ICSD Superintendent would raise spending 4.17 percent, but hold levy hike within tax cap
Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; March 21, 2025
Erin Croyle wasn’t there that night. Had the program-conscious Ithaca Board of Education member attended the board’s March 11 voting meeting, the tenor of the discussion might have evolved differently. Croyle’s presence could have given the meeting a pulse.
Amanda Verba wasn’t there either. The sharp-minded, PowerPoint-driven former Chief Operations Officer for the Ithaca City School District (ICSD), resigned last summer. She migrated to Trumansburg to become business executive of its school system. At Ithaca, Verba had served as much the budget salesperson as the bean counter. Her ICSD successor is much more the green-eyeshade accountant type.
But maybe that’s the mood of the moment for the ICSD. Burned badly by a first-round landslide budget defeat last year, many school board members in Ithaca have now embraced a cautious, taxpayer-respectful approach to budgeting.
Ithaca School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown and Verba’s successor, Dr. Dom Lisi, ICSD’s recently-hired Assistant Superintendent for Business, reflected that penchant for fiscal caution as they provided the board the skeletal outline of a next year’s spending plan whose details they’ll refine and bring back to the board in forthcoming days.
“We’re presenting a rollover budget,” Dr. Brown told the bare board quorum of five who attended March 11th. By “rollover,” the Superintendent meant hold-the-line spending; nothing bold and beautiful; nothing likely to make Erin Croyle smile.
As unveiled that night, Brown’s outline would increase spending by 4.17 percent for the 2025-26 school year. Yet it would raise the tax levy—the true benchmark of taxpayer pain—by only 3.76 percent, a percentage falling into line with this year’s state-calculated “tax cap” as applied to the ICSD.
The proposed spending total is $169,811,365; less than the 2024-25 budget Dr. Brown initially advanced last year, yet larger than a trimmed-down plan that voters last May rejected.
The tax cap is truly an arbitrary number; a fiscal fiction. It changes year to year and district to district. And aside from its propagandistic power in promoting frugality, the only legal significance the number serves is to require at least a 60 percent margin of approval when any non-cap-compliant school budget goes to the voters in a May referendum.
“We want to take what we’re doing this year and continue doing it next year,” Brown advised the school board. “No major additions; and we’re not proposing any major reductions.”
Last year was different. Dr. Brown and district teachers and administrators had loftier plans. Brown was laying the groundwork for a 20 percent hike in teacher pay over a three year period. At this time last year, the Superintendent had proposed a $170.9 Million budget for 2024-25. It would have increased spending by 7.79 per cent, and boosted the tax levy by 12.14 percent, more than three times the increase proposed now.
Even the school board didn’t accept Brown’s—and by her association with it, Amanda Verba’s—first draft. Over several weeks, the board cut the budget’s proposed spending by $2 Million, and pared the tax levy increase to 8.43 per cent.
It still wasn’t enough. Last May, seven out of ten Ithaca voters rejected the district’s first-submitted budget. They also tossed two of three board incumbents out of office, members they’d (rightly or wrongly) faulted as being spendthrifts.
The school board regrouped. Guided by board budget hawk Jill Tripp, it cut spending to $163 Million, reduced the levy hike to 2.92 per cent, and ordered a second referendum. That time, the budget passed.
But to carve away the proposed increased spending, the Ithaca District also cut programs. And some program-friendly liberals fear that too much was lost. No schools got closed. But high school elective courses that drew too few students got chopped away. Administrative positions—including some at the top level—got cut as well.
The 2024 election was one whose lesson was not lost on those who survived and currently populate the Ithaca Board of Education. Three members will face the voters this spring; two more the year after.
“I’m glad that the proposal is staying within the tax cap,” Board Vice-president Adam Krantweiss told Dr. Brown and Dr. Lisi. “It seems like a good start to me.”
Adam Krantweiss was the only incumbent among the three whose terms then expired to survive last year’s election.
“I, too, am pleased to see us coming in at the tax cap,” Jill Tripp remarked. “Thanks for your hard work to get us there,” Tripp told the two administrators.
“My personal view would be that the tax cap is a reasonable way forward,” Garrick Blalock affirmed. “What I heard the public say last year was that that tax cap was what they were comfortable with. I believe that remains the public sentiment. We’ll certainly listen to folks when they come in.”
Blalock’s term expires next year.
True, the tax levy increase being roughed in for next year—3.76 percent—is three-quarters of a percentage point higher than that of the revised budget voters approved last June. But this year’s tax cap is also higher. Still, remember, the tax cap remains a fiction. A levy increase reflects real money.
And by raising proposed spending more than they increase the tax levy, what Brown and Lisi have advanced for starters is technically an unbalanced budget. The gap must be filled, of course, yet only by perhaps raiding savings accounts or adopting a heavy dose of wishful thinking. Think state aid.
“We think we can work through that as we continue to refine the budget,” Dom Lisi told the Board of Education.
As it stands now, a 4.17 percent spending increase coupled with only a 3.76 percent rise in the tax levy would leave a $933,000 funding shortfall to fill. Were the Ithaca District not to raise the levy at all from this year to next, the funding gap would swell to more than $5 Million.
With each of the five adult school board members attending the March 11 meeting reluctant to urge aggressive new spending or exceeding the tax cap, some of the better questions that night came from the high-school age, non-voting student representatives.
If gap-closing money can’t be found, how would the shortfall get remedied, one student asked?
“We’d have to look at either reductions or using fund balance to support that,” the Assistant Superintendent conceded.
Is there any chance of restoring language programs cut in the current year’s budget, another representative, “Claire” asked? Last summer’s reductions eliminated both Mandarin and Latin, the latter course spared only though an outside donation.
“Last year we made some hard cuts, and those cuts I don’t think are going to come back,” Garrick Blalock cautioned. “What remains we want to continue to offer at the highest quality. That’s my general approach.”
Infer from that, Mandarin isn’t likely to return.
“It was a class-size threshold,” Dr. Brown explained. Fifteen students became the cutoff. Brown gave no indication that the criterion would change.
The budget draft that Luvelle Brown and Dom Lisi roughed-in on the 11th was not quite finished. Brown said he first needed school board “feedback” that night. And if five of eight board members sitting in a room can prove an effective gauge of sentiment, one can expect that the more formalized budget that Brown and Lisi will present at the next meeting, Tuesday, March 25, will prove a close-to-perfect reflection of the one briefed to members that earlier night.
And when the Board of Education reconvenes, those not heard from two weeks ago may register their own opinions. Fiscal conservative Todd Fox is likely to argue for economies. Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell is apt to serve as more referee than advocate. And Erin Croyle may attend too. Her passion could pivot the discourse to a whole different level; to more than just dollars.
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A Progressive Primary Cut Short
Ostlund declares for Koreman seat; Foote withdraws; Enfield incumbents eye easy re-nomination
by Robert Lynch; March 17, 2025
Barring a last-minute surprise, Enfield Democrats—and for that matter, Republicans—will find no need for a June primary as they sort out their nominees for this November’s off-year elections. Indeed, unless new faces emerge, the local November ballot could prove pretty boring.
The most likely prospect for a intra-party primary battle quietly evaporated eight days ago as Ulysses progressive David Foote withdrew his short-lived campaign for the Tompkins County Legislature. When he did, Foote threw his support to Jacksonville food entrepreneur and wedding planner Rachel Ostlund, who now appears gliding unopposed toward securing the Democratic nomination to succeed retiring incumbent legislator Anne Koreman, whose newly-redrawn District 16 includes northern Enfield, all of Ulysses, and a slice of the Town of Ithaca.
“Rachel who?” you might ask. “David who?” you’d ask as well. Neither candidate is a household name, at least not in Enfield. Neither is known to have held prior elective office. At least neither of their biographies speak to it.
And unless you were a petition-carrying party activist, or happen to read a soft-ball, puffy profile that ran March 7 in one local paper, you wouldn’t have known that Ostlund was even in the race.
“I believe that with creativity and an open minded approach to collective problem solving, we can build a Tompkins County where we all can live and thrive,” Ostlund stated to Tompkins Weekly, whose story byline was simply stated as, “Uploaded by Staff” (meaning that Ostlund’s campaign likely wrote the story itself).
“We deserve a community where we all have access to affordable housing, healthful food, clean air and water, equitable education, affirming and respectful healthcare, affordable childcare, meaningful work that pays a living wage, and the right to live free from oppression and violence in all its forms,” Ostlund’s campaign rollout continued, quite transparently hitting every single liberal button cliché.
But in an off-year election year when the progressive rallying cry is “Run for Something!” the message appears to have fallen on deaf ears among others in the Enfield Democratic constituency.
With pre-primary party petitioning for the fall elections now at about its mid-point, an informed local Democratic official advises this writer that not a single member of the party has emerged to challenge Republican incumbent Randy Brown in his legislative district that includes southern Enfield and Newfield. Likewise, another party official indicates that for the Enfield Town offices up for election this year, only the incumbents have chosen to petition.
Lack of competition for party nominations would cancel Enfield’s otherwise-scheduled June 24 primary.
Local Republicans in Enfield have not announced any plans to seize offices now held by elected Democrats. For his part, County Legislator Brown has already said he’s running in the Newfield-Enfield district.. The GOP has not said whether it will compete in Koreman’s heavily-Democratic district to Brown’s north.
Meanwhile, for Enfield Town offices, the only petitions now known to be circulating are those for the incumbents; namely three-term Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, and two-term Councilpersons Cassandra Hinkle and Jude Lemke. (Two other Enfield Councilpersons seats are not up for election until 2027.)
Incumbent Town Clerk Mary Cornell, a Democrat, is known to be running. Incumbent Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins, a Republican, is said to be petitioning as well. No Democrat has yet emerged to challenge Rollins. A party official has suggested Democrats may cross-endorse Rollins instead, just as they did two years ago.
Where a June Democratic primary could have emerged—but now apparently won’t—was in the northern Enfield/Ulysses district where Rachel Ostlund will likely secure an unopposed nomination to the Tompkins County Legislature. For a while, another Ulysses Democrat wanted the job for himself.
David Foote’s campaign to succeed two-term Democratic incumbent Anne Koreman wasn’t widely known until it was already over. The Trumansburg Road resident announced his withdrawal from the race March 9, two days after Rachel Ostlund’s press profile was published.
On his short-lived campaign’s Facebook page post March 1, Foote announced “I’m putting finishing touches on a website for my campaign and expect to have it published soon!” It may never have happened. Eight days after his proclamation, Foote pulled the plug.
“I am backing off the campaign for county legislature district 16,” David Foote wrote, again on Facebook, March 9. “This follows a lot of thought and direct conversations with volunteers, local allies, and others who have offered support.”
David Foote continued:
“Last year, I was asked if I would consider running for the open seat. Having supported a number of local campaigns and familiar with the process, I started planning, meeting with local groups, and studying up on county processes. However, the time requirements and pressures of running a campaign from my dining room have been affecting my health and ability to focus on my day job and other commitments.”
Side-by-side, the platforms and points of political passion for David Foote and the fellow progressive he endorsed, Rachel Ostlund, reveal little sunlight between them. Legislator Anne Koreman has represented her district for the past nearly eight years from the center-Left. Whether it was David Foote or Rachel Ostlund, one could—and can—expect an even more leftward tug.
From David Foote’s endorsement: “My goal was to make sure we continue a trend of progressive, community-based representation for the district,” Foote said as he withdrew his candidacy. “I believe that Rachel will be an advocate for resilient social services, affordable housing, local agriculture, and protecting the rights of our community, and that she will be attentive and responsive to the needs of people in the district,” Foote stated.
And from Rachel Ostlund’s self-scripted profile in Tompkins Weekly:
“I am committed to raising my family here, and it matters to me that Tompkins County is a welcoming, inclusive, livable, affordable, safe and vibrant place for every person,” Ostlund wrote.
And make no mistake, the presumptive Democratic nominee knows who it is who won last year’s Presidential election and what he stands for.
“I’m also running because of the chaos that is happening at the federal level right now, which is destructive and destabilizing,” Ostlund informed the paper. “We are entering into a period of extreme uncertainty, especially around federal funding – and the programs and services that many of us and our neighbors rely on are on extremely shaky ground.”
An Ithaca High School and Cornell University graduate, Rachel Ostlund has lived in Tompkins County most of her life. She’s served as an AmeriCorps volunteer, taught environmental education in Tennessee, co-founded a student-run organic farm in Connecticut, performed field botany work in Arizona, and started her first business at a farmers market in Montana.
Ostlund’s closer-to-home business ventures have included the Iron Owl Kitchen, a prepared foods business at the Ithaca Farmers Market, the Sweet Bough Wedding Collective, and Kinship & Company, a business “focused on planning inclusive and meaningful weddings and events,” as Ostlund described it.
Ostlund and her partner live in Jacksonville and have two young children.
“She loves to build and fix things,” Rachel’s campaign website biography said of the candidate. “She loves people and thinks we all deserve the world.”
Rachel Ostlund will likely carry the Democratic Party banner into the fall as prospective successor to Anne Koreman on the Tompkins County Legislature. Other Democrats, should they choose, hold the power to force a primary providing they gather sufficient petition signatures before April 3. Independent candidates, if any, whether for the County Legislature or for local town offices, may circulate their petitions between mid-April and late-May.
But unless something changes soon, local elections this year could prove themselves to be a parade of cakewalk coronations. And for democracy’s sake, that’s a situation that’s always less than good.
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Courthouse Dry Well fails; dollars drained
Solar Bid OK’d; Flood Law Set for May Hearing
by Robert Lynch; March 14, 2025
Call the March 12 monthly meeting of the Enfield Town Board one of multiple, yet manageable, catastrophes. And battling fatigue, shock, and occasional sniffles, but finding no disagreement among themselves, Town Board members waded through their agenda; a long one… one consuming three-and-a-half hours.
For starters, the five-member Board could barely muster a three-person quorum. Councilperson Cassandra Hinkle was out sick. Melissa Millspaugh was also ill, but attended remotely from home. She could vote, yet still not count as present toward a quorum. Meanwhile, sitting at a side table, Town Clerk Mary Cornell also nursed a cold. Cornell could barely speak.
Next problem: Little more than 15 minutes into the meeting, the video stream encountered its worst “Zoom bomb” attack ever. Multiple hard-core pornographic images suddenly flashed onto the meeting room screen. A hacker slurred a racist obscenity. And Supervisor Stephanie Redmond found herself momentarily helpless in trying to expel her video’s unwelcome intruders. In time, the feed was cleansed, apologies were shared, Millspaugh returned to the sanitized Zoom room, and the session resumed.
But those calamities brought only inconvenience and embarrassment. What cost the Town real money that night was the catastrophe that lurked outside, deep down under the driveway, just a few short steps from the meeting room door.
The dry well had failed. The lid that covers the dry well (dry hole), a pit that receives sewage effluent from the Enfield Courthouse’s septic tank and then disperses it into the soil, was about to collapse. It must be dug up and replaced. And the replacement won’t come cheap.
“Nobody knows how deep it is,” Enfield Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins told the Town Board. Most likely the six-by-eight foot cinderblock repository was dug 77 years ago, when the Courthouse building, formerly the Enfield Fire Station, was built back in 1948. Rollins judged replacement as too complex of a task for his crew to undertake without help. A private contractor, Paul Carpenter, will oversee the work. Rollins said Highway staffers will assist him.
Board members were told that Enfield Food Pantry Director Jean Owens and her volunteers had only days earlier spotted the imminent rupture. The Food Pantry co-locates on the Enfield Courthouse’s lower floor.
The Town of Enfield Budget maintains a contingency fund, a catastrophe cushion of sorts. Of the $27,500 in contingency moneys budgeted in 2024, more than $20,000 of the total had gone unspent, the Town Board learned that night from the bookkeeper’s year-end report. An identical $27,500 had again been placed into the contingency fund for 2025.
Sadly, when it comes to unspent surplus in contingency, the Town won’t find itself so lucky this time next year when books are closed. And it’s little more than ten weeks into this year’s budget.
Rollins and Redmond estimate the dry well’s replacement cost at $10,000 to $12,000. By a quick, unanimous vote among the four members present, the Town Board pulled $12,000 out of this year’s contingency fund to pay for the reconstruction. Of course, that’s what contingency funds are for; unplanned emergencies. Some years you win; others, you don’t. This year, one guesses, Enfield won’t.
As for the work ahead, Rollins predicted a timely completion. He said excavation will likely occur either Friday, March 14, or on Wednesday or Thursday of the following week.
And Food Pantry officials assured Board members that the driveway’s current precautionary closure will not impair weekend food distributions. Instead, the oft-seen patron-parade will follow an alternate route.
If another public works disappointment needed to be put on the Town Board’s plate—and it was—Rollins reported that this winter’s off-and-on bouts of sub-freezing cold had taken a tough toll on secondary roads.
“Dirt roads and oil-and-stone (surfaced) roads took a real bad beating,” Rollins stated, assessing their seasonal damage. And wintertime harm will, no doubt, heighten summertime repair costs.
One thing more: Two trees are dying and need to be felled in Town-owned Budd Cemetery off Gray Road. Rollins recommended their professional removal. It was that kind of night.
But amidst a sudden run of disappointment, the Enfield Town Board did move forward March 12 on a few other fronts. It awarded the winning bid for the largely grant-funded addition of solar panels atop the Enfield Town Hall, the long-vacated old Highway Barn that currently quarters the Town Clerk’s office.
By a 4-0 vote, the Board awarded the Enfield-based firm, Fingerlakes Renewables, Inc., the contract for putting the panels in place. Fingerlakes Renewables will install the 25.4 kilowatt rooftop array for a quoted price of $70,248. A state grant will cover $60,000 of the cost, and estimated rebates will contribute another $6,355.
Of the five companies that quoted on the job, Fingerlakes Renewables, Rebekah Carpenter’s local firm, did not tender the lowest bid. Yet her company got the award, nonetheless.
Carpenter’s company won selection after the Town Board first excluded the rock-bottom bidder, Solar Environment, from Saratoga Springs, saying its bid offered too few specifics to be considered a “responsible” offer. And then as it employed state-authorized “best value” analysis, the Town Board calculated that Fingerlakes Renewables would generate the most kilowatts for each dollar the Town would invest. The company also achieved “best value” preference as a woman-owned business.
****
Flood Prevention Law: More than a year after state and federal officials had warned that Enfield would need to restrict development in its newly-mapped flood plain bordering Enfield Creek, the Town Board Wednesday finalized a preliminary set of development rules. It authorized the draft regulations, forwarded them to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for a required review, and set a local public hearing on the proposed “Flood Damage Prevention Law” for its May 14 meeting.
“People I’ve talked to say this looks a lot like zoning,” Rosanna Carpenter, an Enfield Main Road resident, warned the Board before it acted. Carpenter’s home, while not located within the proposed restricted area, stands close to it. Carpenter also owns vacant land within the flood plain and maintains a private bridge that crosses Enfield Creek. Carpenter cautioned that restricting future development in the flood plain could diminish her land’s value should she ever subdivide it.
In response, Town Board members pointed out that for the most part, their hands are tied. Given the Enfield Creek’s newly-designated flood-prone status, they said Washington as soon as this June will dictate the purchase of flood insurance by anyone who holds a federally-backed mortgage and lives in the flood plain its federal agency has newly-designated. And the insurance would only become available if the Town adopts the development rules. New York State will go further, they were told, demanding the regulations regardless of the insurance consequences.
Enfield, however, has chosen to make the state-scripted rules one step tougher.
The draft Enfield Flood Damage Prevention Law would prohibit any new residential structure in flood zones, not merely follow state guidelines that still allow new homes be built in flood zones, only if elevated above worst-case flood levels using “pilings, columns… or shear walls parallel to the flow of water.” The Enfield draft would also prohibit the placement of any new mobile home in a flood zone. In either instance, aggrieved property owners could plead hardship and seek a variance.
“We as a Town Board may exercise ‘police powers’ to keep our community safe,” Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) wrote in an email to other Town Board members and the Town’s legal counsel one day before the meeting, defending the tighter restriction. “And building a home on elevated pilings in a flood plain is less than safe or desirable,” he said. “This is a safety thing for me.”
One day later, during the meeting, the Town Board agreed to retain within the draft law, at least for now, the more restrictive language. Should residents object at the public hearing, members said, the prohibition could later be stripped out.
Subdivision Regulations: Pressed for time as the hour advanced and attention spans waned, the Town Board gave only glancing attention to an end-of-meeting chore that’s evaded resolution for as long as 18 months; namely the revision of Enfield’s Subdivision Regulations. The Planning Board had handed up its rewrite of the nearly 40-page document as far back as September 2023.
About all the Town Board decided at this latest March meeting was to tone-down any attempt to infuse Town Board oversight into the subdivision review process. The Town Board had sought to involve itself in the wake of the “Breezy Meadows” development controversy two years ago.
Having been cautioned by the Town’s attorney that state law limits Town Board intervention and prohibits any form of novel, “two board” subdivision review, the Town Board resolved itself to offer the Planning Board only advice and recommendations—not hold veto power—regarding a future developer’s plans for larger subdivisions. The Town Board will hone regulatory details at future meetings.
Ukraine: Before adjourning for the night, the Town Board resurrected an initiative it first took three years ago. It directed that the flag of the Republic of Ukraine again be flown on the flagpole outside the Town Hall, this time for a renewed 30 days.
“[A]s the third anniversary of the Ukrainian war has come and gone, significant adjustments in United States foreign policy affecting Ukraine have occurred, changes which in many people’s minds complicate the path to peace and imperil the preservation of Ukraine’s democratic sovereignty,” the latest Resolution to “Reaffirm Solidarity and Support for the People of Ukraine” stated in part.
The adopted Resolution further expressed Town Board sentiment that continued American support to Ukraine “in both word and deed… stands vital to the achievement of a true and lasting peace in eastern Europe and also serves to advance American interests of democracy, independence, and freedom, principles this Board wishes to embrace.”
Expect the banner for Ukraine to return to the flagpole within days.
****
It was a long Town Board meeting. And in case anyone should ask, Supervisor Redmond said she’ll take extra precautions to deter future Zoom bomb attacks. That was a sort of catastrophe that no one needed that night. Too much else was going on.
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Previously Posted:
Do it for Downtown’s Sake
Economic case pushed for Center of Government siting
Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; March 4, 2025
A prime reason to build a $40 Million Center of Government downtown next to the County Courthouse is so that government employees will continue to prop up the Downtown Ithaca economy, an architect guiding Tompkins County in the pricey project argued to lawmakers Tuesday.
“The main reason that we’re saying this is the right location for the Center of Government is related to the economic impact that it would have in Downtown Ithaca,” Quay Thompson, a principal architect with Holt Architects, Tompkins County’s design firm, advised a Tompkins County legislative committee.
Thompson pushed back on a hypothetical alternative—advanced by some, though still not considered seriously by most legislators—that County Government instead build its new, eight-figure office building on cheaper, more objection-free land, a “Greenfield,” somewhere outside Ithaca’s city limits.
“So not only would you lose the benefits of bringing all of the county employees right to the heart of Downtown Ithaca, but you’d also conceptually lose the employees that are currently in the Old Jail and the Tompkins Building if we were to consolidate all of them together at an off-site location,” Thompson said, albeit deceptively.
The “Do it for Downtown” argument may fall flat with some rural Tompkins County residents, taxpayers who wince at paying a premium price for an office complex buried in the bowels of Ithaca, an increasingly congested place many hate to visit, where crime is perceived as on the rise and where (paid, of course) parking is catch-as-catch-can.
But what architect Thompson and his team must work on most immediately is a presentation to the New York State Historic Preservation Office, the agency commonly known as “SHPO.”
The SHPO review centers on the County’s intent to “deconstruct” (i.e. demolish) three existing buildings on the Center of Government site. In 2021, Tompkins County brought the former Key Bank branch at Buffalo and Tioga Streets and the one-time Wiggins Law Office building adjacent to that bank. County Government would raze both buildings to make way for its new five-story office building. Its plans also call for tearing down the so-called “Building C,” the current home to the Tompkins County Board of Elections and the Assessment Department.
One year ago, alerted by the preservationist group Historic Ithaca, SHPO bureaucrats began to express concerns about the proposed demolitions. SHPO holds influence since the Center of Government site lies within the DeWitt Park Historic District. The structures may not themselves be historic, but regulators regard them as “contributing structures” to the district.
The Tompkins County-SHPO standoff has dragged on for a year. The agency demands input and warns that evading its authority could compromise Tompkins County’s ability to secure state and federal grants to help underwrite the office project. About the extent of that leverage—or the range of grants affected—local officials remain unsure.
Holt’s design team will submit to SHPO by March 20th its final justifications for the buildings’ deconstruction. SHPO representatives plan to tour the downtown site April 10.
The Tompkins County Legislature’s Downtown Facilities Special Committee took no action Tuesday. But unless plans change drastically, legislators appear moving unimpeded toward building the Center of Government on the downtown site with a groundbreaking, state willing, targeted for January 2027.
“What SHPO wants to see is have you done due diligence in trying to (sort of) create a solution for your project that preserves the three buildings… reuses and preserves them,” Thompson advised the committee Tuesday.
The problem is that keeping the old buildings is not what either the architect or most legislators want. So what Holt’s team will do instead, Thompson made clear, is to make the most persuasive argument as to why as many buildings as possible should come down. And it’s in the context of demolition advocacy that the issue of downtown economic vitality secures the architect’s attention.
Thompson called it, “the importance of locating the Center of Government downtown in Ithaca from an economic perspective.”
What the architect plans to present SHPO preservationists are three principal options. The first would retain all three of the structures and somehow build a Center of Government around them. A second option would keep only the former bank building at the corner as some sort of public-facing entrance and build a government working space in a new building behind it. The third, and the preferred, option would tear all three buildings down.
Regarding the option of keeping all buildings standing, “That’s an option that we’re trying to take off the table,” Thompson admitted.
“Leaving the three buildings on the site and building a really tall, skinny building in the middle isn’t really a viable option,” the architect opined. A new office building, he explained, must be built with an expected 80-100 year life span in mind. Moreover, one can imagine that a tall, odd-shaped monstrosity could overpower the adjacent DeWitt Park. That’s the historic space SHPO most wants to protect.
Quay Thompson hadn’t even planned to consider as an option moving the building’s site out of downtown. Only when Department of Planning and Sustainability Commissioner Katie Borgella raised the alternative did the architect latch onto it as it could sway SHPO regulators into endorsing demolition.
“Should we include a project option of moving the Center of Government to a ‘greenfield’ outside the boundary of the City of Ithaca?” Borgella asked. “It does help tell the story for why we would be investing in downtown and what the benefits are of that,” she said.
“So you’re asking if we should build this in Lansing instead of downtown?” Downtown Facilities Committee Chair, Newfield-Enfield’s Randy Brown, asked the planner.
“I’m asking if we should include that in the report as an option,” Borgella answered. “If it is, then it seems like it’s something SHPO should understand that if this doesn’t get approved, that (relocation) might be one of the options that the County move forward,” she said.
Some Tompkins County legislators, most notably Dryden’s Mike Lane, hate the idea of “building in a cornfield,” as Lane has derisively put it. Others, however, may prove more open.
“I’m not against moving the building location if it’s counter-productive,” Brown said, presumably referring to the obstacles faced by staying downtown and facing SHPO’s continued roadblocks. “It is what it is, right?” Brown posited rhetorically.
“We’ve always looked at… keeping the center of our government in the county seat, which is the City of Ithaca,” Mike Lane insisted. True, Tioga County built its offices in the proverbial “cornfield,” Lane acknowledged. But he thinks that was a mistake, and that his county should not follow Tioga’s lead.
“Yes, it’s cheaper, faster to do that,” Lane admitted. Nonetheless, he said, “Ithaca is central from all of the surrounding areas,” and a building’s location should consider that.
Toward that issue of centrality, some on the committee raised transportation concerns. An estimated one-third of Tompkins County residents live close enough to the downtown Courthouse complex to either walk there, bike there, or take a reliable TCAT bus.
“More and more people that I’m meeting and talking to downtown are foregoing getting a car,” Ulysses-Enfield’s Anne Koreman observed. “Some people don’t even have a driver’s license,” she said. An out-of-the-way office building, she argued, would prove inconvenient for them.
Whether through institutional ignorance or by purposeful design, architect Quay Thompson spread much misinformation about the committee’s meeting room Tuesday, arguments that would work to dispel thought of a more rural siting and keep the focus on downtown.
“So we have three buildings that we’re preparing to take down that are currently unoccupied,” Thompson told the committee. “One has become a homeless shelter. They’re deteriorating, and we haven’t been able to find tenants for ‘em for the last number of years.”
“We’ve invested a lot in the Old Jail,” the architect continued. “If we moved this project off-site into a greenfield, those buildings would continue to sit there and probably be sold off to someone else, and the investment that we’re planning for those other two buildings wouldn’t occur.”
So wrong, so misleading on so many fronts:
First, only two of the three buildings targeted-for-deconstruction are “unoccupied.” Building C is—and has remained for many years—very much in use. It’s a county office building.
Secondly, the two other buildings, the former bank and the law office, were bought specifically to be torn down to build the Center of Government. Tompkins County has never made a serious attempt to rent them out. The old bank is now a Code-Blue wintertime homeless shelter only because no one could find any other place for the state-mandated service.
And what about the Old Jail and the Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins Building, the 1854 Courthouse? No, they won’t become vacant. The Gov. Tompkins Building houses the County Legislative Chambers, and no one’s talked about moving that venue. The Old Jail was repurposed in the 1990’s. Renovations to either of the buildings would be made only to re-accommodate departments moving in after the current occupants expectedly move out.
But again, consider the arguments advanced here as bargaining points to bolster demolition’s case in any forthcoming negotiations with SHPO.
“Certainly, if we’re talking about moving off campus and letting three buildings become abandoned and not making the improvements in the two buildings that we were talking about, they can’t not look at the whole project, the whole package that we’re talking about,” architect Thompson reasoned to legislators, trying to think as he thinks the state office’s preservationists would.
Might the argument work, as biased and deceptive as some may see it? We can only wait and learn what happens in April. That’s when SHPO comes to town.
###
Local “Living Wage” jumps by a third
by Robert Lynch; March 2, 2025
It’s a pay rate many a local employer would be hard-pressed to provide and many a local worker can only envy at a distance.
Reflecting inflation-driven increases in basic necessities, the so-called “Living Wage” for Tompkins County has grown to $24.82 per hour, according to figures released February 26 by the Tompkins County Workers’ Center, an Ithaca-based employee advocacy group.
The revised Living Wage stands 34.5 per cent higher than a comparable calculation the Workers’ Center made two years ago.
“It’s obviously a huge increase,” Workers’ Center Director Pete Myers admitted to a radio interviewer one day after his group had made the new number public. “There are some employers that are going to have a really difficult time with this,” Myers Thursday advised the morning host on WHCU.
To state the just-released Living Wage a little differently, paying $24.82 per hour would earn an employee nearly $200 per day, a thousand dollars a week ($992.80) or $51,625 per year.
The Tompkins Living Wage calculation stands well above—a full 60 per cent above—the legally-enforced $15.50 per hour “Minimum Wage” that New York State currently imposes on employers upstate. The state’s Minimum Wage rose by 50 cents last January. It’ll rise by another 50 cents next year.
“Tompkins County, New York, is the most expensive place to live in Upstate New York, and by some measures one of the most expensive places to live in the United States,” the Workers’ Center asserts on its website.
While the wage increase may seem staggering, it registers not far different from the number local officials had predicted last summer when Myers and his supporters brought their complaint about inadequate local wages to the Tompkins County Legislature. Tompkins County Government already applies Living Wage standards to its county workforce.
In his Thursday broadcast interview, Myers claimed as many as 23,000 employees in Tompkins County earn below the Living Wage. And the worker advocate conceded that for some employers, particularly those in the health care industry, a sector dependent on state subsidies—he singled out Racker (the former Franziska Racker Centers) as an example—the new, higher wage will likely prove impossible to meet.
Myers also acknowledged the special burden placed on “mom and pop” businesses. “This will be really hard to keep up with,” he said of the new benchmark wage and owners’ resulting struggle.
The Workers’ Center website credits researchers at the Ithaca and Buffalo “Co-Labs” for Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations for computing the revised Living Wage. “The latest study was updated to take into account the extreme inflation that took place this past year,” the website states.
“These are basic needs,” Myers said in the WHCU interview regarding the factors driving the revised statistic. Increased rent stands foremost among these, he said. “Rent has increased pretty substantially in the last year,” Myers stated.
The Living Wage calculator, posted by the Workers’ Center, estimates current countywide apartment rental at $1,489 a month, up 17 percent from the $1,276 calculated two years ago.
Still, many may find that even this new, higher rental number seems low, especially for those living in the City of Ithaca, where one must compete for scarce housing with throngs of college students.
Transportation costs have also gone up, Myers said. The new calculations peg local transportation cost at $520 per month, up from $320 two years ago.
Among the other monthly costs estimated: Food at $341; Health Care at $348; and “Taxes” at $909.43.
“It’s definitely a big number,” Pete Myers said of the newly-computed Living Wage. “But for a lot of people it’s not going to be enough to live on.”
And the worker advocate pointed out that the ILR School calculations target costs for only a single person, not a couple or a family. If children were factored in, Myers conceded, the livable pay rate could climb as high as $40 an hour, a plateau impossible for most employers to reach.
Paying a Living Wage is strictly voluntary, not the law, although some local activists have sought to persuade Tompkins County to wrest authority from New York State and enact a stand-alone local Minimum Wage, one that would mirror Myers’ higher number. Doing so would require challenging a long-standing court precedent that assigns the New York State Legislature exclusive power to set minimum compensation.
During his radio interview, Myers claimed 127 local employers voluntarily comply with the Living Wage standard. But he acknowledged that this number may become a high-water mark.
“I presume we’re going to lose a lot of Living Wage employers because of such a large increase,” Myers said.
That may already have occurred. As of February 25, the Workers’ Center’s website listed 66 “Living Wage Employers” as certified. That list includes Tompkins County Government, the Ithaca Teachers Association, and the towns of Ithaca, Caroline, and Danby. Conspicuously absent from the list are the City of Ithaca, the Ithaca City School District, and most noticeably, Cornell University.
The Workers’ Center advises that it will allow employers up to one year to “catch up” to the new, higher Living Wage. To retain certification, employers will need to pay at least $24.82 by the end of December.
Early last July, Democrat Veronica Pillar placed before a Tompkins County legislative committee a resolution that by its title would have moved toward implementing a higher County-wide minimum wage through a local law. Its title overstated expectation. The resolution was mostly process, not substance. And by the time Pillar’s bold move got watered-down and debated to death by the full Legislature one month later, it stopped short of snatching away state authority. Instead, it merely set aside money for a consultant to study the prospect.
Nevertheless, it was during those summertime meetings that Pete Myers first predicted that a $24 an hour Living Wage would be coming soon. Now that it’s here, we can look back and say Myers underestimated reality by nearly a dollar an hour.
But a Living Wage is more than just organized (or disorganized) labor’s lofty aspiration. It can hit taxpayers soon—and hard.
Remember, Tompkins County Government is a Living Wage employer. Its mandates demand payment of living wages. And because they do, our county budgets next year may require padding to cushion the wage burden blow.
“We are a Living Wage employer,” Lansing legislator Mike Sigler reminded colleagues last August when Myers first predicted a $24 Living Wage. “If you just do back-of-the envelope math… you’re looking at over $8 Million it would end up costing the County.”
Sigler that night voted against proceeding with the consultant’s study, as did two other lawmakers. The other eleven members of the Legislature supported moving forth. Nothing’s known to have surfaced publicly from that study to date. And even were the experts to chart a path forward, some recognize that challenging state authority could prove futile.
“A lot of employers are going to feel this is unrealistic,” Pete Myers admitted in his latest radio interview as he addressed the new Living Wage. “So I’m concerned about it,” he said.
Pete’s not the only one. It costs a lot to live in Tompkins County; or to pay people sufficiently to remain living here. Perhaps it’s the price Ithaca pays for its prosperity. If more small businesses shutter, or your taxes go up, this new Living Wage may stand at fault for the new reality we’re all about to face. Better brace for it.
###
Posted previously:
Onward, to Albany!
Tompkins Legislature urges TCIDA expansion
[And posted after: Tompkins DEI Report carves partisan divide]
by Robert Lynch; February 22, 2025
The Ithaca Board of Education wants its voice to be heard. So does the Town of Enfield. But first, New York lawmakers must grant their consent. And this week the Tompkins County Legislature took a needed step toward making that happen.
By its unanimous vote February 18th—Ulysses’ Anne Koreman was excused, but had previously stated her support—the Tompkins County Legislature endorsed and forwarded to our state Senator and Assemblymember a request for so-called “Home Rule” legislation that would expand membership in the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency (IDA). It would raise membership from seven people to nine.
More than just adding chairs around the table, the enlargement is seen by some as a tool to infuse wider community input into the agency’s decisions, particularly those involving tax abatements granted for housing developments and solar farms.
“This is diversity. This is inclusion. This is giving many voices a chance to be heard,” this writer, Enfield Councilperson Robert Lynch, addressed the issue at the meeting’s start. The Enfield Town Board had adopted its own resolution in January calling for local and state lawmakers to expand the IDA by the two extra seats. The Enfield resolution would have governmental leaders assign one of those two positions to someone who would represent rural towns and villages.
The IDA board has long remained at seven members. And it will take an act of the New York State Legislature to change that. The current expansion initiative began last November when the Ithaca Board of Education recommended legislators take steps to grant it—or some other Tompkins County school district—a single seat at the table. Momentum behind the expansion has grown ever since.
When the current expansion plan cleared a County Legislature committee February 5th, at least one legislator, Ithaca’s Rich John, who doubles as the IDA current Chair, expressed misgivings. He feared that a school district representative would become a roadblock, a person repeatedly vetoing otherwise-worthy IDA initiatives. John repeated his concerns to the full Legislature this past Tuesday, yet added his affirmative vote, nevertheless.
“I’m willing to vote for this resolution,” John assured legislators, “but I do have real concerns.” Emails he’d received in the resolution’s support had alleged “the IDA has undermined the schools,” John reported.
“It’s just absolutely untrue,” the Ithaca Democrat said of the critical assertion. “Pardon me, I don’t want to get hyper-political here, but it’s like listening to our president talk about tariffs and who pays for them. People say things that are just not true,” John stated.
Later, a fellow Democrat, Veronica Pillar, tempered Rich John’s assertion with a healthy dose of doubt.
“Someone said it’s not true that the IDA has harmed the school districts,” Pillar remarked, explicitly declining to attribute the refutation to her colleague one seat away. “I think none of us here probably know. It’s not our place to say. And this is why it would be great to have more diverse voices at the table.”
What emerged from committee and secured legislative support that night looked a bit different from what the Ithaca Schools or the Town of Enfield had first recommended. The County Legislature’s proposal intentionally avoids creating specific new seats that clearly-defined constituencies would subsequently fill. Instead, the adopted resolution envisions expanding the IDA board’s number by adding two more “at-large” seats, raising at-large membership from its current four persons to as many as six.
As far as recruiting those half-dozen at-large members, the resolution’s text opts for ambiguity, stating only:
“That the appointing body of the TCIDA shall seek to fill at-large seats with a diverse representative board including the following representatives from as many of the following as possible, both urban and rural areas of the County, a member from the Ithaca Area Economic Development Board of Directors… municipal taxing jurisdictions, school districts, organized labor, finance & banking, development & construction and economic development appointed in a manner consistent with New York State law and local practices.”
School district hardliners may find the new textual vagueness hard to swallow. They may need to assure themselves of guaranteed input whenever tax abatements get decided. As for Enfield, this writer/ Councilperson accepted the new language as a fair compromise. For one thing, by stating particular interest group appointment as an aspirational goal rather than making it a promise, one evades the thorny problem of multiple governing jurisdictions squabbling among themselves as to whom to designate for an assigned seat.
As presently comprised, the IDA Board of Directors draws three of its members—one short of a majority—from the County Legislature itself. The Ithaca Area Economic Development Board, a corporate appendage of the IDA, appoints a fourth member.
The City of Ithaca, by recent practice, has landed the fifth seat, although it’s technically only an “at-large” appointment. Under pressure from worker interests back in 2021, the County Legislature has ever since then reserved one position on the IDA Board of Directors for a representative of organized labor.
Before the County Legislature took its vote February 18, Lansing lawmaker Mike Sigler sought assurance that the proposed restructuring would not jeopardize labor’s guaranteed presence.
Last October, the Tompkins County IDA granted its largest tax abatement ever, a 20-year, $85 Million relief package, to Ithaca’s SouthWorks development, an ambitious private initiative to transform the abandoned Morse Chain/Emerson Power factory on South Hill into housing, commercial, industrial and retail space. Credit the SouthWorks abatement controversy for driving the Ithaca Board of Education and its unionized teachers toward requesting school-centric IDA membership.
Rich John staunchly disagrees with his naysayers. But school officials and union leaders view the massive SouthWorks abatement as sucking money out of the tax base rather than contributing money to it. The critics’ schoolhouse math only works if one assumes SouthWorks—and lesser projects like it—would still happen were the abatements not to exist.
The Ithaca Teachers Association publicly opposed the SouthWorks abatement last October. Both Ithaca School Board member Jill Tripp and Ithaca Teachers Association President Katheryn Cernera spoke in favor of IDA expansion when the enabling resolution cleared a legislative committee earlier this month.
“The recent consideration of the SouthWorks industrial project, the decision to approve the project despite strong concerns about the impact of this project on the Ithaca City School District, and the defense of this decision… all prove that continuing to approve school tax abatements for industrial development projects without input from our local schools is a tremendous mistake,” Cernera told the Housing and Economic Development Committee.
County political leaders are listening. “I think one thing that I’ve heard very loud and clear in meeting with the teachers’ unions, in meeting with school board members, in meeting with constituents, was that there’s definitely a demand for more voices to be heard on the IDA,” legislator Shawna Black asserted in defense of Board expansion the night the legislature met.
But Rich John defends the IDA. He says the agency, since its birth decades ago, has pumped forth enough prosperity to produce $71 Million annually in local tax revenues.
“The IDA in Tompkins County has been remarkably successful in building tax base, in creating jobs, in furthering energy efficiency, in furthering affordable housing,” John counseled the Legislature.
IDA’s critics, John asserted, “seem to believe that we are giving money away to developers. We don’t do that. We do not abate existing taxes. The abatement only applies to new value, the bricks and mortar that are added,” he said. “That abatement phases out over time, and then they pay full taxes just like any other property owner.”
But 20 years for SouthWorks—or 30 years for Enfield’s Norbut Solar Farm—is a long, long wait. And local taxpayers, along with those who represent them, can be of the impatient type.
“I can tell you as far as Enfield is concerned, we would not be an automatic ‘no,’” this Councilperson assured Tompkins County’s legislators, while also acknowledging that municipalities and school districts, “shut out of the process” often have had to “compromise with our revenues” when tax abatements get struck.
“We would have an open mind and look at these matters and decide whether it’s in the best public interest overall in Tompkins County,” this writer assured lawmakers.
Rich John will be leaving the Tompkins County Legislature at year’s end. So will Mike Lane, the Legislature’s longest-tenured member. He’s also a former IDA chair.
“I would just remind everybody that this is an Industrial Development Agency,” Lane counseled. “And where we’ve gone astray is because we have become mostly a housing development organization,” he said. “We don’t need any more big box apartment complexes downtown that are having a hard time renting out.”
Mike Lane, quite transparently, referenced Library Place, the tax abated, Travis-Hyde developed senior housing project at Ithaca’s Court and Cayuga Streets. Developers tore down the Old County Library, got a tax abatement, built the apartment house despite protracted delays, and recently had to restructure their bargain, in part, by letting younger tenants live there.
“We need more light industry, the kind that we used to put up at the airport,” Lane reasoned. And why should we reshape priorities? Lane says it’s because new industry is going to Cortland and Cayuga and Tioga Counties instead.
****
It’s a truism: Big box housing gets pricey, yet creates few, if any permanent jobs. Factories employ people. There’s a big difference there. And many long-term residents, like Mike Lane (and also this writer) remember when IDA abatements helped build places like Borg Warner in Lansing. Now they underwrite high-end, high-rise housing that’s here, there… and seemingly everywhere. Set that issue aside as another challenge for another day.
But the Tompkins County Legislature has acted. Those who represent us in Albany will be asked to pass the Home Rule legislation that would expand the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency. Bills like this often wait until the bitter end. Expect legislative action sometime in May or maybe early-June. Governor Hochul could wait until year’s end to give her signature. In the meantime, we wait.
###
Tompkins DEI Report carves partisan divide
Reporting and analysis by Robert Lynch; February 21, 2025
President Donald Trump wasn’t in Tompkins County legislative chambers last Tuesday night. But his shadow was.
After a nearly hour-long debate over a matter that wasn’t even expected to have been talked about, the Tompkins County Legislature voted 10-3 along strict party lines to adopt the “Institutionalizing Equity Report,” a dense, reticularly-scripted, DEI-centric diversity roadmap heralded to become the “foundational document for embedding equity within all levels of County government” according to the words of the resolution that gave it power.
Charlene Holmes, Tompkins County’s Chief Equity and Diversity Officer (CEDO) since mid-2023, claimed credit for authorship. We’re told the 52-page, data-driven document took her two years to compile. Its text was not made part of the meeting’s published agenda, but instead hitched to it through a hard-to-find data link. The report will eventually be made “publicly accessible” on the Tompkins County website, the adopted resolution promises.
The County Legislature has long proclaimed its embrace of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI). “Inclusion through Diversity” occupies a prominent position of honor as the footer of Tompkins County’s letterhead. Tompkins County was a first among upstate New York counties to recruit a Chief Equity and Diversity Officer. Its newly-hired County Administrator is African-American. So is its Commissioner of Personnel.
But with DEI having become the newly- targeted bad boy of the freshly-minted Trump Administration, the voluminous report that a majority of Tompkins’ legislators gleefully adopted Tuesday could also paint a bright, MAGA-generated bullseye on everything Tompkins County says or does. It may even cost us money.
Still, Tompkins County’s progressive Democrats eagerly raced to their battle stations February 18th to defend what CEDO Holmes had proudly and methodically written. What’s more, some lawmakers came close to tarring any colleague who might critique the report, accusing them of being someone at the inside periphery of racially-unacceptable thought.
Each of the Legislature’s three Republicans; Newfield-Enfield’s Randy Brown, Lansing’s Mike Sigler, and Groton’s Lee Shurtleff, voted against the report’s adoption. All ten Democrats voted their approval. (Ulysses’ Anne Koreman didn’t attend.)
“I’m not comfortable voting for this because I really don’t understand it,” a diffident, bewildered Randy Brown stated as he launched the marathon discussion after having pulled the report’s authorizing resolution from a multi-measure “consent agenda.” Had it languished there, lawmakers would likely have routinely ushered it to adoption without a whisper.
As the 52-minute debate dragged on, partisans threw some of the sharpest rhetorical elbows witnessed of late. Sparring started when Mike Sigler acknowledged he’d opposed creating the CEDO’s job in the first place, back in 2019.
“I took a lot of heat for that,” Sigler acknowledged about opposing creating the job that Holmes now administers. Sigler said his present concern is akin to what it was back then. “What is the metric of success?” Sigler asked. “How successful have we been when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusiveness?”
The Ithaca Town’s Amanda Champion, one of the report’s—and Charlene Holmes’—strongest defenders, insisted the number-driven document is a success metric in itself.
“It’s pretty clear,” said Champion, “that the goal is to collect data and to find out where we’re helping people, where we’re not helping people, where departments are helping people, where departments could do better, look at some of the challenges that departments are having and help them; that’s the goal.”
To Champion, process—process alone—can gauge success. Some may demand more meat on those DEI bones.
The resolution that legislators adopted February 18th lauds the Institutionalizing Equity Report as, “a comprehensive framework to advance and embed equity across County operations,” a framework “utilizing data-driven indicators” to do so. Yes, the document too often reads like a doctoral thesis.
“Our approach to embedding and institutionalizing equity within Tompkins County’s operations is guided by a comprehensive methodology that integrates strategic planning, equity indicators, and the Equity Mindedness Framework (EMF),” page 16 of Holmes’ work product states.
And one might ask, what exactly does an “Equity Mindedness Framework” entail? Holmes defines it:
“EMF provides a comprehensive framework for organizations to institutionalize equity by using evidence to inform targeted interventions, prioritizing the needs of marginalized groups, embedding equity into institutional practices, dismantling harmful systemic structures, and continuously improving their equity efforts. This structured approach helps organizations create lasting and meaningful change towards achieving equity across all aspects of their operations and impact within their communities.”
Hmmm. Good luck to Highway Director Jeff Smith in explaining that word salad to the typical snow plow driver at the department’s next diversity training seminar. Smith shouldn’t have to explain. It’s academic circumlocution; shredded lettuce dressed up and imitate intelligent insight. (Sadly, there is no “Plain language” version.)
As Tuesday’s debate wandered on, emotions heightened, and reality crept in from the edges.
“Diversity and inclusion, I think are fairly agreed-upon concepts,” Ithaca’s Rich John remarked. “It’s the ‘equity’ word that people struggle with,” he observed, “And what does that mean? And it can mean basic fairness. But it also can support that we’re going to try to do something to address past wrongs and rebalance as a result of that… and I don’t know how we can do that, frankly.”
Rich John then drew his argument more to the point,
“We also have to recognize in the last election that there are lots of people in our community all around us that voted for the Administration that is in place right now. They’re here. They’re our neighbors. And part of what drove them to vote as they did, I believe, is a deep skepticism about DEI,” Rich John maintained. “They don’t understand it. They think it’s doing things that shouldn’t be done.”
“So I don’t think there’s truly a consensus in Tompkins County,” John posited. John, himself, doesn’t see the report as “threatening or bad,” but he fears many others do. “And I think that’s on us that we need to bring our community along on this,” he said. “I don’t think we can say there is a consensus. Sadly, there isn’t.”
Rich John called for delaying the Legislature’s vote. Delay didn’t happen.
Liberals, Democrats like Shawna Black, exuded profound unease, maybe sensing that Trump—or at least Trump-ism—had somehow stolen into legislative chambers that night.
“God, I honestly don’t even know where to begin,” Black, the Legislature’s former chair, reacted in distress; disbelief. “I (Whew) feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone right now.” Black seemed to lose her train of thought. “It’s crazy times right now,” she remarked.
“We know what our community wants, it’s loud and clear,” Black continued. There’s no question where we need to go and how we need to vote on this… I feel we’re going back to the Dark Ages even debating this.”
Legislator Travis Brooks, African American, said he’s felt the sting of prejudicial preconceptions himself. His name on a job application suggests one kind of person; his showing up for the interview reveals another. Brooks said interviewers might expect at viewing his name to hear country music. Instead they see dreadlocks and tattoos.
“When you have people that don’t look like you, when you have different backgrounds, it enriches wherever you work, and it creates diversity, it creates thought, it creates a better product for the community that you serve,” Brooks asserted.
Mike Sigler took a second turn at the mic. Sigler sensed a mood in the room he didn’t like.
“I’m a little disappointed, frankly, in some of the things that my colleagues have said, because what they’re doing is they’re making this into ‘if you don’t vote the way that I believe you should vote, that you are on the other side and don’t believe in these things.’” Sigler stated. He said that’s wrong.
The Republican lawmaker insisted the issue is not about Trump. He said he opposed the CEDO position’s creation long before the current Administration took office. And Sigler insisted that most Americans still oppose racism.
“Are there racists in the country? Yes,” Sigler acknowledged. “Have they died off? No, they haven’t… Is it pre-Civil Rights era? No. That is an unbelievable statement, frankly, to say that we’ve made no progress in the last 70 years. That takes me aback.”
As to the DEI report, Sigler said, “Í think we can fight racism, yes, without this. I’m sorry. I thought that five years ago. I think that now.”
What’s more, Sigler continued, DEI should not confine itself to people of color. What about Asians, a minority whose percentage within Tompkins County, statistics reveal, outnumber that of blacks.
“Are we going out and actively recruiting the Asian community to the positions within the county?” Sigler questioned. “These are the kind of metrics I’m talking about.”
To the best of this writer’s knowledge, no Asian heads a top-level Tompkins County department directly answerable to the County Legislature.
“So Mike, you want data about who we’re actively recruiting,” Champion responded , peeved he would ask. “That’s what this report does,” Holmes’ most ardent defender emphasized.
Amanda Champion grew louder, increasingly animated. She looked directly Mike Sigler’s way.
About the report: “It’s all about who we are hiring; who are we not hiring. Are they men? Are they women? How do they identify? That’s what the whole thing is; it’s data!” Champion exclaimed. “And if you’re scared of the data because it doesn’t look the way you want it to look, then you’re the one with the problem.”
“And I do not think that it’s fair for you to say that it’s not fair to you,” Champion retorted, tossing out a feminist barb along the path that everyone’s female ancestors, including Sigler’s, had been “put in their place for eons.”
One other issue, less contentious, crept into the discussion that night. Groton’s Shurtleff noted that CEDO Holmes had buried on page 48 of her report her aspiration to expand her own position to become an entire County government office this year, presumably with added staff and expenses. Shurtleff couldn’t support such an expansion.
Charlene Holmes conceded she’d reached a trifle.
“You have to put it out there,” Holmes said of her CEDO Office initiative. “I put it out there; I took a chance,,, I just took what you guys already had and I put it in a pretty bow, and I said look at what we could do if we were to take what we’ve already done and enhance the work.”
Government always grows that way. Charlene Holmes’ report survived, but her position’s expansion will probably not, at least not this year. Money is tight.
****
“Looking forward, the ongoing evaluation of our efforts through tools like the climate survey, bias reporting structure, and regular progress updates will ensure that the County’s commitment to equity remains dynamic and responsive,” Tompkins County’s newly-adopted Institutionalizing Equity Report states in its concluding paragraph. “These efforts, grounded in transparency, accountability, and continuous learning, will drive Tompkins County toward an inclusive future where all individuals are empowered to thrive.”
Enjoy the word salad. Some in government choose to write that way. For Charlene Holmes sake, let’s hope President Trump isn’t sampling the lettuce.
###
Also from the Legislature:
“There’s a Time for These Things”
Mike Lane, longest-tenured T.C. Legislator, to retire
by Robert Lynch; February 18, 2025
If the Tompkins County Legislature can be said to have one statesman—more than just a mere politician—that man of elevated stature is Mike Lane. And at the end of this year, Mike Lane will be gone.
Mike Lane’s served in the Legislature longer than has anyone else now there.
Saving his announcement for the ornate venue of legislative chambers, where he sits at the end-most seat of the oval, nearest the chairperson’s podium, Mike Lane invoked a Biblical passage from Ecclesiastes Tuesday night as the centrist Democrat revealed his plans not to seek reelection this fall representing Dryden in the seat he’s held off-and-on since 1993.
“It’s the Bible that teaches us that for everything there is a season; a season to reap and a season to sow. And that’s true of public service and elective office,” Lane began his somber, measured, three-minute announcement.
“But everything has a season,” Lane continued, “and at this point I think the season is for me to say tonight that I don’t intend to seek reelection to the Legislature this fall.”
“There’s a time for these things,” a reflective Mike Lane reckoned.
After he delivered his message to a hushed legislative chamber, lawmakers, administrators, and guests provided Mike Lane a standing ovation.
“All the institutional memory is leaving,” texted one seasoned hand of Tompkins County government upon being informed of Lane’s agonizing verdict. “Sorry, but not surprised,” was that retiree’s reaction.
As incumbent Tompkins County legislators have, one-by-one—sometimes in groups—announced their reelection or retirement plans in recent weeks, a process dating back to before Christmas, Mike Lane remained mum. He’s served in the Legislature for seven, four-year terms. It marks continuous service for more than 30 years, excepting one election cycle when a Republican ousted Lane from office.
Mike Lane is now in his mid-70’s. We’ve been told he’s winding down his law practice. Some have suspected this might be the moment he’d choose to step aside. They were right.
“I’ve had the distinct honor and privilege to serve the people of the Village of Freeville, the Village of Dryden, and the area surrounding them in the Town of Dryden,” Lane took note in Tuesday’s remarks. “I’ve done my very best for them,” he asserted.
“I’ve never shied from taking stands that I thought were appropriate and in their best interest,” the retiring incumbent continued. “I listened to them. I learned from them. Sometimes I went against what I personally thought because I felt that being a representative meant that I should try to represent the views of my constituents, and of Tompkins County as a whole,” Lane observed.
And as he spoke—at times choking back emotion—Lane attempted a lighthearted departure. He quipped that “if all things were equal,” he’d serve, voters willing, “until they carried me out feet first.” A keen observer could understand how that might, indeed, have been the case. Mike Lane always made clear he loved his job, his legislative service.
Mike Lane is the second-to-last of the 14 current Tompkins County legislators to reveal his or her reelection intentions. Only first-term Republican Lee Shurtleff of Groton has not announced his plans. And Shurtleff declined to tip his hand Tuesday during his own speaking privileges on the Legislature’s floor.
Only this week did news widely circulate that another long-time legislative Democrat, Rich John of Ithaca, would, like Lane, decline to compete this election cycle. In a broadcast interview January 31st, which got little coverage beyond its Friday morning airing, John told WHCU, “I really think it’s time for me to go on to another opportunity, and frankly for somebody else to come in with new ideas and energy and give it a shot.”
Because of redistricting, which will only begin to alter legislative lines this fall, John, had he run, would have found himself in a primary contest against first-term progressive Democrat Veronica Pillar. With Pillar planning to run—and now, Rich John not running—prospects of a primary in that Ithaca City district diminish.
By recent experience, incumbent legislators in relatively “safe” party-favored districts have run, and then won, unopposed.
Mike Lane’s district, eastern Dryden, however, has proven different; much more evenly drawn between the two major parties. In his last election, in 2021, Lane beat Republican Thomas Corey by a mere eight votes. The final tally was a cliff-hanger.
And with veteran Lane’s planned departure, one can envision another competitive match-up this year. Lack of a popular incumbent could even bring a GOP pickup.
Currently, Republicans hold only three of Tompkins County’s 14 legislative seats. A redistricting plan adopted by the County Legislature in 2022 will raise next year’s number of legislators to 16.
Next year’s crop of fresh faces will be among the largest in recent memory. Not only will two new seats crowd the oval. Lane’s announcement means that at least seven incumbents will be stepping off. Nine new legislators would make nearly three-fifths of Tompkins County’s lawmakers’ newcomers. There’ll be a steep learning curve.
One of the imminent retirees, Rich John, recalled at Tuesday’s meeting how when he first planned to seek county office, he drove out to Dryden and spoke with Mike Lane.
“He was really generous with his time to just explain the Legislature to me and give me some idea of what I was getting into,” John remembered. “And that was not an anomaly,” John added. Lane’s shared advice many times since, John said. “And in terms of an institutional source of knowledge; the history that he carries around with him, that’s really going to be sorely missed,” John forewarned colleagues.
If Mike Lane has a passion, it may best be stated in terms of his defense of democracy, a passion often reaching far beyond Tompkins County’s borders.
Of any legislator, Lane has been the strongest defender of Ukraine’s fight to remain a free nation. Lane’s spoken of it often on the legislative floor. And the long-time display of that embattled nation’s flag in legislative chambers was Lane’s doing more than anyone else’s.
Democracy lights a fire in Mike Lane’s heart. And as he disclosed his political plans Tuesday night, it did so once again.
“For the next ten-and-a-half months… I will continue to do my utmost to represent (constituents) to the best of my ability and to keep my oath of office, which is to preserve, defend and protect the Constitution of the United States,” Lane promised.
At that point, as his statement drew to its close, the “big-D” Democrat in Mike Lane’s political conscience showed itself.
“Yes, I’m a lower-level elected official,” Lane acknowledged. “But representing our people under our Constitution is so terribly important to me.”
“And in these dark days”—his closest reference to the Trump Administration—“when the Constitution sometimes seems extremely in jeopardy, each of us has to step forward and make that commitment.”
Mike Lane, of course, will be stepping back. Others, no doubt, will step forward in the days ahead to inherit his legislative seat—maybe to push it to the Left or the Right.. Party petitioning begins at month’s end.
[In its business Tuesday, the Tompkins County Legislature unanimously endorsed an Enfield-encouraged measure toward expanding the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency through state legislation. The Legislature also supported a long-shot state initiative to force manufacturers to pay to recycle the plastic they produce. More on these stories will be posted here later. / RL]
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Why I Still Pledge
This Councilperson, Robert Lynch, speaking after requesting and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of the Enfield Town Board’s monthly meeting, February 12, 2025:
Board:
“I’ve just joined this Enfield Town Board in the Pledge of Allegiance. I’ve done so for most every monthly meeting I’ve attended since I first joined this Board five years ago. I recognize that a majority of my colleagues don’t accompany me; they remain seated. One member generally stands, but declines to recite the words. That is your prerogative. The Constitution guarantees you that right. I defend your freedom to exercise your choice, just as you should always respect my decision to exercise my own within the rules of this Board.
“Much has changed in America since we last met. Some of us in this politically blended community of Enfield may welcome the change. Others may question if the United States of today remains the same country they’ve always known, respected and loved.
“And because of that concern, some of you, our residents, may now refuse to stand, hand-over-heart, and pledge to our flag. I regret that you’ve made that choice.
“The American flag I pledge to represents freedom, patriotism and love: Love for our Constitution, our Rule of Law, our resilient institutions, and our nearly 250-year heritage as a—yes, sometimes flawed, but always evolving and self-correcting—democracy. We express our love for the dedicated public servants in uniform and in civilian service. And yes, we express our love for the citizens—or non-citizens—whom we sometimes leave behind, but later reach down and pull up to join in our unique American experiment.
“Nowhere in the words I recite is there a demand of allegiance to one man—or to one woman—or to one office. We pledge allegiance to a principle, to a nation, and to a concept of liberty and justice for all that our Constitution commands we embrace.
“And if they ever rewrite the Pledge of Allegiance to demand obedience to a particular leader, I will be among the first to stop standing and requesting we recite those words.
“One thing more: I assure you that the winds of change that have buffeted our nation have not dislodged Enfield from its foundation. Enfield’s strength, its resilience, and the generosity, compassion and determination of its people remain as rock-solid as ever. I’m glad I live here and serve here. Thank you.”
[Our meeting continued.]
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