equipment often gets bought. Decisions often arrive with minimal deliberative forethought and seat-of-the-pants snap judgments. Whether it should be that way really doesn’t matter. That’s the way it’s done.
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Far less contentious, although with an outcome less predictable, the Enfield Town Board June 10 sent a renewed appeal to the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) seeking an updated traffic study into what’s probably Enfield’s most dangerous intersection, the crossing of Applegate Road with Mecklenburg Road, NY Route 79.
NYSDOT last studied “Applegate Corners” in 2024. State review followed numerous accidents and a December 2023 Enfield Town Board request that state and county traffic engineers” consider any and all improvements that would enhance traffic safety at that intersection.” Suggested remedies then included “upgraded signage, pavement modifications, and/or the installation of new traffic control devices, such as an overhead blinker.”
New York undertook the study. The Department of Transportation, of course, never installed the blinker. Nor did it approve another Enfield request to lower the speed limit on Route 79 east of the intersection to below 55 Miles per Hour. (The limit is 45 MPH west of the crossroads.) But by November of 2024, Scott Bates, the agency’s Regional Traffic Engineer, had promised installation of “low-cost improvements,” primarily new signage, which he determined to be “feasible.” They were later installed.
The Town Board’s most recent attention has turned to a new problem. It’s a recently-set electrical pole at the intersections’ southeast corner, a pole that blocks driver visibility of cross-traffic. It’s worse because the pole that it was supposed to replace has yet to be removed.
“It is the most dangerous intersection in Enfield,” Councilperson Lynch, sponsor of this latest Resolution, told Board members. “It’s a dangerous, terrible intersection.” Lynch continued. “It’s not really a question right now of people being able to stop. It is a question of people not being able to see.”
“That pole is very obstructive,” Lynch told the Town Board. And when driving Applegate Road it’s often impossible to see Route 79 traffic until you’re actually in another vehicle’s path. “People have died there already,” Lynch said. “Something has to be done. I don’t know what it is. I’m not a traffic engineer. But we really need to make that intersection safer.”
The “Resolution Requesting an Updated Traffic Study” at Applegate Corners passed the Town Board unanimously. It asks state and county agencies “to address the need for additional improvements, including but not limited to traffic control devices, foliage removal within the state- or county-maintained right-of-way, and/or the directing of New York State Electric and Gas Corporation to relocate its recently-installed electrical transmission pole to a location posing less of a safety hazard.”
Other Enfield Town Board business handled June 10:
- Tax Cap: By a four-to-one vote, the Town Board set a Public Hearing for July 8 to consider overriding New York State’s tax cap on next year’s tax levy. The hearing’s scheduling comes even though planning of the 2027 Budget has yet to begin and the tax cap for Enfield has yet to be set.
“What’s wrong with doing it in October when we’ve got a budget?” Councilperson Lynch asked.
“Because it kind of pushes everything really tight,” Supervisor Redmond explained. Holding the hearing early, Redmond argued, assures “we have all of our i’s dotted and t’s crossed.” And we don’t “have to push it up against the deadline” or “clog up our meetings” should the need for other hearings arise, Redmond asserted.
“Let’s just do it and get it out of the way,” the Supervisor concluded.
“This is basically thumbing the nose at the taxpayer,” Lynch answered. “We don’t know what the tax cap is. We don’t know what the budget is. We don’t know how much the levy’s going to increase because the budget hasn’t been written yet. So why override the tax cap? It’s kind of a cavalier action. I can’t vote for it.” He didn’t.
- Highway Department Wastewater: Taking parallel action to resolve an ongoing problem that could quickly prove costly, the Town Board approved a lone bid by a Schenectady firm, Precision Industrial Maintenance, to haul away drain wastewater from the Enfield Highway Garage. It’s waste water accumulated mostly from washing down trucks. And it’s water the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Facility (IAWWTF) has refused to accept since late last year.
The hauling contract is pricey: $2,725 per service call—generally once per month— plus 25 cents per gallon of water disposed. The fluid goes all the way to Schenectady. When the IAWWTF had accepted the Drainwater, a monthly pumping generally cost about $900.
Meanwhile, the Town Board authorized a Cortland-based laboratory, Microbac, to test of the drain water. Testing could enable Enfield to eventually obtain a permit and resume using the Ithaca disposal plant. Authorization to pay Microbac its more than $2,300 testing fee awaits final approval of testing procedures by IAWWTF officials.
- FLAIR Powerline Project: The Town Board endorsed a recently submitted “Joint Proposal” by New York State Electric and Gas Corporation, the New York State Public Service Commission and other state agencies toward resolving citizen complaints over the “FLAIR” electrical line reconstruction near the Newfield-Enfield border. Enfield’s adopted Resolution describes the Joint Proposal as a “compromise” that advances both the utility’s interests and Enfield residents’ demands for “economic well-being, health, and community enjoyment.” (See separate reporting.)
- SkateGarden: And on the heels of a $5,000 anonymous gift, accepted May 26, the Town Board appropriated $500 from that fund toward purchasing trees and possibly playground equipment to expand opportunities at Enfield SkateGarden, across from the Town Hall, and make it more than just a skateboard rink. As it took that action, the Board tabled until its July meeting a broader Resolution that would accept and adopt the Cornell Design Connect student recommendations as the “conceptual design model to guide future improvements” at SkateGarden. The tabled measure would also ensure that “all substantial improvements” at the skate park occur only with Town Board consent.
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Powerline Critics Score Win
NYSEG “FLAIR” redo brings shorter poles, familiar design
by Robert Lynch; June 15, 2026
“I was shocked that they were so thoughtful.”
Newfield Town Board member Christine Seamon, reacting to NYSEG’s sudden redesign, June 11.
When New York State Electric and Gas Corporation (NYSEG) rebuilds the high-tension electrical line we drive under near Teet’s scrap yard on Enfield’s Black Oak Road or across Millard Hill Road in Newfield, it’s likely to look nearly the same going forward as it’s always looked for nearly the past century.
In a sudden about-face move that’s surprised just about everybody, NYSEG late last month revised plans for its 21-mile “FLAIR” powerline reconstruction. The change would dramatically reduce the height of the project’s replacement poles from those first proposed and revert to the familiar, twin-pole “H-frame” support configuration that the current line utilizes.
The utility’s change, conveyed in a “Joint Proposal,” filed with the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) by NYSEG and staff attorneys for various state agencies May 28, has or will likely quell public and governmental opposition to the project. The company had initially planned to replace the long-familiar, parallel-draping H-frames with much taller steel monopoles, structures that some residents complained would destroy their scenic views and devalue their properties.
Yes, the adage, “Everything old is new again” applies here.
“I was shocked that they were so thoughtful,” Newfield Councilperson Christine Seamon remarked at her Town Board’s June 11 meeting. “If you bought this property with a pole there, there’s going to be a pole there,” Seamon acknowledged. Still, that said, the situation would become no worse than it’s ever been.
“FLAIR,” an acronym for “Finger Lakes Area Infrastructure Reliability” Project, was advanced by NYSEG to the Public Service Commission in December 2024. FLAIR would rebuild a 20.6 mile-long, 115 kilovolt transmission line, so-called Line 982, on the utility’s existing 100-foot wide right-of-way (ROW) and connect a substation in the Town of Montour, Schuyler County to the Coddington Substation south of Ithaca. The right-of way slices through Enfield’s southwestern corner and across a longer swath of northern Newfield.
NYSEG documents state that the wooden-pole, H-frame line was first built around 1930. It’s stood largely undisturbed ever since. What NYSEG seeks now from the PSC is a “Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need.” The certificate represents an official agency determination that the reconstruction would inflict little environmental or aesthetic harm and also serve the public good.
Both the Newfield and Enfield Town Boards in January submitted formal comments in the proceeding, each local government critical of the original “monopole” design that NYSEG had proposed.
The monopoles, which stack the three transmission wires essentially on top of one another, rather than hang them side-by-side, would have elevated support structural height to an average 95 feet above ground, compared to the 55-foot high wooden H-frame supports that exist now. The amended, H-frame poles, now advanced in the “Joint Proposal,” would stand only an average 75 feet in height. They’d be taller than what’s there now, yet still an average 20-25 feet shorter than the monopoles.
“It’s good news,” Enfield Councilperson Robert Lynch (this story’s author) advised Enfield Town Board colleagues as the board met June 10. “It might be a little more intrusive than it is at present,” he admitted, “but it’s far less intrusive than the 95 foot metal monopoles.”
By a unanimous vote June 10, the Enfield Town Board adopted a Resolution, written by Lynch as Board liaison to the PSC’s FLAIR proceedings. The Resolution affirmed the Town Board’s support for the NYSEG and agency Joint Proposal and for the amended reconstruction design it advanced.
“Resolved, that the Enfield Town Board hereby endorses the Joint Proposal … and urges the New York State Public Service Commission to grant an Article VII Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need for the Finger Lakes Area Infrastructure Reliability (FLAIR) Project, conditioned on NYSEG’s adherence to the revised specifications embodied in the Joint Proposal,” Enfield’s adopted Resolution states.
“This Town Board believes the Joint Proposal… stands as a fair compromise between NYSEG’s needs to meet increased electrical demand and the public interests of Enfield residents to protect their economic well-being, health, and community enjoyment and to minimize the FLAIR proposal’s earlier-identified adverse impacts,” Enfield’s Resolution stated.
Town Clerk Mary Cornell promptly filed Enfield’s adopted Resolution with the New York State Public Service Commission.
One night later, Newfield Supervisor Michael Allinger advised his own Town Board of the May 28 NYSEG revision. Allinger’s announcement prompted brief Town Board discussion. The Newfield Board took no further action.
A “Ruling Regarding Process and Procedure,” issued by the Public Service Commission June 5, allows any interested party until Wednesday, June 17 to file statements in support or opposition to the May 28 Joint Proposal. Parties also have until June 29 to submit replies to those statements.
Signatories to the Joint Proposal include NYSEG, and staff attorneys for the New York State Department of Public Service, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets.
In a video conference convened June 4 by James Costello, the PSC’s designated Administrative Law Judge in the FLAIR proceeding, a conference in which Enfield’s liaison, Councilperson Lynch, was its only municipal participant, agency and municipal representatives expressed general support for the changes NYSEG had made. No known opposition surfaced then or has thereafter.
Should the Commission grant a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need after this month’s comment period has closed, NYSEG’s timetable, at least as originally advanced, calls for line reconstruction to begin early in 2027. Work would finish and the new line energized by the end of 2029.
As part of its 2024 original filing, the utility’s application figures initially redacted, but subsequently made public in part, NYSEG projected the FLAIR reconstruction would cost just over $88 Million. The estimate had been based on monopole construction. Revised cost projections did not issue with the May 28th changes. Nonetheless, the Joint Proposal states that “the Settlement Revisions are not anticipated to materially increase Project cost above that set (previously).”
For nearly a year after NYSEG’s initial filing, the FLAIR project hung only in the shadows. It received little attention despite NYSEG’s mandated outreach efforts. It took a family from Newfield to elevate FLAIR to the point of controversy.
And it was Shaun Brown, a young Bishop Road resident turned community activist, who along with his mother, Ann, went house-to-house in northern Newfield last fall alerting neighbors of what NYSEG had proposed. Shaun Brown also alerted Enfield officials. Both mother and son attended an Enfield Town Board meeting last November. They also spoke before a larger gathering of Newfield residents at a Newfield Town Board meeting November 20.
Shawn Brown told Newfield’s November meeting, “In their application, NYSEG (has written) the project will not interfere with the policies and plan outlined in the Town of Newfield’s Comprehensive Plan. This is a gross misrepresentation, and is demonstratively false,” Brown alleged.
More than a dozen Newfield residents spoke before the Newfield Town Board that November night. Many were angry at the utility and worried that the tall, ugly, steel monopoles, would scar the scenic views to which they’d become accustomed.
“My whole life, I’ve dreamed of having my house on a hill with a scenic view,” Kirsten Hamburg of Douglas Road told the Newfield Town Board that night. “These aged poles were a concession for me, but I was fine with it because it blends in with the tree line,” Hamburg said of what had become familiar. Yet of the proposed monopoles, she said, “I cannot handle a ginormous pole in my backyard.”
With very few now aware of the utility’s November 28 sudden about-face, widespread community reaction of this latest design change has yet to surface. But tellingly, prior to the administrative law judge’s video conference June 4th, Shawn Brown suddenly withdrew his active participation in the FLAIR proceeding. Brown opted instead to remain listed only as a “passive party.”
“I take a position of non-opposition regarding the Joint Proposal and the redesigned project,” Brown emailed Judge Costello the day of the conference. “I will not be a signatory to the Joint Proposal, nor do I intend to file testimony, briefs, or objections against its adoption by the Commission,” Brown wrote the administrative law judge.
That said, it was probably Brown’s activism, that of his mother, the resistance of numerous other residents, along with the—strikingly similar—critiques by the Newfield and Enfield Town Boards that brought from NYSEG the concessions that surprised those in and out of local government.
“I hope that we in the Town of Enfield and some in the community, mostly in Newfield, made some progress and did some good,” Councilperson Lynch told the Town Board June 10, the night the Town Board’s resolution of support was adopted.
“The Joint Proposal includes certain revisions to the Application, which the Signatory Parties agree improve the Project with respect to constructability and potential visual impact,” the PSC released in a four-page summary of the Joint proposal June 2. “This design change proposed in the Joint Proposal allows the Project to meet modern reliability and safety standards while minimizing changes to the landscape and maintaining consistency with existing infrastructure…” the summary continued.
The original December 2024 FLAIR proposal would have used 159 separate steel monopoles to carry electricity from Montour Falls to Ithaca. The revised design would reduce that number of monopoles to four, each of them to be used in Newfield, but only to cross Cayuga Inlet.
“Although the four steel monopole structures proposed for the area of the Project ROW near Cayuga Inlet will be greater in height than the H-frame structures proposed elsewhere along the ROW, the use of monopoles in this segment will help to avoid areas subject to high erosion rates, as well as wetland, stream, and significant natural community resources,” the Joint Proposal’s text states.
But of the final design—the totality of the changes NYSEG has made with its submission of May 28—the Joint Proposal states: “Based on a review of the Evidentiary Record, including the Settlement Revisions, the Signatory Parties have determined that visual impacts from the Project will be minimal and therefore no mitigation is necessary.”
****
And the moral to this story may be this: Whether you’re a private citizen or a backwater town board, sometimes raising a ruckus brings results, even in convincing the big, rich, and powerful to change their plans. Indeed, sometimes the results may even surprise you.
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Posted previously:
Tied tax vote at Tompkins Budget Retreat
Lawmakers huddle and ponder how to escape 17% levy hike
Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; May 23, 2026
There was pizza. Lawmakers dressed down. Minutes weren’t taken; votes not recorded; cameras never rolled. And likely the only reason the meeting was kept public was because state law demands that it must. Not that it really mattered. Members of the Ithaca press corps were found nowhere in the room. Year after year, they never come.
On Tuesday, May 12, the Tompkins County Legislature held its annual Budget Retreat. It’s convened far away from legislative chambers, held again this year at the Whole Health Department near the airport. The retreat accords County Administration its first opportunity to sketch for lawmakers an initial outline of a next year’s county budget, a document legislators won’t adopt until November.
And if you’d hoped for firm word as to how much money leaders will spend or how much they’ll tax you, the session provided little guidance. When Legislature Chair Shawna Black called for an impromptu straw vote on whether the tax levy should rise by more than five percent or by 4.9 percent or less, members tied seven-seven. The retreat adjourned. Legislators went home.
Welcome to the birth of the 2027 Tompkins County Budget. And if the budget retreat’s collective temperament points the way, the coming months will bring as much of a challenge as had occurred last year. Estimated spending increases stand too high. And, painful cuts will be needed to bring property taxes down to what one legislator termed a “swallowable” increase.
“Our current projections indicate about a 17 percent proposed tax levy increase above the 2026 adopted levy to fund service at the current level,” County Administrator Korsah Akumfi stated, May 19, one week after the retreat, speaking when legislators next convened for their regular twice-monthly meeting. County Administration will recommend a budget with a levy increase well below 17 percent, Akumfi assured lawmakers.
Neither Akumfi nor legislators May 19 mentioned the retreat’s 7-7 straw poll split. Remember, Ithaca reporters never attended that earlier conclave.
Tompkins County’s 2027 Budget isn’t adopted until fall. Past practice calls for County Administration to meet with department heads over the summer, receive departmental requests, reduce them as needed, and then present an administrative recommendation to the Legislature just after Labor Day.
What follows is a seemingly endless round of exhaustive meetings. Legislators convene as a committee-of-the-whole. They listen to department heads, re-examine appeals, and subtract from—yet more often, add to—the Administrator’s numbers. Legislators hold hearings, jigger tax rates, and then adopt a final budget a week or two before Thanksgiving.
Yes, the Tompkins County Legislature makes the budget process more complicated than needed. But in the modern era, that’s the way it’s always been. The May 12 Budget Retreat served as the starting point.
The seven-seven split on taxes was more than symbolic; it was substantive. It reflected a philosophical divide among lawmakers, as many as half of whom were newly-elected last fall. The Legislature is two members larger now. If leading politicians is like herding cats, Tompkins County’s clowder has now become even harder to corral.
Moreover, wise minds from the past have now exited. Former Budget Committee (and Legislature) Chair Mike Lane, a fixture for much of the past three decades, retired last December. Lane’s time-tested wisdom was sorely missed the night of the retreat.
Example: Could Tompkins County impose a progressive property tax, newly-seated legislator Iris Packman asked? Could it levy steeper rates on higher-priced parcels? Hers was a question born of legal ignorance and regulatory naiveté. No, County attorney Maury Josephson answered. Aside from state-designated exemptions for categories like farmers and seniors citizens, differential taxation isn’t lawful.
Among the 15, often freshly-scrubbed legislators, two camps emerged at the retreat. (Ulysses-Enfield’s Rachel Ostlund was excused that night.) There was the “Oh My God, this budget is too high” group, but also the “People are hurting; we must meet their needs” faction. The division may spill into the fall.
The May 12 Budget Retreat stretched almost three-and-a-half hours. It began with Administrator Akumfi’s hour-long, 62-slide PowerPoint presentation. His slideshow covered financial trends and “cost drivers” such as state mandates, negotiated salary increases, and capital program requirements. It assessed how what’s needed or expected would impact the budget and taxes.
“Did I miss the cost containment slide?” Dryden legislator Greg Mezey asked at the close of the presentation. “There is a fundamental flaw in this process,” Mezey reacted. “I wish we had some recommendations on cost containment,” he said.
Mezey continued. “Is there a plan to do a funded agency review?” he asked. Akumfi’s projection of a 17.56 percent tax levy rise based itself on a “Maintenance of Effort” (MOE) budget. MOE essentially continues each department’s or agency’s existing programs into the next year and adjusts upward for inflation. Mezey would have each department or agency justify keeping what it already has.
“Something has to be cut, but what it is” will have to be determined, Akumfi acknowledged. His was an open-ended answer.
Last summer, the Administrator had projected that a Maintenance of Effort Budget, if adopted for 2026, would have hiked the tax levy by just over 20 percent. The MOE plan was never adopted. By fall, after legislators had tinkered and tapped prior years’ savings, their final adopted budget carried only a 3.59 percent tax levy increase. (At one point it was a fraction of a percent lower.)
Still, the MOE budget the Administrator presented at this year’s retreat excluded additional, expensive “cost drivers.” Or he could only provide educated guesses about them.
Gas and diesel prices stand as an “emerging and uncertain” cost, Akumfi acknowledged. The MOE budget also skirted making good on a promise to raise all employees to a “living wage,” a possible $1 Million adjustment. And the proposal made no provision for first-step expansion of the Rapid Medical Response (RMR) program, turning it into a quasi-ambulance service.
“If you try to run a county-wide ambulance service, you’re going to add 100 FTE’s (full-time equivalent employees),” Groton’s Lee Shurtleff warned. “It’s unfathomable we’re thinking of going into that service,” Shurtleff, former director of Tompkins County’s Department of Emergency Response, RMR’s oversight agency, stated.
Days before, Governor Hochul had proclaimed agreement on a state budget. But details remained too sketchy for Akumfi to factor. And the MOE budget failed to provide increased funding for the TCAT bus service, Tompkins Cortland Community College, or offer government-supported nonprofit agencies cost of living increases.
“We are still suffering the effects of the pandemic in this community,” Legislature Chair Shawna Black advised fellow lawmakers. Black mentioned mental health services and the Sheriff’s Department’s crime fighting efforts. “We’ve added a whole ‘nother department in the RMR program,” Black noted. “I love it, but it costs a lot of money.”
Shawna Black was among the seven who cast their non-binding votes in favor of a five percent or higher tax levy increase. Ithaca City representative Judith Hubbard, a legislative freshman, was another.
“I think we’ve been doing a very good job of trimming the budget,” Hubbard observed. But “we’ve trimmed essential maintenance,” she said.
Hubbard, perhaps more so than anyone else, focused on those left behind, people in danger of losing vital services unless government—Tompkins County government—steps up to help.
“We want to maintain a vibrant county government that serves the people,” Hubbard stated. “We’re going to have to have a big increase in the tax levy,” she predicted. School district tax levies have risen by far more than has this county’s, Hubbard maintained. “We’ve stayed at two to three percent.”
But taxes are a cost of living, too, others observed.
“We will need to pay more in taxes,” Ithaca legislator Travis Brooks admitted. “But homeowners on fixed incomes don’t have money to pay extra,” he pointed out. Brooks represents some of Ithaca’s poorest neighborhoods. “The assumption is that if they own their home, they can pay the taxes. Some people can’t,” he said.
“Seniors, they’re really struggling,” Enfield-Newfield’s Randy Brown said in agreement. Brown related that a constituent of his is so strapped that she has to visit her neighbor’s house to use the phone.
“We’re talking of replacing a car that’s three years old,” Greg Mezey said, citing standard procurement policy. As for taxpayers, he said, “They’re driving a car that’s ten years old.”
If a legislative grievance emerged the night of the retreat, it was that Korsah Akumfi must do more to rein in department heads. He must remind them who is boss. He must tell them that we’re all in this thing called County Government together.
Lee Shurtleff referenced “silos,” bureaucratic fiefdoms, and he blamed the county’s long-used “target-based budgeting” policy for fostering them.
Akumfi put it differently: “We need a ‘buy-in’ from departments in some of the things that we do,” he said.
For tax-conscious Greg Mezey, the Administrator’s explanation was backwards.
“At some point, you’re the County Administrator, we’re the Legislature,” Mezey bristled. “If only the department heads want to do it, we do it?” Mezey asked. “Who’s the tail and who’s wagging who?”
Akumfi agreed that departments need to keep spending within their budgets, yet conceded sometimes they do not.
“We need to be able to contain these moneys,” Akumfi admitted. Departmental leaders need to be convinced that their department isn’t “my department,” but instead “a collective.”
“It’s difficult to re-engineer their thinking,” Akumfi recognized.
Be “more vocal in your ‘No,’” Mezey counseled the Administrator.
Payrolls are growing fast in the Administration’s projected budget. Wages and benefits would rise by $5.8 Million, a 6.2 percent increase. Three-quarters of the expected rise would come from costlier fringe benefits. Akumfi would keep 2027 employee headcounts about the same as now, at about 850 persons.
“If we don’t flatten it,” Lansing’s Mike Sigler said of the payroll number, “we’re going to have this discussion every year.”
New York State’s tax cap for the 2026 budget was 3.59 percent, and the 2026 levy increase fell just under it. Akumfi predicted at the retreat a smaller tax cap, 2.75 percent, for the year ahead.
“I would like to go for the cap,” Sigler said when asked how high next year’s tax levy should rise. He’d keep it at 2.75 percent and no higher, well beneath the current year’s levy increase.
“I would put in a hiring freeze,” Sigler said. “How many people would we have to cut to get to the cap?”
Sigler also threw out the option of suspending for one year so-called “over-target requests,” those unplanned departmental and agency increases that always crop up.
Tompkins County may save money on the roads we drive. Mezey advanced the idea of combatting rising petroleum prices by delaying some paving projects until next year. Perhaps the Iran War will be over by then, and asphalt prices may fall, he said.
One week after the retreat, at a Legislature meeting accorded wider public access, the Administrator spoke more about economies and of doing something to lower the 17 percent tax hike that all concede no one would accept.
“What we have communicated to the departments is for each department to submit specific cost reductions or controls and also revenue enhancement proposals that will support us to close that gap,” Akumfi informed legislators.
The Administrator alluded to “personnel cost management,” and to what he called “shared services and consolidation,” not only “across departments,” but also “with municipal partners.”
What would such shared pain feel like? Would it ask towns like Enfield to newly contribute to services like Rapid Medical Response? No elaboration came forth.
There could be a second budget retreat in July. There was one last year. By mid-summer, state mandates will become better known; cost increases easier to calculate; departmental requests firmer in focus.
“Are we hunkering down like most of Tompkins County is doing?” legislator Mezey asked the Administrator as the early-May retreat rolled on and on. “Can we contain costs?”
Of any on the Legislature, Lansing’s Deborah Dawson is best known for preserving accumulated savings and for refusing to surrender when department heads or human service agencies beg for more money than she thinks they should get. She’s also blunt.
“We cannot afford to go on this way,” Dawson told retreat colleagues and anyone else who cared to listen. What we’re doing is “not sustainable.” she said.
Yet at budget time, come September, past experience her teacher, Dawson forecast what will happen: “Nobody is going to rein this budget in,” she predicted. Her advice: “You’re going to have to suck it up.”
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Cantelmo: Asteri is still a mess
Summary: Tompkins County Legislature meeting; May 19
Reporting courtesy, Tompkins County Department of Communications; Monika Salvage, Communications Director (reporting edited for brevity); May 22, 2026
“I really wish that I could be here before all of you tonight telling you that I think conditions have materially improved. I do not think that is the case.”
Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo, to the Tompkins County Legislature, May 19th
Tompkins County legislators received an update on ongoing concerns at the Asteri apartment building from City of Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo, Whole Health Commissioner Jennie Sutcliffe, and Whole Health Environmental Health Director Skip Parr. Officials described continued health, safety, and management issues at the facility, while outlining enforcement efforts and the limitations local governments face in addressing conditions at the privately owned property.
Mayor Cantelmo said conditions inside the building had not “materially improved” despite assurances from property management. During a recent walkthrough, he observed elevators without working lights, damaged apartment units, broken doors, overflowing waste, and unsanitary stairwells. He also criticized management for failing to respond to city inspection requests and said the city intends to enforce code violations as aggressively as possible.
Cantelmo noted that meaningful long-term change will likely require action from the building’s investor group and additional state support for supportive housing services.
Commissioner Sutcliffe explained that Whole Health has been working with Asteri for nearly two years on sanitary code compliance, primarily related to garbage, biohazards, and unsafe common areas. She said the county issued a $40,000 penalty after violations of Commissioner’s Orders and has conducted repeated inspections in May.
While concerns remain, Sutcliffe noted that inspectors have observed positive relationships between security staff and residents, helping create some stability within the building. Parr added that inspectors have seen some improvement in conditions compared to earlier visits, though several violations remain unresolved. He clarified that Whole Health’s authority is limited to public health concerns rather than broader building code issues.
Legislators raised concerns about enforcement, supportive services, and public safety impacts. Legislator Hubbard (D-Ithaca City, Town) questioned whether stronger financial penalties may be necessary if conditions do not improve, while Legislator Brown (R-Newfield, Enfield) argued the county should pursue every legal remedy available and expand case management support for residents.
Discussion also focused on the balance between tenant responsibility and property management accountability. Legislator Mezey (D-Dryden) asked how responsibility should be shared when residents create hazardous conditions, while Sutcliffe emphasized the importance of stable housing, mental health support, and supportive services in helping residents maintain safe living environments. Legislator Brooks (D-Ithaca City, Town) raised concerns about inadequate lease oversight and management practices that he said contributed to ongoing instability within the building.
Other Legislative Business:
Sustainability Update: Tompkins County Chief Sustainability Officer Terry Carroll provided legislators with an overview of the county’s energy usage, sustainability initiatives, and renewable energy projects, highlighting both rising utility costs and ongoing efforts to reduce emissions and improve efficiency. Carroll reported that county electricity and natural gas spending increased by 8.3% from 2024 to 2025, driven largely by higher utility rates and weather-related demand. Overall energy costs reached their highest level since the county began tracking them in 2019.
A major focus of the presentation was the county’s hydroelectric partnership at the Waterloo facility, which Carroll described as one of the county’s most successful long-term sustainability investments.
Although hydroelectric production was lower in 2025 due to drought conditions and fluctuating water levels, the county realized approximately $242,000 in savings, nearly double the savings from 2024, because of higher wholesale electricity market prices. Carroll estimated that the facility now offsets roughly 40% of the county’s electricity use and may have saved taxpayers nearly $1 million since the partnership began.
Carroll also reviewed progress on the county’s green fleet and facilities projects. About 27% of the county fleet is currently electrified. He highlighted completed high-efficiency boiler upgrades at the Human Services Building, ongoing solar development at the Health Department, and continued planning for a district geothermal energy system that could eventually serve multiple county buildings.
Actions taken; Endorsements Made:
- Calling on the Federal Government to Invest in Economic Development, Housing, and Infrastructure and to Deliver Results Through Bipartisan Action was approved with an amendment in a 12-2 vote, with Legislators Shurtleff (R-Groton, Dryden) and Brown (R-Newfield, Enfield) opposed.
- Authorization to Disburse County Funds to the Community Housing Development Fund (CHDF) was approved unanimously, utilizing $80,000 in Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency (TCIDA) contributions to support the Habitat for Humanity of Tompkins and Cortland Counties 610 W. Court Street in Ithaca project.
- The Legislature proclaimed May 25, 2026 as Memorial Day and encouraged all residents to pause or join in local ceremonies at 11:00 a.m. on May 25 and carry forward the legacy of courage, service, and sacrifice that defines the nation.
- The legislature declared May 2026 Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) American Heritage Month, recognizing the significant cultural, economic, academic, and civic contributions of AANHPI residents in Tompkins County.
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Recovery Fund takes a haircut, closes quietly
Deadline-driven, legislators repurpose CMC’s biggest award
Reporting and analysis by Robert Lynch; May 7, 2026
It was a product of the pandemic. And just as the pandemic has ended, so, too, has it. Don’t expect a party.
Fueled by millions of dollars in federal COVID relief money, Tompkins County’s Community Recovery Fund drew to an unassuming close late last month. It did so as lawmakers repurposed the last of its set-aside cash on a laundry list of unglamorous bureaucratic necessities. Leaders buried the decision as best they could.
One meeting later, I marked the moment.
“On April 21, two weeks ago, the Community Recovery Fund effectively ended,” this Enfield Councilperson, Robert Lynch, reminded the Tompkins County Legislature as it met this past Tuesday, May 5. “It did when this Legislature redirected more than $1.6 Million in unspent American Rescue Plan (ARPA) funds from Community Recovery Fund grants and instead repurposed them for such mundane things as buying Microsoft 365 subscriptions.”
“Why?” I asked. “Mostly because despite all its wealth and political clout, Cayuga Medical Center could not drag its Crisis Stabilization Center project over the finish line. Its inability to do so simply baffles me.”
As it stands now, the Tompkins County Community Recovery Fund has spent barely $5 Million of its original sum toward its originally intended purpose. And that purpose was to assist nonprofit agencies, local governments, and struggling small businesses hard-hit during this decade’s early years by COVID-induced shutdowns.
This year’s late-April decision marked “the turning of a page,” I advised the Legislature. “There was no fanfare. Few may have noticed,” I said. “But we in Enfield did.”
Enfield remembers the Community Recovery Fund because our town’s government and the agencies we support got little benefit from it.
The Community Recovery Fund started with seven million dollars. County government’s own budget needs quickly pared that total to just over $6.5 Million. But of that amount, the only money that came to Enfield was $26,592 to buy some replacement two-way radios for the Highway Department.
$26,592 is just four-tenths of one percent of the $6,513,893 the Recovery Fund had set aside for its late-2022 and subsequently revised funding awards. Perhaps a little something is better than nothing at all.
Truth told, the highway radio money was a last-minute add-on, an allocation not originally recommended. Former County legislator Susan Currey gets the credit for providing Enfield at least a morsel of nourishment.
The federal government’s American Rescue Plan (ARPA) awarded Tompkins County nearly than $19.9 Million in 2021. Washington’s relief supposedly was to compensate Tompkins County for revenues lost during the pandemic, fiscal shortfalls that never really occurred.
The late-April reassignment of money became necessary because ARPA rules specify that any appropriated moneys not actually spent by the end of this year get clawed back to Washington.
Back five years ago, County leaders first floated the idea of shoveling ARPA’s money into “cash for capital.” It would have earmarked Washington’s entire windfall toward major building projects. The idea didn’t please the public. Many preferred investing in hard-pressed agencies and people.
In September of that year, the Community Recovery Fund was born. It started on wobbly feet.
Initially, an assigned trio of lawmakers proposed a more ambitious, $15 Million, three-year funding scheme. But their money pot soon shrunk to $7 Million, and lawmakers jettisoned the multi-year concept.
Although Recovery Fund awards were initially to have come from County Government’s own savings, not from ARPA, legislators later reversed course upon learning that ARPA rules accorded them far greater flexibility in gifting public money to non-governmental recipients.
A consultant was hired. Invitations went out. And requests for support came in by the bushel.
As of an October 2022 deadline, as many as 231 non-profit organizations, qualifying individuals and local governments had applied for program support. Of those, 23 filed for the highest funding category, each seeking over $250,000 apiece.
Among those 23 was Enfield Food Distribution, which sought up to $1.6 Million to build a new food pantry. Among applications less expensive was that of the Enfield Community Council (ECC). The agency asked for $206,000 to build a “Mental Health and Community Services Wing” onto its community center.
The aggregate $34 Million in requests overwhelmed the Recovery Fund’s resources. Requests stood at more than five times the amount of grant money available.
An exhaustive, consultant-aided, yet legislator-driven triage began. Some would later fault the process as being arbitrary and unfair. A select panel of six legislators scoured (and scored) each application. Within minutes during marathon meetings, members rated each separate request one by one. Individually and collectively, those six lawmakers wielded tremendous power. Unanimous support by all six almost always assured a grant’s award. A three-three tie (or something less) eliminated an applicant from contention.
The Enfield Food Pantry fell from favor early on. (It garnered only two votes out of six.) The Enfield Volunteer Fire Company’s low six-figure request to build a volunteer bunk room, died in a three-three tie. The Enfield Community Council’s appeal squeaked past first-round review (four-to-two), only to tumble out of contention later on after the money supply ran out.
Bangs got a new, $150,000 ambulance from the fund. And for a brief while, Second Wind Cottages stood in line for money to grow its Newfield encampment of tiny homes for the formerly unhoused. But Second Wind later forfeited its $510,000 after community objections became too burdensome to bear.
Yet by far, the biggest winner from the start was Cayuga Medical Center (CMC). Its award was the largest of all. CMC had requested $1.5 Million to build an Intensive Crisis Stabilization Center to treat substance abusers and the mentally ill. The hospital first planned to quarter its center in the Shops at Ithaca Mall. But it later switched to a stand-alone building on North Triphammer Road, one that the Alcohol and Drug Council had vacated after it folded operations.
Even though some would view CMC’s application as shaky, the hospital corporation’s request won every round of Recovery Fund review. It gained support from five out of six on the review committee. It then won final approval when the full Legislature made its decisions in late-December 2022. Only Enfield-Newfield legislator Randy Brown opposed the hospital’s seven-figure grant.
“I’m not against the project,” legislator Brown stressed to Enfield leaders in his monthly report prior to the December vote. It’s just that the one request would eat up 23 percent of the fund, he said. “Cayuga Medical has over $130 Million in cash and investments as of January 1, 2023 and is contributing very little to the project,” Brown asserted.
As it came to pass, CMC’s most ambitious of all applications never got its money.
Cayuga Medical needed two more things to move its project forward; a New York State license and clear title to the use of its building. It could gain neither. And it would have needed them by year’s end.
Along the way, some in Enfield became none too pleased that the hospital took so much time, ate up so much of the Recovery Fund’s cash, yet had so little to show for it. .
“This makes me so angry,” one prominent Enfield resident wrote on social media last month upon learning that administrators had to repurpose the award. “Some of that money could have accomplished tremendous things for the county’s towns and villages,” she wrote. “Instead, the county gave extension after extension for a plan that was dead in the water from almost the beginning.”
“Tompkins County’s entire process to allocate the six million that they disbursed was laughable,” another Enfield resident, a former legislator, said, “and in the end (it) didn’t end up disbursing the money to many that could have used it legitimately.”
Yes, CMC’s inability to see its project to the finish line troubles many, including a few of the leaders who doled the money out.
Quite rightly, intensive crisis stabilization locally would serve a purpose, a valuable one. Local legislators wholeheartedly endorse it. Yet year after year the hospital hit insurmountable roadblocks. And CMC officials often danced around the edges as to the reasons why.
“I wish I had a better update for you,” CMC Assistant Vice President Frank Kruppa prefaced his remarks to a County Legislature committee last November 19. ”We are still efforting to get the Withdrawal Stabilization and Intensive Stabilization Center operational, but are having challenges related to the ownership of the building,” he admitted.
For 20 minutes that November day, Kruppa, Tompkins County’s former Health Commissioner, hired away last year by CMC to guide the Stabilization Center down the home stretch, attempted to explain to the Health and Human Services Committee why approvals had taken so long and still hadn’t arrived. His roundabout journey never persuaded attendees convincingly.
Two state agencies, the Department of Health and the Office of Addiction Services and Supports (OASAS) must license the center. But there’s a tangle.
The Alcohol and Drug Council still owns the North Triphammer Road building, Kruppa advised the committee. The Department of Health bonded the Drug Council’s purchase and renovations. But the Drug Council now exists only on paper at best. And until someone can figure out how to move a defunct agency to grant consent, state licensure cannot proceed.
That said, what may have troubled legislators the most was what Kruppa said next:
“When the opportunity comes where we do have approvals from the state to move forward, with the ever-changing health care environment as it is, the health system has to evaluate every new program almost in every moment when there’s decisions to be made about moving forward,” Kruppa admitted.
“I think we have to have a conversation about Plan B for us,” legislator Shawna Black, now Legislature Chair, reacted to the hospital rep’s tenuous commitment. “Because if you’re saying that Cayuga Health Partners is questioning if they’re going to pursue this, that also gives me pause.”
Frank Kruppa then denied that CMC was contemplating backing out. “There’s just a lot of moving pieces, much of which are out of our control,” for former health commissioner admitted.
“So it was a lot of money, and you all have known for some time that there was some issues, and there was no sharing of that information with us,” committee chair Travis Brooks reminded the CMC administrator that day. “So that’s disappointing to say the least.”
Now, nearly six months after the committee heard Kruppa’s unpredictable forecast, there’s still no known movement on either building title or state licensure.
And no, there is also no “Plan B.” In recent weeks, County Administration staff has made clear that at this late stage in the ARPA funding cycle, forfeited dollars cannot redirect themselves to new projects. Only agencies contracted before the end of 2024 qualify for extra support, and then only with difficulty.
One would think that given the high-powered attorneys Cayuga Health retains and the hospital’s high profile, mountains could be moved in Albany. But maybe those mountains resist movement. Perhaps state regulators really don’t like crisis stabilization centers all that much.
Tellingly, during another, little-publicized committee session, back in September 2023, former Cayuga Health CEO Martin Stallone admitted that regulators had rejected CMC’s initial proposals for crisis stabilization. Stallone advanced that what they only may accept was the equivalent of “a full-blown psychiatric emergency room.”
“To be clear, it’s not Crisis Stabilization,” Stallone then said of the revised option advanced to the state. “It’s a level above that.”
Again, if mountains could be moved, one would think someone could move them. The mountains don’t budge.
Hope springs eternal. Local legislators of both parties have offered assurances in recent weeks that once CMC casts obstacles aside, the County Legislature would likely re-appropriate from its own treasury the $1.5 Million the hospital corporation needs. It’s a source not impeded by ARPA deadlines. Never stated was how this alternate path would bypass that pesky state prohibition against gifting money to those outside of one’s own government.
“This legislature… has been committed to that project and we all realize the need for that in our community,” Shawna Black insisted April 21. Of crisis stabilization, she said, “That’s really the one missing piece—we actually have many missing pieces—but that’s one of the big ones.”
“Voting on the mental health stabilization unit… was one of the prouder votes I’ve had actually in this Legislature,” Republican Mike Sigler stated two weeks later, Sigler responding to this Enfield Councilperson’s critical assessment, “because I felt that that money actually addressed something that COVID exposed, and that’s what that money (ARPA money) was for,” Sigler explained.
“So I just take pause when people say that Cayuga Medical couldn’t get its act together or things along those lines,” Sigler added. “This project’s not dead. They are still working on it.”
“Enfield had shovel-ready projects that could have spent this money on time,” this Councilperson, Lynch, advised legislators last Tuesday. The Community Council’s mental health wing stands first among them. “It would have cost a fraction of what CMC planned to spend,” I stated.
And yes, it would have been finished on time, no Albany approvals required.
At an ECC Board of Directors meeting in late-March, speaking before learning that the ARPA money couldn’t be repurposed for her agency, Community Council President Cortney Bailey was already laying plans for demolishing the dilapidated modular annex that stands on the new wing’s site, and recruiting volunteers to construct the mental health wing “like a good, old-fashioned barn raising.”
But the ARPA money’s now been spent on other things. The Community Recovery Fund’s doors are closed. That said, Bailey remains resilient.
“We will get there one way or another,” Bailey assured her board one month later, on April 23. “It might take us a while. But we will do it. We will make it happen.”
And if gifting rules can be bypassed to help Cayuga Heath, why can’t a similar work-around also provide the Community Council money it needs? There’s been no immediate answer.
“Legislature, please helped the ECC and help Enfield,” this Councilperson closed his statement that night.
All of us move on from here.
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