ICSD sets 3.4% levy hike; speeds Heights flood repairs
Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; April 17, 2026
If there was any air conditioning, it wasn’t working well. Had it been that night, members of Ithaca’s Board of Education April 14 might have grown more focused; attended to their driving, taken fewer side trips, and reached agreement sooner on the 2026-27 District Budget. Members finally landed at their destination. But it took work.
Finding just enough votes to make a majority, the board Tuesday adopted the $177.6 Million proposed budget, its spending left essentially untouched from that earlier presented by district administrators. Ithaca City School District (ICSD) voters will either ratify or reject that budget in a May 19 referendum.
Far less contentious, yet equally significant, the ICSD Board set aside up to $1.5 Million from the school district’s savings account, its “fund balance” accumulated through prior budgets, to underwrite expected flood remediation at Cayuga Heights Elementary School (sometimes assigned the acronym, “Ches”).
Flood waters rushing down a hillside behind Heights Elementary during the March 31 deluge caused major damage to the building’s first floor. Remediation work has already begun. Only the first $500,000 of repairs will be covered by insurance. Administrators have yet to tally a full damage estimate.
We’ll deal with the budget first:
As finally adopted, yet only after 90 minutes of sometimes-tense deliberation, the proposed ICSD budget would raise spending by just over five percent from the current year and hike the tax levy by 3.4 percent. That’s less of a levy rise than administrators had originally sought, yet still higher than were a couple of lower-tax options earlier presented to the board. One year ago, the levy rose by 3.76 percent.
Reflecting on that hour and a half of often-meandering discussion, one found absent any grand, visionary fiscal optimism—not from Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown, not from program-conscious progressives like Erin Croyle or Karen Yearwood, nor from taxpayer guardians like Todd Fox.
The budget, itself, earned few if any accolades that night. Praised far more was the administration’s new computer tool that helps the homeowner calculate the budget’s impact on his or her own property.
The budget program is “not only transformative, but also very innovative,” Superintendent Brown proclaimed at the discussion’s start.
It leads to “a different way of looking at the budget,” Dominick Lisi, Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance, advised attendees.
That may be true. But praising the budget tool rather than the budget is somewhat like going to the Taughannock Falls overlook and walking away talking about the tower viewers instead of the waterfall.
No, there was little satisfaction and more equivocation that night. Perhaps the empaneled, elected educators fell victim to the curse of too many choices. A tool that enables an infinite range of fiscal alternatives also invites an unbounded field of divergent opinions. Spectators seated in chairs against the wall of the all-too-small, all-too-stuffy ICSD board room sensed indecision.
“If we suddenly have another disaster like what happened to Ches, or gas prices go up even more, or whatever, are we suddenly going to say, ‘Oh, my gosh, you should have made the rate even lower, you should have made it higher…’” Emily Workman pondered aloud.
Workman’s quandary stood as a good testament to the curse of too many choices.
The ICSD Board adopted the budget in a split vote; five votes in favor, one opposed, and (surprisingly) three abstentions. Because of those abstentions, the budget barely passed.
At the last regular Board of Education meeting, March 24, little attention was given to spending. Talk focused on the tax levy. And on how much to tax, members could not then agree. At a subsequent committee session on April 9, fresh word about the Cayuga Heights school flood and the uncertainty that flowed from it over the remediation’s cost forestalled any recommendation on taxes then as well.
Fiscal reality dictates that should spending remain untouched, any lowering of the tax levy would pull money out of the fund balance. And the fund balance reserves will be needed to fix the Cayuga Heights School.
At the Tuesday meeting, the board’s majority saw the 3.4 percent levy increase as a middle-ground compromise. Superintendent Brown had wanted a higher, 4.18 percent increase, a percentage just below the New York State tax cap assigned the ICSD this year. At the April 9 committee session, Superintendent Brown had first floated a 3.9 percent increase, only to later throttle it back to 3.4 percent.
“I think 3-4 is the right number,” Garrick Blalock, chair of the Facilities and Finance Committee, said of the compromise number Tuesday night. “I think 3-4’s the number that gives us a healthy fund balance, healthy reserves, and t also recognizes the pressure, the inflationary pressure that taxpayers are under.”
“I’m thinking about, as a taxpayer, you want me to approve a school district budget and I’m in a world where I’m paying $5.00 for a gallon of gas,” Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell commented. Compared with the alternative increase of above four percent, “I feel better going to taxpayers asking for 3.4, understanding all these other financial constraints.”
The lone dissent in the budget vote came from Todd Fox. Fox was elected two years ago during the ICSD’s taxpayer revolt, the one that rejected the budget that year. Fox stood his ground Tuesday for a tax increase even lower than the one adopted that night, a levy increase no higher than three percent. And Fox had a plan to achieve it. He’d tap into fund balances this year and replenish them later. Fox would sell off the long-mothballed Danby Elementary School and reap the proceeds. Danby hasn’t held a class there for almost a half-century.
Danby’s “probably worth $1 Million if you put it on the market,” Fox predicted. If you drew down the fund balance by $1.4 Million to contain this year’s levy increase to three percent, Fox reasoned, “we could recoup that 1.4 (Million) from that one sale.”.
“Hey, we have that lever, that number, and we should dispose of that asset,” Fox said of the Danby building. “And I’m happy to do that this year, next year, whenever it is, as soon as possible.”
“It’s a little weird to me that this late in the game we’re talking about selling Danby,” colleague Erin Croyle countered, “because that’s something like that to me is not a factor in what we’re talking about now.”
“Maybe next year,” Croyle suggested the district consider offloading Danby. “But for the budget, you’ve got to have a vote, set timelines; you’ve got to move forward.”
The three unexpected abstentions on the budget vote came from Adam Krantweiss, Jacob Shiffrin and Emily Workman. Collectively, each in his or her own way, they redirected attention this budget cycle to the little-spoken issue of spending.
Theirs became the side trip the night’s budget journey took. And some at the table, including Board President Eversley Bradwell, did not enjoy the ride. It began late in deliberations, commencing after member Karen Yearwood had moved the budget for adoption—complete with its 3.4 percent levy hike.
Krantweiss said he couldn’t support the budget given how it came to be. He read from a prepared statement.
“I’m going to abstain from the budget vote because I disagree with the process in which the budget was developed,” Krantweiss had written and then spoke.
Administration had prepared the budget and handed it to us, he said. Yet “I feel like we as a collective board have not had substantive public discussions at the full board meetings to provide collective input about how to fund categories included in the budget…”
Krantweiss continued, “We’ve talked a lot about using the reserves to save taxpayers some money this year, but we haven’t even discussed making budget cuts to save money. Not that we would necessarily do that or want to do that, but we haven’t even talked about it together.”
Adam Krantweiss rattled off issues he believes the full board should have discussed, but hasn’t: class sizes, course offerings, the number of teachers in the classroom, even the restoration of the controversial 2024 elimination of Mandarin language classes at Ithaca High School.
Krantweiss’ grievance runs deeper than that of one rogue board member’s complaint about process. It asks the question, “Who’s in charge here?” Is it all nine members of the Board of Education, or is it a well-funded administration that begs annually for deference, joined by allied board members holding a similar vision?
“Against my better judgment, I am opposed to a number of things that were also said about the process,” President Eversley Bradwell remarked at one point. He didn’t elaborate.
“I’m somewhat flabbergasted,” board member Karen Yearwood interjected. Yearwood maintained that the program-related issues Krantweiss had raised have been fully aired at meetings of the Curriculum Committee, meetings few from the public ever attend. Krantweiss sits on that committee.
Krantweiss countered that committee consideration is far different from full board involvement.
Erin Croyle offered the most passionate rebuttal.
“The budget process is a year-long process,” Croyle reminded Krantweiss. “You had all year to have these conversations, all year to bring up all these items, but you’re doing it tonight in this format with a canned speech.”
“Salaries are people,” Finance Chair Blalock reminded everyone. “The reason I think perhaps we haven’t had a lot of focus on the expense side of the books is because… changing expenses means changing the people and how they teach, how this district educates.”
“Should we just take a sponge and wipe the blackboard of our education model all down and start all over again?” Blalock asked, waving the air like he held that sponge.
Yes, the room was hot; the night was long.
Jacob Shiffrin and Emily Workman joined Adam Krantweiss with their abstentions. Neither talked as long as Krantweiss did, nor evoked as much drama. Yet each conveyed general agreement with the process-rooted argument. Workman urged that the “collective input” issue earn discussion at a future meeting. Shiffrin said he didn’t “have sufficient information on the content of the budget to make an informed vote as a board member.”
Yet both Krantweiss and Shiffrin promised to support the budget in the May referendum.
The side trip had ended; the destination reached. The roll was called. The budget passed; just barely.
****
As of meeting night, officials had not fully assessed the dollar loss from the March 31 flooding at Cayuga Heights Elementary. But to be on the safe side and to cover what might be worst-case outcomes, the board passed an emergency authorization allowing the district to draw up to $1.5 Million from its unappropriated fund balance to cover remediation work at the school. Officials say insurance will cover the first $500,000 in claims.
Preliminary damage estimates that night varied wildly. The district’s contractor, SERVPRO, had put in an initial estimate of $388,000 for remediation alone. But Assistant Superintendent Lisi quoted state benchmarks predicting that mitigation and reconstruction work could cost $150 to $250 per square foot. And for 13,000 square feet of damaged area, those guidelines could push costs to $1.95 to $3.25 Million.
Lisi’s best compromise guess was $800,000 to $900,000.
“I think 1.5 (Million) is way too high,” Todd Fox, a commercial developer, reacted. “We don’t have hard numbers back,” Fox stated. “I don’t think the damage is as much as you think it is. It’s mostly cosmetic. There’s nothing structural; no electrical, no plumbing. It’s like flooring and drywall.”
Fox would have set aside only $500,000 now and sought more money later should the need arise. Board President Eversley Bradwell floated a $1 Million mid-ground compromise. Board members stuck to the original $1.5 Million commitment, approving the resolution with only Fox casting an abstention. Fox later explained he’d need more information before he’d support the higher figure.
Most on the board agreed with Erin Croyle’s assessment supporting worst-case contingency. “I don’t understand why we wouldn’t say 1.5 as a C.Y.A. and call it a day,” Croyle remarked.
There’s another consideration, too; government red tape. If you submit the state an emergency authorization now only to come back later with a second appeal, the state might claim it’s no longer an emergency and demand such formalities as competitive bidding, Lisi cautioned.
We should also acknowledge that “it could potentially cost us more,” Eversley Bradwell warned. “Any time you open the wall, there’s the potential you’ll find something.”
Cayuga Heights Elementary remains open. Students are using mostly the upper floor. Remediation work’s begun. Crews have packed up books and ripped up floors. Eversley Bradwell doesn’t like using the term ‘disaster.’ “It’s not a disaster, but a natural occurrence,” the Board President said, though he quickly added, “It looks like a disaster when you walk through the school.”
###
Apology given as Flock flies away
Legislature fast-tracks camera system’s departure vote
by Robert Lynch; April 15, 2026
Sometimes the truth comes out when a politician lets down her guard and forgets first to calculate politically. And that’s what happened Tuesday, April 14 during a suddenly-called, 15-minute meeting of the Tompkins County Legislature.
Convening a session otherwise purposed for a private discussion of a personnel matter never revealed, the Legislature slipped onto its public agenda the termination of a multi-year contract with Flock Safety, the company that’s provided license-plate reading security cameras along local roadways. The resolution passed. Flock’s contract would terminate at the end of May.
“Resolved, that the County Administrator and County Attorney are directed to provide timely written notice to Flock terminating the Flock Contract prior to the auto-renewal date,” the adopted resolution states.
The flash of unguarded candor came through the words of Legislature Chair Shawna Black, a recent driving force behind the removal of Flock surveillance. And while Black and the Legislature’s other dozen Democrats have supported the controversial cameras’ removal, leaders in local law enforcement, most notably Tompkins County Sheriff Derek Osborne, have staunchly defended Flock’s presence. Osborne has maintained the Flock cameras deter crime and save lives.
“We made Sheriff Osborne’s job very, very hard whenever we decided against the Flock cameras,” Black stated from the podium Tuesday, truth admitted in that most unguarded of moments.
“And I want to apologize for taking away one of your tools,” Black continued her candid apology to the Sheriff. “I know that it was effective at times,” Black said of Flock. “And Derek was about to kill me a few weeks ago,” the chairwoman acknowledged in jest, “but I think we’re friends again.”
Maybe Shawna Black believed the public wasn’t watching or listening Tuesday night. The gallery appeared empty. Yet by the next afternoon, YouTube reported as many as 92 people had viewed the meeting’s video stream.
Critics, both on and off the Legislature, have criticized the Flock cameras as an invasion of civil liberties and privacy. They’ve also accused the parent company, Flock Group, Inc. of colluding with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the surveillance of undocumented immigrants.
Any critic of what the Legislature’s been doing lately may have sensed a touch of remorse in Chairwoman Black’s unscripted words; sudden second-thoughts, maybe fleeting deference to conscience, Shawna Black’s honest recognition of right versus wrong, of responsible governance versus slavish obedience to the small, yet vocal cadre of activists who’ve pummeled the Legislature at meeting after meeting to urge Flock’s banishment as a bad actor.
But too late. Tuesday’s decision was, effectively, a foregone conclusion. Its outcome became certain one week earlier when Black’s ally, Lansing Democrat Deborah Dawson, had sprung onto the agenda—and won quick passage—of the motion directing the County Attorney and County Administrator to write the resolution that unwound our county’s involvement with Flock.
“I’m super appreciative and supportive of this,” Caroline/Danby legislator Irene Weiser said of the unwinding resolution. Other than Black, Weiser was the only legislator to speak to the Flock resolution prior to its adoption at the special meeting. “So thank you all, and especially Sheriff Osborne, for being flexible here in the community and still looking for ways to protect the areas that are wanting and needing protection.”
The April 14 resolution passed on a vote of 12 to one. No votes had changed since Dawson’s motion had passed one week earlier.
Sentiment again split along party lines. Each of the dozen Democrats present supported canceling the contract. Newfield/Enfield’s Randy Brown, the only Republican in the room, opposed it. A second Republican, Lansing’s Mike Sigler, attended remotely, but was advised the circumstances of his virtual attendance prevented him from voting. The third Republican, Lee Shurtleff of Groton, didn’t attend.
When Dawson’s test vote cleared the Legislature one week earlier, Dawson and others had signaled the final vote on Flock would occur at the Legislature’s next regular meeting, April 21. But the timetable would have proved tight in meeting the April 28 deadline for notifying Flock of the contract’s termination. Otherwise, the agreement would have auto-renewed for two more years.
County Attorney Maury Josephson told Tuesday’s meeting that the move-up of legislative action provided the county some “breathing room.”
But sadly, the accelerated adoption schedule did something else. It precluded additional public comment.
Supporters of Flock could not have anticipated Dawson’s motion of April 7. They wouldn’t have been in the Legislature’s chambers to speak that night or to have pre-filed written comments. And the rules of the Legislature do not allow for public comment at special meetings. So by accelerating this latest vote, the procedure silenced Flock supporters again.
On Wednesday, April 8, the Enfield Town Board had considered a Resolution titled, “Providing Tompkins County Guidance in the Continuation of Flock Safety Services.” The resolution gained support from two out of five Enfield Town Board members (including this Councilperson/writer, the resolution’s author.) The resolution, as drafted, opposed Tompkins County’s impending contract termination with Flock and had argued that the termination would be “premature and unwise” and “would endanger public safety.”
Given the absence of any public comment opportunity, neither an Enfield representative nor sympathetic legislators could easily air Enfield’s (minority) municipal viewpoint before the contract termination vote had occurred.
Neither of the two attending Republican legislators, Randy Brown nor Mike Sigler, offered opinion before the resolution’s adoption Tuesday. Asked by Shawna Black to speak to the resolution before it passed, Sheriff Osborne declined comment. Osborne did address next-steps after the vote was taken.
Money for the Flock program had come through a state-sponsored $220,650 “Gun Involved Violence Elimination” (GIVE) grant. Local law enforcement officials, principally Ithaca Police Chief Tom Kelly, wrote for renewal of the GIVE grant last week. Pressed for ideas on deadline and given the Legislature’s newfound opposition to Flock, Osborne said grant writers plugged in a request to buy dash-mounted license plate readers for police cars as a substitute. It would serve short-term as a placeholder.
“We’re getting quotes now on camera trailers,” Osborne reported. “They look nice, but they’re extremely expensive,” the Sheriff cautioned. Each trailer costs about $73,000. The GIVE grant money might buy at most two, Osborne said. He also questioned the trailers’ feasibility.
But then, again, if the public objections lie in surveillance, might camera trailers themselves resurrect the central issue that terminated Flock?
“Are we prepared for the backlash when one of these things shows up, and people say, ‘Well, now you’re not watching the whole county, you’re watching a specific area or a specific group of people?’” legislator Sigler asked.
The Sheriff acknowledged Sigler’s scenario could be true.
“Yeah, for sure,” Osborne said. “These are cameras that do similar work,” he said. “”But I’m hoping that if we just deploy them to areas where need arises, that maybe that’ll be the difference, at least I hope.”
That could be more easily said than done. Public opinion is seldom unanimous. One neighbor’s crime fighting tool is another neighbor’s peeping intruder.
The Sheriff has another worry. It involves timing.
“There’s certainly probably going to be a time frame when Flock goes away before we purchase and have these devices, if we even move in that direction,” Osborne advised legislators, referring to the trailers. “So I’m more worried about that, about what happens in-between with gun crime and violent crime. So time will tell,” Osborne concluded.
Clearly by his words, Derek Osborne is not pleased with the hardline position against Flock that the Tompkins County Legislature has chosen. A repopulated and more progressive table of lawmakers this year has struck a new path that pleases some, but not others. Last fall, legislators had approved Flock’s continued presence; but not now.
In early-March, the Ithaca Common Council, also tilting liberal, canceled its contract with Flock.
“I’m afraid we are letting a few strong voices really take away the common sense,” Randy Brown told the Enfield Town Board earlier his month as he gauged the new legislative environment.
No doubt, Tuesday’s action underscored Brown’ impression, Shawna Black’s spontaneous second thoughts accepted or not.
###
Flood damage at Heights Elem. tops $500k; impacts new budget
Update (April 12): In a resolution posted Sunday, one attached to the Board of Education’s Tuesday, April 14 agenda, the Ithaca City School District proposed assigning up to $1.5 Million in previously budgeted funds to undertake flood damage remediation at Cayuga Heights Elementary School, the district expecting that insurance payments would cover a third of the projected maximum cost.
The ICSD’s drafted resolution states, “that it is in the best interest of the District to utilize up to $1.5 million that is currently housed in the District’s unappropriated fund balance of the 2025-2026 budget to cover the cost of any remediation work that is necessary to repair the water damage at Cayuga Heights Elementary School, recognizing, however, that the District will likely recoup approximately $500,000 of such expenses through insurance proceeds secured by the District.”
The Ithaca Board of Education placed the emergency funding resolution on its meeting’s “Consent Agenda,” placement that generally assures an item routine, unanimous adoption. / RL
The previously-filed story on this subject follows:
****
by Robert Lynch; April 11, 2026
Off-camera and defying certain identification, an Ithaca Board of Education member asked, “Has there been local press about what happened at Heights?”
No there hadn’t been. Of course, teachers knew. Students and parents knew. The neighborhood likely knew. But we in the broader community did not. Yet thanks to what was said at a media-ignored committee meeting nine days after the catastrophe, we now know. At least, we know a little bit.
The out-like-a-lion March 31 torrential rainstorm that inundated greater Ithaca during the late-afternoon rush hour and poured inches of water down upon us within minutes caused major flood damage at Cayuga Heights Elementary School. Preliminary reports price the damage at more than $500,000. And officials haven’t ruled out repairs topping One Million.
The Tuesday, March 31 storm occurred during the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) spring break, so pupils and teachers weren’t around. Students didn’t return to classes at the Heights school until the following Monday. We’re told the school reopened on schedule.
But the physical and financial impacts of the flood remain with us and are yet to be fully tallied. Administrators could not put a final dollar figure on the damage when they first disclosed the flooding publicly at the school board’s Facilities and Finance Committee meeting Thursday, April 9. Those administrators hope to have better estimates when the full Board of Education next convenes Tuesday, April 14.
The ripple effects of the flood have already extended to the 2026-27 ICSD proposed budget, now in its final stages of preparation. Administrators and board members have conceded that the repairs at Cayuga Heights Elementary could nudge the proposed $177.6 Million budget’s tax levy upward, at least slightly.
“So we’re in the process of determining the full scope of work, Dominick Lisi, ICSD’s Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance, informed the committee. “Right now our first order of business is the resolution to declare it an emergency so that we can use funding to serve that purpose,” Lisi said.
Lisi advised the committee that Cayuga Heights Elementary is insured for $500,000 in damages. But he stood confident that the insurance money wouldn’t cover all the cleanup.
“Do we have an order of magnitude of what it might cost?” school board and committee member Todd Fox asked.
“Hope to have that soon,” Lisi answered.
A walk around Cayuga Height Elementary School this Saturday would fail to alert the observer to their having been a flood. Of course, you’d need to overlook the contractor fencing, the signs on doors closing off entrances, and a little mud here and there.
The National Weather Service reports that more than two inches of rain fell during the 24-hour period that included the afternoon of March 31. Most of that rain fell during a brief afternoon cloudburst that caused the flash floods in Cayuga Heights, Ithaca, Enfield and elsewhere.
The storm is long gone, but the Cayuga Heights School’s first floor got soaked. Peering through windows at ground-level reveals naked floors and materials packed in boxes. One hears ventilation fans running.
“Is this like correlated to the ongoing issue we’ve had with water runoff coming off the hill and kind of percolating under the building?” Todd Fox asked committee chair Garrick Blalock.
“It is, precisely,” Blalock answered.
A wooded lot stands behind Cayuga Heights Elementary. One can easily envision how a rushing torrent could slam against the school, go beneath it, and come up from under the floors.
Blalock said he’d toured the school the prior Tuesday. The committee made efforts to encourage every member to tour the building before the upcoming April 14 meeting.
Neither administrators nor board members described specific interior damage during the committee session. But a post-meeting summary, released Friday by district staff, referenced “mold and mildew concerns.”
Blalock urged that “modernization” of the building be considered, specifically to address the hillside runoff problem.
An ICSD profile states that Cayuga Heights Elementary School was built in 1956, closed briefly, and then reopened in 1989. The profile describes the school as “well equipped and maintained.”
In January, the school board received a Cornell professor’s report that cited Cayuga Heights Elementary, along with Enfield Elementary, as among three facilities the board could consider closing to address declining enrollment. The Facilities and Finance Committee never discussed possible closure during its Thursday meeting. Any decision on closing buildings stands months, if not years away.
****
The Facilities and Finance Committee had intended its April 9 meeting to be one to button down its next year’s budget. Spending within the more than $177 Million proposal is essentially set. Spending would rise by about five percent. Yet members have yet to decide the tax levy, and they’d planned to do so that day. They’d expanded the meeting to a committee-of-the-whole work session and encouraged all nine board members to attend. Seven did.
Back on March 24, when the full board last convened, administrators had offered three alternative tax scenarios. The levy could rise by 2.18 percent, 3.18 percent, or 4.18 percent, they said. The 4.18 percent number would fall just under the state-calculated tax cap for next year. Board members earlier couldn’t decide which number to pick, although Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell expressed a preference toward the middle number.
But that was before the Cayuga Heights flood.
“So capital has changed since the last time we met,” School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown stated when discussion turned to budget planning. “We had a flood that’s cost a lot of money that needs to be replaced immediately,” Brown said. So from my perspective, yes, we have a fund balance for a reason. And the fund balance is going to be dipped into in a way that we didn’t think about two weeks ago.”
ICSD budget planners had used simple math to calculate their tax scenarios. Programs wouldn’t be touched, nor would payrolls. To reduce tax increases, the district would just dip deeper into its “fund balance,” its pot of accumulated savings. For each one-percent drop in the tax levy, about $1.15 Million in fund balance would need to be withdrawn.
But unforeseen flood repairs would need to come out of that fund balance. And money diverted to fixing a school can’t be used to cut taxes.
“Doctor Brown’s right; we did have a flood, and we don’t have the final bill yet. But we do know that it’s going to be substantial,” Blalock, chair of the committee, affirmed. “And so I have been, myself, looking at somewhere in the middle, but then we have to update, and now we know that we have this actual expense and we don’t have a number for it set.”
“I’m kind of tempted to hold off until we have that number,” Blalock hedged.
Contrary to what may have been its original plan, the committee never reached consensus on a tax recommendation Thursday. Board President Eversley Bradwell’s absence may have contributed to the drifting indecision. (Board member Emily Workman was also excused.)
Blalock said he had “a number in the back of my head” that might come close to what the ICSD would need to spend out-of-pocket for repairs at Cayuga Heights, but he declined to reveal it publicly. A figure of $322,000 was bandied around a bit, yet never stated definitively. The $322,000, of course, would stand on top of any insurance reimbursement. (There’s apparently no deductible.)
The most likely levy increase emerging from Thursday’s meeting was one between 3.4 and 3.9 percent.
“I’m recommending we do three-nine, and you can say I don’t like your recommendation, or I do,” Superintendent Brown initially advised the committee. “I don’t think we need to go above four (percent), and I like the three-nine number.”
“I think we need the three-nine based on what’s just happened and to keep our trajectory and fund balances healthy for the next three years according to my formula,” Brown stated.
That said, before the committee had adjourned, Brown had amended his recommendation downward to a 3.4 percent increase. And it reflects the fact that Ithaca’s tax increase has become very much a moving target. It’ll likely come to rest somewhere between 3.4 and 3.9 percent. But just where it falls may depend on the flood damage estimates yet to be received.
What the increase will certainly not do—barring a monumental change in thought—is to stray above the 4.18 per cent tax cap. If it did, the budget would require 60 percent approval at the polls.
“I’m absolutely committed to tax relief,” Blalock stated. “I’m absolutely committed to coming under the tax cap. It’s just a question of how much.”
Todd Fox was elected to the Board of Education two years ago in a taxpayer revolt against high budgets. Seventy percent of voters turned down the ICSD budget that year.
“I feel like we could go closer to three percent this year,” Fox told Thursday’s meeting. “I think we reevaluate next year, and I think there’s enough of a fund balance,” Fox said.
Todd Fox’s drive for frugal taxation likely led the Superintendent to amend his recommendation downward; that is, to 3.4 percent.
Whatever budget the Ithaca Board of Education eventually recommends this coming week must still win voter approval in the May 19 referendum.
Cayuga Heights Elementary School’s teachers and staff made miracles happen to open their school little more than five days after the flash flood had soaked it. Maybe their stories get told another time. But Garrick Blalock has already credited Principal Aileen Grainger and her instructors for a job well done
“I just wanted to acknowledge the really heroic efforts of staff of Cayuga Heights in getting that school up and running,” Blalock told committee members. They worked over spring break and “they gave up their weekend so that school was ready to open on Monday morning,” he said. “I want to shout out to her team. That was really a commendable effort.”
###
Tompkins to jettison Flock; Enfield Board concurs
Legislature vote could shutter license-reading cameras by month’s end
by Robert Lynch; April 10, 2026
First, Ithaca’s Common Council acted. Now the Tompkins County Legislature will follow.
Sending a message that couldn’t have been clearer, the recently rebuilt and increasingly progressive Tompkins County Legislature this week retraced City Hall’s footsteps and signaled its intent to terminate the county’s grant-funded contract with Flock Safety—and do it soon. Flock’s crime-fighting license-plate reading surveillance tool has earned unquestioned support among local law enforcement. Yet Flock has confronted withering criticism from privacy advocates and from defenders of immigrant rights.
Then one night after the Legislature’s Tuesday, April 7 test vote, the Enfield Town Board took its own turn at Flock. When it did, Enfield Town Board members narrowly rejected a member-filed resolution that would have opposed termination the County’s Flock contract. It would have described the Legislature’s imminent action as “premature and unwise” and one that “would endanger public safety.”
“I want to be very clear that we’re not going to renew the contract at this point with Flock,” Legislature Chair Shawna Black stated before Tuesday’s motion had even come to a vote, Black confident that what she wanted adopted would, indeed, pass.
“I did not support Flock when we voted for it back in October,” Black reminded meeting attendees. “I was in the minority. That’s why we started using Flock cameras,” she explained. “Now we have a new Legislature with eight new members. They felt very differently than the previous Legislature, and that’s why we’re moving this forward right now.”
What the Tompkins County Legislature adopted Tuesday—it did so on a 13-3 party-line vote—was a motion, one submitted by Lansing Democrat Deborah Dawson, that directs the County Administrator and the County Attorney to prepare a resolution for the Legislature’s next meeting, April 21. That resolution would terminate Tompkins County’s contractual relationship with Flock Safety “at the earliest possible time and in a manner consistent with the County Government’s grant funding obligations.”
“I do wish we could move a little faster,” recently-elected legislator Judith Hubbard remarked at one point in Tuesday’s discussion. Hubbard was among several who’d prefer the Flock cameras be turned off sooner rather than later. But majority Democrats deferred to County Attorney Maury Josephson, who’d recommended the two-step action to better preserve the state government’s $220,000 underlying grant for the broader crime prevention program.
Josephson explained that preserving the grant funding “would be most prudent,” and that “the purpose of the motion is to provide a document that lays out an orderly unwinding of the contractual relationship between the County and Flock Safety,” and to do so in a way that doesn’t otherwise jeopardize the grant.
Last July, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services granted Tompkins County $220,650 under its “Gun Involved Violence Elimination” (GIVE) Initiative. Most of the GIVE money has been purposed for Flock.
By a vote of 9-4 last October, the Tompkins County Legislature accepted the grant money and authorized the Flock program’s continuation. Since then, an increasing number of Flock license-plate reading cameras have been installed around Tompkins County. The City of Ithaca had also installed Flock cameras, as have the villages of Trumansburg and Cayuga Heights. A report last fall claimed Tompkins County operated 22 Flock cameras around the county.
At its meeting on March 4, the Ithaca Common Council voted unanimously to begin winding down its own contract with Flock Safety and shutting down the cameras. At the time of Council’s action, Flock had positioned nearly two dozen of its cameras at city locations, according to media reports.
Josephson told the Legislature that some degree of ‘coordination” needs to occur between the city and county as part of the Flock termination wind-down, presumably to preserve state money.
As the County Legislature prepares for the expected April 21 termination of its Flock contract, enter the Town of Enfield. The Enfield Town Board holds no control over Tompkins County’s decision-making regarding Flock’s future, only a limited power of persuasion. Wednesday, April 8, one Town Board member attempted to flex that persuasive muscle.
Responding to the County Legislature’s action of the night before, Enfield Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) moved a 14-paragraph resolution that would have put the Town Board on record as opposing Tompkins County’s intended termination of its Flock contract. Instead of termination, the resolution had urged that the Flock contract simply auto-renew at month’s end, as it otherwise would.
“This Town Board believes that the termination of the Flock contract is premature and unwise, would endanger public safety, and could compromise Tompkins County’s continued access to the GIVE grant,” the Enfield resolution stated.
Following extended discussion held near the end of its nearly three-hour meeting, the Enfield Town Board rejected Lynch’s resolution, two votes to three. Lynch and Councilperson Jude Lemke supported the resolution. Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, with Councilpersons Cassandra Hinkle and Melissa Millspaugh joining her, opposed the measure.
Redmond’s and the Board majority’s argument fell much along the lines of Flock’s most vocal downtown critics. Their argument holds that Flock Safety cannot be trusted; that despite the firewalls and protocols local law enforcement have imposed, Flock’s sensitive surveillance technology could intentionally or inadvertently fall into unauthorized possession. Most worrisome, critics say, it could reach the hands of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and be used to track undocumented immigrants.
“My distrust is not with Tompkins County or the Sheriff’s Office or anybody locally,” Councilperson Hinkle insisted Wednesday. “My distrust is in the cameras themselves in connection with the federal government.”
“I’m very torn about it,” Councilperson Lemke admitted before she voted her support for the resolution. “I vote Aye, but with a lot of reservations,” Lemke stated.
Randy Brown, one of two Tompkins County legislators who represent Enfield, was invited to participate in the resolution’s discussion at the Town Board table. Brown was among the three Republicans who’d opposed Dawson’s motion the night before in legislative chambers. And in Enfield Wednesday, he defended the position he’d earlier taken.
“I trust Sheriff Osborne and Undersheriff Olin,” Brown stated, defending Derek Osborne’s support for the Flock cameras and the restrictions that the sheriff and undersheriff Jennifer Olin have put in place to protect personal privacy and block unauthorized data sharing. Brown said Osborne will only release information to ICE upon submission of a judicial warrant.
“The Sheriff’s Department has done everything they can to control the data,” Brown told Enfield. “This is extremely important to them.” Brown praised the privacy protocols imposed by Osborne and District Attorney Matthew Van Houten.
“I think Derek Osborne is wonderful at his job,” Supervisor Redmond credited the Sheriff and his team. “My concern is Flock itself, the company itself,” Redmond said. “There’ve been some concerns that people have, and I don’t want to ignore those.”
The Tompkins County Legislature has trended more liberal since the November 2025 election, and the progressive tilt may help explain why a crime-fighting tool accepted by a majority of legislators last October is heading toward overwhelming rejection this spring.
“I’m afraid we are letting a few strong voices really take away the common sense,” Randy Brown described the current legislative climate surrounding Flock, when he spoke to Enfield’s Board.
Indeed, many of those strong voices came out to speak at the Legislature’s April 7 meeting. Chair Black tallied as many as 33 who’d signed up to address the Legislature that night. Not all spoke to the issue of Flock, yet many did. Public privilege-of-the-floor comments occupied nearly two hours of the Legislature’s four-and-a-half hour meeting. Dawson’s motion was adopted before any of those participants had gotten to the mics. But after Dawson’s motion passed, the gallery erupted in applause.
Few people other than government insiders had expected Dawson’s termination initiative to reach the floor Tuesday night. Randy Brown admitted he’d only learned of it earlier that day. Shawna Black moved it to near the top of the meeting’s agenda, likely to preemptively answer those many Flock critics who’d turned out to speak.
“I’d be happy to cancel the contract today,” proclaimed legislator Veronica Pillar—who, like Black, had opposed Flock last October as well as now. “It’s abundantly clear that Flock Safety… is irresponsible with security on a number of levels and untrustworthy and not really it turns out a company that Tompkins County should do business with,” Pillar concluded.
The record shows that Deborah Dawson had supported the Flock-based GIVE grant’s acceptance last October. But she opposes Flock’s continuation now.
“This community seems to conflate license plate readers with surveillance; it’s been a fairly consistent occurrence” Dawson said at Tuesday’s meeting. “It’s not one that I indulge in,” she qualified.
But while she paid deference to Flock’s endorsement by Sheriff Osborne and the Ithaca Chief of Police, Dawson added, “It’s clear to me that Flock’s not the contractor that we want to move forward with in any event legally because it is a company that has allowed itself to be co-opted by a federal administration that consistently subverts our justice system, and that’s my major concern here.”
As with legislator Dawson, an anti-Trump theme runs through many a Flock critic’s statements.
Legislature Public Safety Committee Chair Travis Brooks had assembled an ad-hoc “working group.” He’d intended it to hold several meetings and then render its judgment on Flock’s future. But the working group met only once, sometime in early April. It reportedly gathered together administrators, law enforcement, and some legislators. But after just that one meeting, Brooks conceded, the message stood clear; the political will for Flock’s continuation had vanished. Brooks had supported the program. But he now believes “alternatives” must to be sought.
“I understand what you’re saying,” Flock supporter Mike Sigler told Brooks. “I agree with you. I don’t think there are the votes to keep this going. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t negatives to the cancellation. I think the Sheriff, the DA, and Probation have stated those negatives. I’d be curious as to what they believe those negatives to be in the cancellation of this.”
Brooks replied, “There are negatives. And there are pockets of this community who feel differently and appreciate that technology, appreciate those concerns. There are families and folks that feel more safe in their community knowing that this technology exists. But there’s not nine votes in this room to keep it moving,” Brooks conceded.
Nine votes is the number needed in the Tompkins County Legislature to get anything passed. Remember, the Dawson motion got 13 votes Tuesday. And it would deconstruct the service.
Caroline/Danby’s Irene Weiser, new as a legislator, but for years a veteran sideline observer, was among the 13 who’d supported Flock’s termination. But Weiser has misgivings.
“I will be supporting the motion,” Weiser said, “But I do want to raise the other side that I think is important too,” she cautioned. “There are people in neighborhoods that have been particularly impacted by violent crime that have appreciated these cameras and have found them to help the safety in their communities.”
Weiser said she hopes alternatives can be found that protect those in high-crime areas “without requiring surveillance of the rest of us.”
After his discussions Wednesday in Enfield, Randy Brown commended both Travis Brooks and Irene Weiser for their open-mindedness and their willingness to view both sides of the issue.
What drove the Enfield concerns Supervisor Redmond and Councilperson Hinkle expressed Wednesday night was the omnipresence of electronic eyes; peeping cameras seemingly everywhere. But Randy Brown pointed out you’ll find that intrusion almost everywhere these days; in stores, along the street, even in government buildings, whether Flock or no Flock. (Yes, cameras spied on our meeting room.)
Back at the County Legislature, the Ithaca Town’s recently-elected representative, Christy Bianconi, recognized the intrusion. Said Bianconi, “Cameras taking pictures of people all over the community” construct “a sum totality of pictures that can very much track a person’s life and their habits and their activities and so reveal their private habits. And to me that crosses over into a violation of our civil liberties and our privacy.”
The almost-adopted Enfield resolution would have encouraged further “discussions by the Legislature, as well as by its designated committees and working groups” prior to any termination of the Flock contract so as “to address Flock Safety’s continued role in this community.” Where discussions go now remains to be seen.
But the immediate goal is to turn the page. Shawna Black made that clear. Flock will go. Its cameras will vanish from the local streetscape. Flock is a company she does not trust and wields a technology that reaches too far. Furthermore, those who wear blue uniforms must recognize who’s in charge.
“The Legislature was designed as policymakers,” Black stated bluntly. “We are the ones that decide what type of policies we use here in Tompkins County. This is a policy decision.”
And while the elected Sheriff, the elected District Attorney, and the appointed Ithaca Police Chief may write the next grant application for whatever the repurposed GIVE money gets spent on, Black warned, “If they write a grant with something that the Legislature is not willing to accept the government funds for, it will be a waste of time.”
“It pains me, how law enforcement has been abused,” Deborah Dawson observed. “And that’s why I’m bringing this motion and why I want to see the last of Flock,” Shawna Black’s ally made clear. “I hope the door doesn’t hit their butts on the way out.”
###
A School Budget Easy to Overlook
ICSD Board weighs three tax options in low-key fiscal rollout
by Robert Lynch; April 4, 2026
Memories of the Ithaca City School District’s taxpayer tea party trauma of 2024 are not lost on anyone, certainly not on current members of the Ithaca Board of Education and the administrators they employ.
In case you hadn’t noticed—and most people, including reporters with the Ithaca media, haven’t noticed—the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) is close to finalizing its next year’s budget. In fact, the spending plan is almost set in place, pending, of course, the required voter ratification in May. All that the board has yet to do is to agree on a tax levy. And judging from discussions at the most recent school board meeting, there may not be much for voters to complain about this time around.
“In terms of expenditures, I’m solid with what we have,” Garrick Blalock, chair of the school board’s Facilities and Finance Committee, said as he described the proposed $177.6 Million Dollar budget’s spending tally during the board’s March 24 meeting. ”I think that’s a lock.”
“We think we’ve put together a funding request that will meet the needs of our learners,” School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown stated. There are “no significantly new initiatives,” Brown stated, “and no significant cuts to anything we’re doing currently.”
Proposed spending would rise by just over five percent from that of the current year’s $169 Million budget.
What’s not yet a” lock,” to employ Blalock’s terminology, is the tax levy. In response to an earlier school board directive, Dominick Lisi, Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance, provided three alternate taxing scenarios at the March 24 meeting. Each of the three would keep the tax increase to within New York State’s calculated “tax cap.” The highest of the three would fall just under the cap. That option would raise property tax revenues by 4.18 percent.
The two lower-tax options would raise the levy by 3.18 percent and 2.18 percent, respectively. And because each alternative would be tax-cap compliant, the budget would require only a simple majority—not a 60 percent supermajority—to pass.
To make the lower-percentage choices work, the district would tap accumulated savings—defined in school parlance as “fund balances”—to cover the shortfall. The 2.18 percent option would drain nearly $2.3 Million from fund balances. The middle-ground 3.18 percent choice would use about $1.15 Million of the savings. The 4.18 percent option would tap none of the savings at all.
“I am as one board member of the belief that we have a fund balance for a reason,” Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell, told those at the meeting. And there are times, Eversley Bradwell said, “in which it is necessary to mitigate the costs to the taxpayers.”
“I would be much more inclined to be thinking about a 3.18 (percent) increase to the levy as opposed to a 4.18,” Eversley Bradwell said.
And as for taxpayer recognition, no board member at the March meeting challenged the lesson painfully learned in 2024.
Just two years ago, in the early spring of ’24, administrators first brought forth a proposal that would have raised the tax levy by more than 12 percent. The school board wisely cut the increase to 8.43 percent.. But in that year’s May referendum, the board-revised budget lost. It lost badly. Whereas ICSD budgets generally sail to approval in a calm sea of school-friendly voters and benefit from apathy and a light turnout, the initial 2024-25 budget referendum saw seven out of every ten voters reject what the board had handed them to decide.
Turnout in that May ’24 election was heavy. A capital spending proposition was also rejected, and two incumbent board members were turned out of office. For the ICSD, it may have been an election anomaly, but it was still a traumatic ordeal.
The Board of Education regrouped. A trimmed-down budget passed one month later, with nearly three in every four voters supporting it, the revote election’s turnout much smaller. The revised 2024-25 budget kept the tax levy increase to less than three percent.
Last spring, school board members took pains not to make the same mistake twice. They advanced what quickly earned the now-despised nickname of a “rollover budget.” It launched no big initiatives and took no unnecessary risks. It raised the tax levy by 3.76 percent. Seventy-seven percent of district voters supported it. ICSD’s annual elections had returned to their predictable path.
“We won’t use that term ‘rollover budget’ ever again,” Superintendent Brown assured his audience on March 24. “But I hope folks do understand we are maintaining our programmatic offerings for the most part.”
“I’m the one that made the mistake and used the term rollover budget,” Eversley Bradwell apologized, “and realizing how inappropriate that was.”
Yet, two observations deserve clarity here. First, what’s likely to be placed before Ithaca voters in this coming May’s election will, indeed, likely be a ‘rollover’ budget in its impact, if only not in its name. And second, more significantly, the $177,638,041 proposed budget now on the table is still some $6.7 Million higher than was the $170.9 Million budget that Dr. Brown first proposed in 2024, the one that never even got to the electorate, the one that carried the infamous 12 percent tax hike.
School budget planning has a way of proving the old “boiling the frog” apologue. A series of little tax hikes wins greater acceptance than does just a single big increase all at once. Yet little by little, year by year, one gets to the same place. The frog boils.
“The cost of living has gone up a bit, energy costs and so on,” Dominick Lisi explained to the board as to why totals have crept up. And, he acknowledged, “Our contract obligations certainly play a role in that.”
Influential among those contract obligations are those newly-negotiated with Ithaca teachers. One budget line, labeled “Instructional Salaries,” states a 7.38 percent rise in the new budget, an increase about in line with the annual raises negotiated last fall.
“We’re probably in a four or five percent world when we think about all the inflationary costs, everything that’s coming at us,” Superintendent Brown observed. ”And I think we have a budget and a funding request that represents the kind of fiscal reality we’re in,” Brown reflected.
The Board of Education spent only about a half-hour of a much longer meeting March 24 listening and talking about the budget. And almost a third of that allotted time got eaten up in merely deciding when to talk about the budget again. Members informally repurposed a previously-scheduled Thursday, April 9 committee meeting to become a board work session. Expect those few dangling details to be tied up that night. The school board expects to formally adopt the budget April 14.
School district voters will pass final judgment in a May 19 referendum.
But budgets can only be best-guess predictors of what lies ahead. What if there’s a surprise?
“There are always things that we don’t foresee. So particularly oil prices skyrocketing came out of what felt like nowhere,” Board member Erin Croyle, a program-friendly, fiscal progressive, cautioned during the late-March session. “So when we’re thinking about how unpredictable things are right now, I think about safety,” Croyle said.
Lisi and Brown attempted to assure Croyle that uncertainty has been addressed.
“So energy has traditionally cycled, and we have to take that into consideration when we plan the budget,” Lisi answered.
“We’re talking about a 170-some Million (budget). You should be expecting your superintendent, your business official and the team to manage those kinds of spikes in any particular area with that kind of money and the kind of fund balances that we have,” the Superintendent assured Croyle.
Dr. Brown posited it’s actually easier to manage uncertainty with larger budgets like his because an unexpected increase in one area can more easily be compensated elsewhere.
Aside from the board president’s preference for the mid-point option, none of the eight school board members present March 24 (Madeline Cardona was excused) expressed a clear opinion as to which tax percentage would best meet their comfort level. Nevertheless, Finance Committee chair Blalock did say he’d like a better forecast as to where future fund balances and budgets may go.
But judging from the general, understated consensus evident that night, don’t expect any additions or subtractions from expenditures before the $177.6 Million budget goes to voters in a month.
Never spoken about during the March meeting were school buses. But a glance at the ICSD budget page indicates that the school board has already decided, apparently quietly during a past meeting, about how many and what kind of buses to buy.
The district would buy ten buses in all, the page states, most of the vehicles full-size and none of them electric. Each would be powered by “ultra-low emission propane” fuel.
True, New York State, in a legislative decision reaffirmed in the State Senate only days ago, has mandated that all new school buses purchased beginning in 2027 be powered only by electricity. But Governor Hochul is granting districts two-year waivers on the mandate, and the ICSD clearly intends to employ that delay. More than a year ago, ICSD officials put the brakes on electric bus buying, arguing that the Bostwick Road transportation facility lacks the grid capacity to keep electric buses running.
And recall that in that May 2024 rout of a referendum, voters also rejected a mammoth $125 Million capital spending initiative. Never did the board resubmit that proposal, or any one similar to it.
Not, that is, until now. A far more modest, $43.9 Million capital package awaits voter approval in this May’s ICSD election. Gone is any talk of building a new bus garage. Most proposed items in the revamped capital package involve such things as rebuilt roofs, new bathrooms and updated heating systems.
Three seats on the Ithaca Board of Education will be decided in the election. Candidacies won’t be confirmed until the end of April.
###
Three Minutes to Move Minds
Amanda’s true story may change your opinion about Flock
Posted March 24, 2026
The Kirchgessner family sinks deep progressive roots into this community’s soil. Some will recall that most recently, in 2019, Amanda Kirchgessner made a run for Enfield Town Supervisor. Now residing across the line in Ulysses, Amanda these days speaks regularly before the Tompkins County Legislature. She spoke again March 19. And as Ithaca and Tompkins County debate and decide whether to purge Flock surveillance cameras from city streets and rural roads, Ms. Kirchgessner used her three allotted minutes wisely this past Thursday. She delivered a message powerful and persuasive. And it deserves yielding this page to her every word:
****
“Good evening. My name is Amanda Kirchgessner. I’m a lifelong resident of Tompkins County. And I’m going to start this evening by saying something plainly:
“I’m angry. I’m angry because I genuinely believe this community is different. I believe we cared, and I believe that our level of education, our access to resources, and our relative privilege meant that we had the capacity for nuance, for deliberateness, for actually taking the time to get complex decisions right. And right now I’m not seeing it.
“I’m seeing fatigue. I’m seeing reactivity. I’m seeing self-righteousness and judgment. And I’m seeing a failure to create and hold space for nuance and decisions that directly impact people’s safety.
“What I’m about to share is deeply uncomfortable. But that’s part of the problem. We avoid discomfort, and in doing so, we avoid reality.
“On Wednesday, March 11th, around 9:30 at night, on Cayuga Street right in front of the library, I was approached by three men in a vehicle and propositioned for sex. They were trying to get me into their car. The man speaking to me lowered his voice and was trying to draw me closer. He was mumbling. It was very subtle, but very intentional. It was a tactic.
“I told over a dozen people in the following days, and not one of us immediately thought to report it. But it wasn’t until I spoke with a friend on Sunday, who’s served on the Ithaca Community Police Board, that I was told that this sounded like routine behavior, and I needed to report it.
“So I did. I went down to IPD that afternoon, and the officer there told me that the Flock camera system had been disabled, which means if it had been active there’s a real possibility that the vehicle could have been identified.
“So I’m just asking what are we doing? We’re watching Epstein dominate national headlines, confronting the reality of exploitation at the highest levels of power, and yet we seem unwilling to acknowledge that trafficking is not distant; it is local. It shows up quietly in moments like this. And at the same time, we are removing one of the most valuable tools law enforcement has to identify patterns and intervene. How does this help protect our community?
“Our children are watching us avoid these conversations right now. They can feel when we choose comfort over clarity. And I want to say something difficult. There are people in this community who might quietly celebrate my disappearance. And at that same time my greatest fear is that anyone in this room or anyone’s child in this community could face what I was facing last Wednesday evening, here or anywhere.
“I want to believe that we are capable of nuance. And I want to believe that we are capable of doing better, but only if we’re willing to slow down, to tell the truth, and engage fully with the complexity of what is happening. I’m asking us to do this. I trust us because at the end of the day, we are all that we have, friends. We are all that we have.
“Thank you.”
****
Amanda Kirchgessner thus finished her remarks. Others then spoke. The meeting moved on.
Back on March 4, in a unanimous decision, the Ithaca Common Council voted to terminate its ongoing contract with Flock Safety. Council thereby effectively denied Ithaca Police access to the traffic cameras’ license reading capabilities. The Tompkins County Sheriff also uses Flock. Yet in meeting after meeting, Flock-skeptical critics have marched into Legislative Chambers; taken to the mics, and one by one implored Tompkins County legislators to do exactly what the City has now done. Indeed, as many as six of those critics renewed their opposition March 19, the night Amanda Kirchgessner spoke. Public opposition has prompted extended debate among lawmakers themselves. .
Amid this controversy, a legislative committee has empaneled a working group to chart the system’s continued reach in areas beyond the Ithaca city line. The working group will hold its first meeting in April. No deadline’s been set for when the working group’s recommendations will issue.
Sometimes tough problems point to easy answers and bright-line remedies. But sometimes they do not. Amanda Kirchgessner’s words suggest to many of us that Flock’s future better rests amongst those problems tougher to resolve.
Sadly, Kirchgessner’s plea for nuance has yet to resonate. Maybe the greater clarity she seeks will find its voice; maybe not.
In the meantime, please stay safe. As was said, we are all that we have.
Robert Lynch
###
County throws legal lifeline to evicted Asteri tenants
Highlights of March 19 meeting; Tompkins County Legislature
Core reporting courtesy, Tompkins County Department of Communications; Monika Salvage, Communications Director; March 25, 2026
It doesn’t happen often that a key member of a lawmaking body crafts a major initiative just hours before a meeting, then puts in on the floor and gets it passed without dissent. Odder still is when the event that drives that leader to act is the death of a friend, a struggling victim of the system, and the legislator lies in bed the night before the meeting agonizing over how best to pay proper tribute to her friend’s legacy.
But that’s what happened last week. And Tompkins County Legislature Chair Shawna Black openly admits that the unnamed man’s untimely death is why she’d sought—and secured—a $50,000 grant in emergency legal services support to aid the briefly-evicted residents of Ithaca’s Asteri apartment complex, some of them the formerly-homeless.
“I was laying in bed, and I just kept thinking like, what the hell could I do (or) could I have done to help this gentleman,” Black told legislators that next evening, March 19, when she directed a colleague to move the $50,000 appropriation..
“The one thing that I wish I knew more of and I wish that the residents knew more of was what their legal rights were,” Black said she’d pondered earlier on meeting day, “because we all know that Asteri has a lot of attorneys and a lot of money, and there’s probably a situation where they’re taking advantage of some of our vulnerable population.”
What Shawna Black presented and what the County Legislature passed without objection March 19 was clearly scripted on the fly. Black credited County Attorney Maury Josephson and County Administrator Korsah Akumfi for assisting her in drafting on deadline. The Legislature’s first procedural vote added the spending item to the agenda. Discussion proved minimal. It passed quickly. No legislator wanted to say taxpayer money couldn’t—or shouldn’t—be spent that way.
Tompkins County’s Communications Department condensed the breakneck action into a single paragraph:
“In response to the challenges that arose for Asteri residents due to the Order to Vacate, the legislature considered and approved a member-filed resolution allocating $50,000 from the contingent fund to support legal assistance for housing needs, aimed at helping residents navigate housing instability and access legal resources,” the news release stated. “Legislators emphasized the importance of proactive support to prevent displacement and ensure equitable access to housing protections,” the paragraph ended.
Largely because of the initiative’s spontaneous submission, details on just how the $50,000 appropriation will find its way to Asteri’s evicted residents remain sketchy. A legal aid group, known as “Law New York ,” its service staffed by attorneys, legal interns and paralegals, will likely handle most of the work. But Law New York may not do all of it. It’s been short on staff lately. Some of the money could go to other legal agencies.
There’s something else to remember: The Chair made one point clear. “This resolution specifically does not talk about representing for the purposes of litigation,” Black advised. “It really is just to offer some assistance.” Nevertheless, she added, “If that (meaning litigation) ends up being the path that they choose, then we might have to have a different conversation.”
Quite obviously, Black’s was well-intentioned and hastily-conceived legislation engineered on the fly.
And much the same way, the hastily-imposed Asteri evictions remain a rapidly-evolving saga hard to follow day-by-day.
On March 4, the City of Ithaca’s fire marshal issued an immediate eviction order for tenants to vacate the 181-unit Asteri Ithaca residential tower on East Green Street. A number of Asteri’s residents living there are the formerly homeless. Reportedly 40 of Asteri’s units were set aside for homeless transitioning. The fire marshal’s eviction order followed the discovery of broken glass in stairwells and glass missing from windows, deficiencies that could endanger tenants exiting in the event of a fire.
As tenants moved out, and with many of them having no place to go, Tompkins County stepped in and arranged to have some newly-displaced tenants quartered in local hotels.
Asteri’s owner, the Vecino Group, subsequently took emergency action to fix the deficiencies. Media reports tell us the marshal approved the repairs last week and Asteri’s tenants began moving back into their apartments Friday, March 20.
Given that the March Asteri evictions—although admittedly disruptive—have so far been measured in only days and not months, and given that third parties may have paid the hotel bills, the extent to which displaced tenants hold any legally-tenable claim for damages against Vecino remains unclear—that is, unless tenants’ lawyers go after alleged landlord negligence more pervasive and long-running.
“Access to legal support at critical moments can make the difference between stability and displacement,” Chairperson Black told the Legislature. “And we must do more to ensure that residents are not navigating these situations alone,” Black said.
But recall that Shawna Black’s concern stemmed from the death of a single Asteri tenant, one particular tenant, a formerly unhoused person, one whose full name was never revealed during the meeting, but one who’d reportedly attended the Legislature at least once. He’d been a friend of Ithaca Republican activist and political candidate Zach Winn, who himself often attends and speaks.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do something before, and I hope he is at rest,” Winn told the Legislature that night of his lost friend. “Please continue to press for positive change over on Green Street,” Winn implored.
The deceased victim was last seen alive February 19. That’s when he’d been served a notice of eviction by Asteri, possibly in error. Black said she’d worked with Law New York to try to help him, but in her words, “due to limited capacity at Law New York and the circumstances of the notice, it appeared he had to leave Asteri.”
“He was understandably upset,” Black described the man’s emotions at the time he got the notice to move out.
Ithaca Police found the man deceased in his apartment on March 18. He may have lain there dead for weeks. At the meeting, the cause of death was not yet known.
“This is a deeply sad situation,” Shawna Black described the victim’s passing, “and this individual was a member of our community who had worked hard to transition out of homelessness and into stable housing,” Black added. “His passing is a reminder of vulnerabilities many individuals in our community continue to face even after accessing housing and services.”
“This is a deeply sad situation,” Black reiterated, “and one that I believe requires us not only to reflect but to act.” And that night, in the legislative leader’s chosen way, it acted.
****
In other matters addressed March 19 by the Tompkins County Legislature, as reported by the County’s Communications Department:
Flock camera working group: Legislators discussed forming a working group to evaluate the continued use of Flock license plate reader cameras, emphasizing the importance of balancing public safety benefits with community concerns about privacy and data use.
“We do want to make sure that whatever direction we go in is what’s best for the community,” commented Legislator Travis Brooks, Chair of the Public Safety Committee “We want to protect the programs that have been established by the GIVE grant and hear some of the voices that we usually don’t hear in this room … folks that live in neighborhoods that historically have had larger instances of violence.”
[Note related commentary reported from the meeting.]
Paid caregiver leave policy: Upon recommendation of the Workforce Diversity and Inclusion and the Budget, Capital and Personnel Committees, the legislature unanimously approved a resolution to direct county staff to develop a Paid Caregiver Leave Policy based on the Team Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) proposal.
Legislator Iris Packman said, “It is important that we show that we are creating these opportunities for people so they don’t have to choose between do I stay at my job or do I grow my family or do I care for a family member.”
Vietnam Veterans proclamation: The legislature proclaimed March 29 as Vietnam Veterans Recognition Day, honoring the service and sacrifice of Vietnam-era veterans and acknowledging their lasting contributions to the community. Director of Veterans Services J.R. Clairborne and Terry Clark, representing and leadership team member of the American Legion Post 221, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 961, and Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter #377 received the proclamation.
###