Flowerful planters celebrate nation’s Semiquincentennial
by Robert Lynch; July 2, 2026
Credit Town Clerk Mary Cornell for the inspiration. Credit local kids for the artwork. And credit the entire Town of Enfield for welcoming a new, tasteful addition to our central hamlet’s main thoroughfare just in time to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary.
On May 22, youths drawn from the Enfield Community Council (ECC) and elsewhere gathered outside the bays of the largely-unused former Enfield Highway Garage, next to the Town Clerk’s office. They were there to paint, and paint they did.
“Participants used a mix of stencils and freehand designs to create unique artwork while enjoying snacks, conversation, and excitement about the upcoming summer season,” ECC Program Manager Spencer Van Epps wrote in the agency’s bimonthly Rural Youth Services Report.
It was “definitely a learning opportunity for kids that haven’t ever painted anything,” Van Epps later told the ECC Board of Directors June 25. “Kids had a lot of fun,” the program manager assured the board.
Then quietly, without fanfare, Clerk Cornell, helped by Town and volunteer staff, placed the eleven painted planters on Town property and under light poles bordering Enfield Main Road throughout Enfield Center. Flowering plants were purchased from Eddydale Farms. The planters will remain in place throughout the growing season, well beyond the nation’s anniversary that they patriotically celebrate.
Clerk Cornell says funding came through a $3,000 Beautification Grant funneled through Cooperative Extension. The grant money required a 50/50 local match. Some of the Town’s support came through in-kind services.
The Enfield Town Board last fall set aside $1,500 in its 2026 Budget for beautification efforts. Clerk Cornell traditionally administers those funds.
“Little things count,” Cornell said when interviewed about the project June 30. The planters demonstrate that “Enfield cares about the community,” she said.
As for the planters themselves, they came from purchased kits. The Town Clerk and her family assembled the pieces and then let kids decorate them. Each kit cost about $59, cheaper than you could buy materials to build them from scratch, she reported.
“It brought the community together and kids together,” Cornell commented.
And community spirit extends to maintenance. Plants require water. The clerk first thought she’d need to nurture the plantings herself. But instead, she reported that many neighbors whose homes stand near the planters have willingly taken on the often daily watering task.
“People are loving them,” Cornell stated about the wooden raised beds.
“It’s a work in progress,” the Town Clerk said of the ongoing Enfield beautification initiative.
Cornell hopes to buy several more planter boxes and specifically place them within the evolving municipal parkland across from the Town Hall, commonly known as Enfield SkateGarden.
Under terms of the Cooperative Extension grant, the planter boxes must be placed on Town of Enfield property. Boxes now stand outside the Clerk’s Office and at the rear entrance of the Enfield Courthouse. They’re also on each side of the painted snowplow sign at the roadside entrance to the Highway Department driveway.
Because Enfield Center’s street lights are considered public property, boxes are also placed there.
Cornell hopes the planters will last well beyond America’s Semiquincentennial. “We’d hope to get three or four years out of them,” the Clerk predicted.
And there’s something more; a beautification attribute you’ll notice only after dark. Colored bulbs have been purchased for the post-mounted Enfield Center street lights. They’ll be red, white, and blue around July 4, and then still different colors near Halloween and again at Christmas.
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Appeals Court affirms NY “All Electric” Law
Ruling on oil furnace, gas stove ban puts Hochul in a heat-wave bind
by Robert Lynch; July 3, 2026
For New York Governor Kathy Hochul, the decision could not be more ill-timed. As an early-summer heat wave placed incredible strain on the Empire State’s power grid and prompted the governor to urge residents to set their air conditioner thermostats to higher-than-comfortable levels, the Second Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals has cleared away—at least for the moment—legal objections to an adopted state law that would mandate most new homes heat and cook only with electricity.
In a unanimous ruling June 30, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit held that the “All-Electric Building Act,” passed by the Legislature, but with key provisions temporarily suspended by Hochul, does not violate federal statutes. Industry challengers had contended that the law’s sweeping powers were left reserved to Washington.
The holding puts Hochul in a bind because she must now decide whether to lift a stay that she’d placed on the New York law’s first phase of implementation. Its imposition would have banned oil, propane, or natural gas furnaces in most new home construction after December 31 of last year. The All-Electric Building Act would also have banned gas cooking ranges in those new homes.
Hochul’s delay of implementation, ordered last November, was based on her desire to let the legal challenges play out. Unless plaintiffs appeal further, her legal justification has ended.
Nonetheless, because the Second Circuit’s author acknowledges that her Circuit’s holding conflicts with that of another appeals court covering western states, that conflict may drive the U.S. Supreme Court to resolve the disagreement. The conservative-dominated High Court has proven more skeptical of environmental overreach than have some of its subordinate courts.
The three-judge decision could also face a mid-stop and be appealed to the entire Second Circuit panel of judges.
The Second Circuit holding, authored by Circuit Judge Myrna Pérez, a Biden appointee, dealt primarily with the plaintiff’s claim of what’s termed federal “preemption” of the New York law. Her panel’s holding affirmed Federal Judge Glenn Suddaby’s July 2025 ruling that the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA) did not preempt New York State’s authority to ban installation of fossil fuel heating systems and appliances.
The challenged law in question was one of those frequently-feared “dead-of-night” things; substantive regulation tucked into an overladen budget bill, in this instance in the spring of 2023. No one much noticed it then. As deadlines approached, they did.
As many as a dozen industry and labor interests, led by Mulhern Gas Company, LLC, had brought suit in lower courts and on appeal to challenge the law. Plaintiffs included the New York State Builders Association, the New York Propane Gas Association, and two local units of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Plaintiffs argued that federal preemption overrode the New York statute, as the New York law would “effectively set covered gas appliances’ maximum energy use to zero.”
“But the text of the preemption provision cannot support Appellants’ expansive construction,” Judge Perez wrote in her introductory paragraph. “EPCA preempts energy conservation standards for covered appliances and a fairly limited realm of additional regulations which operate in a similar manner,” she wrote. “The challenged laws fall outside of that realm.”
The appellate court ruling “is a welcome return to a commonsense understanding of state and local control over the homes we live in and the air we breathe,” said Dror Ladin, Senor Attorney for Earthjustice, an intervenor in the case on behalf of the law’s supporters, Nexstar television reported this week.
At its meeting last October 22, the Enfield Town Board adopted a resolution urging Governor Hochul to delay the law’s implementation on grounds that the local electric grid lacks capacity to handle the load that a rapid transition to heat pump technology would require.
Enfield’s urging followed related action by a Town Board in Cincinnatus, Cortland County. Cincinnatus had also urged that the electrification mandate be sidelined. But Cincinnatus would have Congress and President Trump enact and sign new laws that would have made federal preemption more clear-cut.
“The Enfield Town Board welcomes the intelligent, aspirational transition to renewable energy sources for home heating and associated energy applications, yet also recognizes the infrastructure limitations that currently impede total electrification efforts in rural communities such as its own,” Enfield’s request for a gubernatorial intervention stated last October.
Weeks after Enfield’s Town Board voted, Governor Hochul’s attorneys entered a “stipulation” in court postponing the state law’s implementation pending appeal. However, that stipulation was only temporary, not permanent.
The All-Electric Buildings Act would roll out in two phases. And it still may, although the legal obstacles could postpone deadlines. The first phase was supposed to ban fossil fuel heating and appliances in buildings that are under eight stories tall and built after December 31, 2025. There’d be limited exceptions. The second phase would expand the ban to all buildings of any height or size built after December 31, 2028.
Given that most buildings in rural Tompkins County rise to fewer than eight stories, the first deadline would have applied to most construction locally. The law carved out exceptions for hospitals, factories, farms and restaurants. And the statute only impacted new construction or major renovations, not routine replacements of oil furnaces or propane ranges when they simply wear out.
The Sierra Club and the American Lung Association had each submitted amicus briefs in the case.
“Burning fossil fuels, like methane gas, in homes, schools, and businesses is a threat to New Yorkers’ health and our climate,” Bridgett Lee, a Senior Attorney with the Sierra Club wrote in a statement the day of the Second Circuit’s holding.
But Judge Perez’s ruling stuck closely to the law of federal preemption, not to the health, economic or environmental arguments advanced by activists.
“These appeals concern whether [the Energy Policy and Conservation Act; EPCA] preempts state and local laws which prohibit fossil-fuel-powered appliances,” Judge Perez wrote. “EPCA, in relevant part, imposes energy conservation standards on covered appliances, and its preemptive text closely aligns with its affirmative regulatory scope. The statute does not directly regulate the availability of fossil-fuel-powered appliances, and its express preemption provision does not extend to laws far beyond its defined regulatory reach,” she stated.
“Thus, for the reasons explained below, EPCA does not preempt the challenged laws,” Judge Perez held.
The Second Circuit holding parsed statutory language, seeking contextual exactitude for otherwise commonplace words and phrases like “energy use,” “concerning, and “related to” as the federal statute employed them.
Perhaps easier to understand, the judge analogized the EPCA’s regulation of appliances to other federal laws that set national mandates for mobile homes.
“[I]t is plain that a federal statute that sets standards for the construction and safety of manufactured homes (i.e., mobile homes) does not preempt zoning regulations that ‘exclude mobile homes’ from certain areas,” Judge Perez wrote.
“We do not mean to minimize the overall impact of the challenged laws,” the judge acknowledged. “They will undoubtedly have an effect on the market for, and availability of, certain covered products” she wrote. “But that is irrelevant to the question at hand because the preemption provision targets regulations concerning appliances’ ‘energy use,’ not, as [industry and labor group] Appellants sometimes seem to suggest, regulations concerning the covered appliances themselves.”
“EPCA, a statute that at its heart promotes national energy conservation goals, does not preclude these particular state and local efforts to regulate the use of fossil fuels,” the Appeals Court concluded.
The legal snag that could propel the All-Electric Buildings Act to reach the U.S. Supreme Court lies late in the Second Circuit’s 46-page opinion, a complication that most other reports on this story have overlooked. The west-coast based Ninth Circuit, a court that claims equal standing with the New York-quartered Second Circuit, has ruled differently.
Two years ago, in a California case, the Ninth Circuit had before it the challenge to a local law that effectively barred the installation of natural gas piping in newly constructed buildings. Like the New York-based federal courts, the California trial judge had determined that the federal preemption under the EPCA did not apply. But on appeal, the Ninth Circuit held that it did.
Second Circuit Judge Perez acknowledged, “After much consideration of the statute’s text and relevant precedent… we conclude that the reasons for divergence are too compelling and reluctantly believe it necessary to create ‘a split among the Circuits’.”
Judge Perez wrote she’d prefer to side with a dissenting judge in that California dispute. But a “split among the Circuits” is one of the surest ways to invite SCOTUS to step in as referee.
As the All-Electric Buildings Act has received what may (or may not) be its final verdict, New York State wrestles with record-breaking early-summer heat. The electric grid is strained. Brownouts remain a possibility. And Governor Hochul finds herself urging air conditioner thermostats be inched upward.
“My team has been coordinating with (electric utilities) and New York City leaders to ensure all large consumers able to switch to other fuel sources have done so to reduce their usage,” Hochul said in a statement July 2, released two days after the Second Circuit’s ruling came down.
“I am also calling on New Yorkers to do their part to proactively conserve electricity if safe to do so by setting air conditioning units between 75 – 78 degrees and avoiding unnecessary appliance use,” Hochul’s statement added. “These small steps can go a long way.”
So, to make matters clear, the governor is urging use of energy other than that generated by Mr. Ready Kilowatt, your power provider.
Critics, including Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, have mocked Hochul’s recommendations. Blakeman says we need more fossil fuel plants instead.
And tellingly, Governor Hochul has announced absolutely nothing about whether she’ll lift that legal stay imposed last November and move to implement the All-Electric Buildings Act. Timing is everything.
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High School hazing claim reaches ICSD Board
Employee, purported witness, wages petition drive for “Zero Tolerance”
by Robert Lynch; July 1, 2026
If true, the allegations stand serious. If false, making them was irresponsible. Whatever the case, a purported long-time Ithaca City School District (ICSD) employee, one whose two children went through the Ithaca system, brought allegations before the Ithaca Board of Education Tuesday that students at Ithaca High School, specifically white players on the high school football team, have committed racially-charged hazing offenses against one or more students as recently as this year. She claimed to be a witness.
When she made the charge, the complaining current—or former—employee, Sandra Wold, evoked a testy response from at least one board member and was advised by the meeting’s presiding officer, the school board’s vice president, that the board “will not disclose those matters in public while they’re being looked into.”
The incidents to which Wold referred, alleged hazing in 2023 and again this year, purportedly involved sexual assault. Neither allegation has been independently and publicly corroborated by Ithaca City School District officials. As a result, the details shared by Wold and others on social media will not be reported here until they’re confirmed.
“I’m here today to tell you about a problem I’ve noticed,” Wold began her public comment to the Board of Education June 30. “There’s been two hazing incidents I’ve reported, and I haven’t gotten any response from the board in a way that makes me wonder if you all understand that hazing is a national epidemic,” the instructor continued.
Wold represented herself as a roughly 20-year ICSD employee holding a Master’s degree and one who’s worked in education for three decades.
Posting on Facebook prior to the meeting in a message supposedly sponsored by the group, “Ithacans for Student Safety,” Wold called for an “ICSD Zero Tolerance Policy for Hazing.” She and the group circulated an online petition calling for such a policy.
The petition also urged that the school district “obtain an FBI investigation for recent and past hazing allegations to fully understand and address the hazing problem.”
In her public comments Tuesday, before she was cut off by members of the board, Wold took particular aim at the ICSD’s “Restorative Justice” disciplinary policy; a policy that she claimed punishes offenders too little and fails to refer hazing incidents to the police.
“Because the school district will not suspend, will not expel, and will not make law enforcement referrals,” Wold maintained, “that has given a green light to those—it’s only a few perpetrators—to do what they did.”
“I walked into a huddle of white…” Wold continued, only to be cut off in mid-sentence by an animated and visibly angry Erin Croyle, a member of the ICSD board.
“Sorry; no sorry,” Croyle interrupted. “You are disclosing students… You are disclosing information about students,” Croyle shouted back.
Wold attempted to defend herself, stating that she had not identified any student or students by name. Board member interruptions continued.
Croyle’s colleague, Karen Yearwood, then entered the discussion.
“You’re not saying any names,” Yearwood acknowledged. “But you’ve also stated that there has been no response,” she said. “So we need to end this discussion.”
Accuser Wold wanted a deeper response to her allegations. But Board Vice President Garrick Blalock joined in ending Wold’s comments and then moving on to other matters.
“I state for the record that when the district receives written complaints about matters, the district—or I should say, the board—will not discuss those matters in public while they’re being looked into,” Blalock stated firmly. “Public comment is over.”
“I hope that the victims come forward and let you know,” Wold pleaded before her speaking time had ended.
“All of your emails have gone to the relevant parties,” Yearwood assured the critic.
The Sandra Wold/Ithacans for Student Safety petition, circulated on Facebook, had reportedly received as many as 67 signatories as of midday Wednesday.
The online initiative advanced a seven-point “Zero Tolerance” policy it seeks the ICSD to adopt. Among those requests, it urges increased “education and awareness,” and also a requirement that administrators and coaches “sign anti-hazing statements.” It further requests that the distract institute “prompt suspensions, season cancellations, expulsions, (and) law enforcement referrals” to punish hazing offenses.
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At the Board of Education’s final meeting of the 2025-26 academic year, the board June 30 authorized time-sensitive asbestos remediation to facilitate the repair of flood damage at Cayuga Heights Elementary School (CHES).
Little discussion preceded the unanimous vote of the six attending members to contract with MJ’s Contracting for the abatement work. The Waterville, NY company will remove asbestos-contaminated flooring in ground-floor learning space that was damaged when a flash flood March 31 spilled down a hillside in back of the school and caused what could be more than one million dollars in damage.
To expedite repairs, the abatement contract circumvented the customary bidding process. This particular phase of the project became calendar-sensitive because unlike other work, asbestos removal can only take place when students aren’t in the building.
Contract approval came as part of an otherwise routinely adopted, 21-item consent agenda.
“It’s imperative that we complete that work this summer,” Travis Randall, Senior Project Manager with Campus Construction Management, the ICSD’s consultant, told the board. “All the rest of the work that we’re going to do is contingent upon this getting done,” Randall said. “We can’t do it once school starts.”
Providing details after the meeting, Randall said asbestos abatement should commence by about “the third week of July” and conclude by August 15, well before the start of school.
Remaining bids for other aspects of the CHES repairs are set to be opened at the end of July. Randall cautioned that repairs will continue throughout the 2026-27 academic year and won’t finish until next summer.
MJ’s Contracting will receive $118,447 for its services. Its was the lower of two bids received. Randall indicated that on a normal time schedule as many as five contractors might bid. But fewer bid for this project, the project manager said, because many remediation contractors were already booked for the summer.
Despite the fewer bids, Randall described the winning bidder’s price as within expectations.
Asbestos remediation, although the first major contract to be awarded for repair work at CHES, will cost the ICSD only a fraction of the total repair cost.
In April, the school board assigned up to $1.5 Million in previously budgeted funds to underwrite the flood remediation. It’s expected the district’s insurance policy will cover $500,000 of the expense. Board members also predicted at the time that not all of the $1.5 Million may be needed.
Randall said Tuesday that what the ICSD pays out-of-pocket will also qualify for state aid.
Within days of the late-March flood, a clean-up contractor, Servpro, began removing damaged carpets and drywall so as to stem the spread of mold.
Flooring and drywall replacements will continue into the upcoming school year, Randall said, and will require students and classes to move about the building from time to time.
The March 31 Cayuga Heights flood occurred during the ICSD spring break. By the following Monday, when classes resumed, CHES had reopened, with learning partially moved to the building’s upper floor.
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By quick, unanimous action, following a more than hour-long executive session, one addressing subjects undisclosed, the board unanimously awarded the district’s managerial and confidential staff four percent raises for the 2026-27 school year. That compares to the seven percent salary increase awarded the district’s nearly 600 teachers in their recently-negotiated contract.
And the June 30 meeting officially marked the end of Sean Eversley Bradwell’s 17-year tenure on the Ithaca Board of Education, the last four years as Board President.
That said, Eversley Bradwell did not attend his final meeting. A district spokesman said that the outgoing president had hoped to attend remotely. But that didn’t happen.
Board members and district officials had paid tribute to Eversley Bradwell and his years of service at an earlier board meeting, June 9.
Also excused from her final meeting was Madeline Cardona, elected to a one-year board term in May 2025, but replaced by another candidate in this latest May’s election.
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County, I Shrunk the Building
Designers, lawmakers agonize, tangle over Center of Government
“They’d (his constituents) said very clear they’d prefer to go to the mall.”
Newfield/Enfield Legislator Randy Brown, Center of Government debate, June 16.
“Well, the mall’s not going to be an option.”
Legislature Chair Shawna Black, same meeting.
Reporting and analysis by Robert Lynch; June 20, 2026
Yes, it would have showers; changing rooms too. Why would an office worker need to bathe and dress on the job? Good question. Oh wait, the architect wants us to ride our bikes to work, instead of drive. Wise idea, since there wouldn’t be many places to park.
Welcome to Tompkins County’s newly-shrunk—yet quite politically correct—Downtown Center of Government.
For nearly an hour last Tuesday night, the Tompkins County Legislature listened—and reacted—as Holt Architects’ Quay Thompson, the Center of Government’s lead designer, detailed the latest changes his firm has made to the ambitious project, including its centerpiece jewel, the 45,000-square foot office building at the corner of North Tioga and East Buffalo Streets in downtown Ithaca. His were changes made by necessity. They’d contain the project to within a $50 Million budget, a price cap that’s supposedly hard and fast.
Gone is the building’s fourth floor (well, kind-of). Its ground footprint is pulled in a trifle, both at the side and the rear. Yet holding true to its Green New Deal bona fides, the structure would remain framed of wood timbers, not steel. It would treat windows with “bird-friendly glazing.” It would heat, cool, and power everything only with electricity (of course). And there’d be geothermal, too.
But with all that said, Holt has pared the structure to the point that the County Administrator wouldn’t be able to work there.
That face-only-a-mother-could-love façade, a hybrid of brick and stone, would remain the same as it was when unveiled last December. And so would those annoying third-floor sunshades across every window, shades that hauntingly resemble fake eye lashes. Street side, you’d hardly notice a difference from December’s rendering. Municipality names would remain tacked along the side, if for no apparent reason. And no, there wouldn’t be a basement.
“I think you came up with something pleasant and nice, and I think it fits the bill,” Dryden representative Greg Mezey said approvingly of Thompson’s redesign. He gave Holt’s redo the most praise of anyone.
But even Mezey didn’t welcome everything. A plainly-faced, penthouse-sized smidgen of a fourth floor—that’s where the showers would be—remains in the plan. Of that, the Dryden lawmaker said, “It looks kind of like a trailer plopped on top of a beautiful government building.”
Cast adrift by a pair of deadlocked votes at their meeting March 3, Tompkins County legislators have defaulted to a pledge they’d made last year to build a Center of Government no larger than 45,000 square feet and costing no more than $50 Million.
And for Holt Architects, that promise posed a problem. During their six months of architectural refinement between last June and December, designers came to realize they’d need as much as 57,000 square feet to shelter all of the departments Tompkins County wanted to put in the center. And the bigger the building got, the more it would cost. Estimates of $60 Million or more got tossed about.
Cutting corners became Holt’s big challenge these past three months.
“I’m going to show the one thing that sort of solves this entire problem,” Thompson told legislators in his freshened, June 16 presentation. “We made the Center of Government smaller by taking County Administration, Human Resources, and Planning out of the new building.” he said.
The revisions Thompson shared that night were the same ones he’d described to a sub-set of legislators at a committee meeting May 21. They sounded odd then. They still do. Why target these three departments? Their culling sounds ill-conceived.
If the Center of Government is truly a place where most Tompkins County office staffers do their day’s labor, doesn’t it make sense to have the big boss there in the building, maybe sitting in a top-floor corner office? Shouldn’t the personnel administrator be in the building as well? And Planning is a department whose tentacles reach out to overlap many others.
There’s a sense of randomness to the departmental shuffle Quay Thompson has advanced, apparently with the blessing of County Administrator Korsah Akumfi.
“Who’s decided who’s going to be in this building?” Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown asked Akumfi. “Is this a proposal, or are you telling us this is the way it’s going to be?”
“This is a proposal,” Akumfi answered. “This building is being built to be very flexible,” he explained. Akumfi and Thompson indicated that departmental placements could change even before the building is finished three years from now.
“I think it’s really important to know definitely who’s going to be in the (building) when you design it,” Brown rebutted.
To shrink the new building down to its mandated size, Akumfi’s department, Administration, as well as Human Resources, would return to the Old Jail, a building that until recently had housed both those departments for decades,. Planning would remain on the Legislature building’s first floor. Gone is any talk of spilling significant legislative space onto that ground floor of legislative chambers, the Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins Building, and putting conference rooms and legislator offices there.
Meanwhile, Tompkins County’s Office for the Aging (COFA), soon to move temporarily to an office park in Lansing, would become a Center of Government ground floor resident. Designers doggedly place COFA’s foot inside the new building, even though legislator Brown says it makes no sense.
“These are people, elderly people, that really come to visit,” Brown said of Office for the Aging patrons. “And they don’t want to come down here,” he said of seniors visiting downtown.
Brown recalled that at a Newfield Town Hall meeting, older constituents were “all on me” to make their case. They want accessibility, Brown said. “I don’t see a lot of access here,” he said of the Center of Government site. “I’m worried about that.”
“Item number one should be accessibility for constituents,” Brown stated emphatically. “And this does not address that.”
Tompkins County’s march toward a Center of Government has always resembled that of a healthy, 50-year old scheduling his first colonoscopy. There’s desire to get the job done, but also a temptation to postpone the inevitable. Fear of the consequences prompts anxiety and encourages delay.
The corner lot on which the $50 Million building would sit was purchased nearly five years ago. Secret negotiations to buy the pair of properties actually commenced a couple of years before that. Since 2021, there’ve been endless design meetings, bureaucratic impediments, indecision, and snail’s pace progress.
In a key legislative decision in September 2023, leaders voted overwhelmingly “to proceed with Space, Architectural, and Engineering Plans for a Center of Government.” Lawmakers reaffirmed and sharpened their commitment in June of last year, setting both the projected 45,000 square foot size limit and the $50 Million cost ceiling.
Yet when they voted last summer, Akumfi acknowledged that the vision the Legislature had set for the project was “not a binding document,” but “just a direction from all of you to tell us that there is a commitment for us to move the project forward.”
Then this past March, when Thompson and team realized they couldn’t pack all the departments our county wanted into a building so small and priced so low, legislators looked anew, yet failed to change course. They voted down making the building larger and more expensive than before. They also defeated a second resolution that would have made it smaller and cheaper.
Resulting from the March impasse, a $50 Million, 45,000 square foot building survived as the default, Goldilocks choice. It’s constrained the architects ever since.
But there’s little time for continued delay. If timetables hold, construction contracts will go to bid around Halloween. Legislators will award bids near the turn of the year. Work will commence shortly thereafter.
And dragging things out brings only pain. With construction expenses rising at 4.75 percent annually, Thompson warned that every extra month adds $200,000 to the cost. That’s $2.4 Million in a year.
Legislators cast no votes on the Center of Government project June 16. And the majority showed little desire to retreat from prior commitments. Randy Brown proved the exception.
The Republican from Newfield took on the project from several fronts. He faulted its location and its operational priorities. And when he did, it put Brown squarely at odds with Legislature Chair Shawna Black, a Center of Government supporter, albeit a cautious one. Theirs produced the evening’s most riveting exchanges.
Brown objected to placing “front-facing” departments, like COFA and Assessment, in the building. “I think it should be administrative focused,” he said. Cluster departments that “work closer together,” Brown advocated. And if you attempt “to bring people downtown who don’t want to come downtown, they’re not going to come.”
“That is going to be an operations decision and Korsah will make that decision,” Black said of departmental placement. Even though the Legislature is Akumfi’s boss, Black would delegate to the Administrator the operational power otherwise accorded to an elected County Executive. “It shouldn’t be 16 legislators being lobbied by different departments” as to whether they’d be in the building or not, Black insisted.
“That just doesn’t make sense,” Brown said of leaving office assignments for Akumfi to decide. “I want to see logic. There’s no logic to this,” he observed.
”We respect our department heads, right? And their opinions,” Brown challenged the chairwoman. “And they gave it to us and we go, ‘You know, we don’t care about that because we’re going to leave it, the decision, to somebody else.’”
The project would reduce the supply of parking, yet increase its demand, of course, The nearby Seneca Street ramp has closed permanently. And the Center of Government, once built, would cut on-site employee spaces from 104 to 93, a reduction that understates the true squeeze, since many of the slots are always reserved for State Court’s employees.
“I just don’t get it,” an animated Randy Brown continued. “My constituents have made it loud and clear. Enfield did a Resolution to say, please, we don’t want to come down there.”
“I’m not sure your Newfield people would want to go anywhere outside of Newfield, right?” an impatient and annoyed Shawna Black tossed back the argument.
“That’s not fair,” Brown rebounded. “They’ve said very clear they’d prefer to go to the mall. They’ve said that very clearly.”
“Well the mall’s not going to be an option. We voted against the mall,” Shawna Black reminded her critic.
But have they? To the best recollection, legislators have never cast a stand-alone, up or down vote on whether to relocate governmental offices to Lansing’s vastly-ghosted Shops at Ithaca Mall, at least not in public session. One can only infer rejection from other votes taken to double-down on downtown.
Nor has the Legislature formally and publicly dismissed another fallback option; quartering departments in modern, low-slung buildings at the Cornell Business Park. They’re nearby the airport and begging for a buyer. Black, Akumfi and others would like us to believe the business park’s been tossed aside as well.
But has it? Listen to our Legislature’s Chair:
“We’re looking at a situation at the airport that I think most of you know about,” Shawna Black remarked at the meeting, her enigmatic message directed to insiders’ ears only. “We don’t know if that’s going to pan out,” she piqued curiosity. “If it pans out, it moves people everywhere. And so we have a lot of balls in the air.”
Black did not reveal more. But we do know that the bank which had foreclosed on the Business Park developer’s mortgage would love to sell us some buildings. Those many closed sessions that legislators hold after public business is done hold a purpose. Remember Black’s words.
Many of those you’d expect to speak during the June 16 Center of Government discussions remained silent. And those who did offer opinions usually stuck to a congratulatory script or else turned to the superfluous stuff—like those employee showers.
“As a runner, I can say it’s also nice to have showers so you could run on your lunch break and then go back,” freshman legislator Iris Packman remarked.
In fact, Packman would go one step beyond and install “a small gym” with a couple of workout machines, “something for people on very cold, icy days,” she said.
“Anything is possible,” Quay Thompson answered her.
Veronica Pillar also liked the shower idea. She reiterated her call for public restrooms and an outside drinking fountain.
But as Greg Mezey saw it, at some point the change orders—big or small—must stop.
“I think it’s very important to my colleagues that we lock and load, and we trust, and we figure it out, and we dial in whatever project we’re going to move forward with,” Mezey asserted. “Because if we keep throwing change curveballs in the process, it’s going to get so expensive, and $50 Million can go out the door very quickly.”
“We can have some minor debate,” Mezey admitted. “But really the big debate is over.”
Greg Mezey might like to believe it. But is it true?
A mere four months before the Center of Government bid documents hit the table, a nervous unease still pervades the process. Critics like Randy Brown continue to pepper leadership with questions tough to answer. Office placement remains a game of musical chairs. Competing visions fight for attention. And what about that “situation at the airport,” tossed out to tease us?
Meanwhile, costs escalate. And because they do, no one can predict how high those bids will come in. They could break the bank or kill the project.
“So here’s the issue moving forward,” Shawna Black laid plain as she pushed back on Randy Brown’s go-to-the-mall alternative. “We’re committed to doing a $50 Million building. We’re not going to let our employees dictate where they want to be. We are going to listen to our constituents. And everything that Quay is proposing here, he said this is not our final presentation,” Black cautioned.
“So I would ask that people calm down. We’re going to figure this out,” the Legislature’s Chair sought to assure us. (Did she?) “You know, I think we have a lot of growing to do. And I don’t want to get wrapped up in who’s going where right now, because we have a lot of moving pieces.”
Yes, when it comes to the Center of Government, the Tompkins County Legislature is, indeed, that 50 year old who never books his colonoscopy. And to Randy Brown: Yes, it would be so simple—and likely cheaper—to just go to the mall… or to someplace else. You can even put the showers and treadmill there.
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Board hastens big-bucks buy at Rollins’ urging
Enfield wrap-up: Town leaders renew call to save lives at Applegate Corners
by Robert Lynch; June 16, 2026
When the Enfield Town Board convened to conduct its monthly business June 10, none of its five members knew that they’d be spending more than $200,000 that night to buy a big, new dump truck. But that’s what they did.
In a sudden move that prompted on-the-fly budget math, a desperate call to the town bookkeeper, and a pointed dissent from one board member, Enfield leaders last Wednesday accelerated by a full year their planned purchase of the 10-wheeler, all because Enfield Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins said he wanted it.
In most any newsroom, the purchase of a dump truck—even by a smaller community where such spending can strangle a budget—prompts rolled eyes and open-mouthed yawns from editors. “Who cares?” they’d ask.
Some may posit the same question here. But in Enfield, last week’s action opens a window into how today’s Town Board majority conducts business, especially when addressing impromptu spending appeals by the Highway Superintendent, a man Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond bends over backwards to please.
At meeting’s start June 10, Redmond closed off attempts to read into the record a constituent’s correspondence critical of Rollins’ department’s ditch management practices on Tucker Road. Also that night, she deflected criticism of the superintendents’ latest tree-cutting dispute, this time involving a resident complaint on Buck Hill Road.
Two months ago, the Supervisor had defended Rollins and peeved an Enfield Center resident in the process when that person and her partner came to allege that the Highway Superintendent’s inaction had worsened damage to their property during a March 31 flash flood. Rollins had exited the April 8 meeting early and angry.
“You’re off base. You’re wrong, both of you. You’re out of line,” Rollins had blurted out to the complainants, defensively denouncing their allegations of supposed inaction.
“I totally appreciate all the work that you did,” Supervisor Redmond complimented Rollins after the fiery exchange, speaking as she also cut off the accusers and sought to restore order. “I appreciate the work that you were doing. Thank you so much,” the Supervisor repeated to Rollins moments before he left.
Barry Rollins never stayed around to give his own departmental report to the Town Board that April night. In May, Redmond said Rollins had been excused from attending for reasons never explained.
So by the June 10 meeting, the Highway Superintendent had business to transact. For him, perhaps, it was a request long overdue. But for board members, it came as a complete surprise.
“One thing I wanted to bring up,” Rollins stated during his Superintendent’s report, 47 minutes into the June 10 meeting. “We’re supposed to replace another ten-wheeler in 2028. And they’re telling me trucks are two years out to build,” he said. “So I’m wantin’ to ask about buying a truck this year.”
“And how that works now,” Rollins explained, “is you’ve got to buy the cab and chassis and pay for that, but the equipment you don’t have to pay for it until it’s put on the truck.”
Eighteen minutes after Barry Rollins said those words, the Town Board, voting four to one, bought the cab and chassis. A formal resolution was never written. A precise dollar figure was never assigned, although a range of $190,000 to $220,000 was tossed around at one point. Even the exact model number of the Western Star frame was based on the Superintendent’s best recollection.
“I cannot vote for it tonight because it’s hasty decision making,” Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) stated before casting the board’s lone dissent. “I can’t spend $200,000 with only maybe five-to-ten minutes’ discussion. That’s not responsible budgeting, so I will be voting no.”
“You should be supporting me instead of fighting me,” Rollins later told Lynch, rebuking him when the topic later turned to Lynch’s reporting the Buck Hill Road constituent’s complaint about tree cutting. “Don’t criticize me for doing my job. You should be thanking us for doing our job,” Rollins insisted.
Between the Highway Superintendents appeal for purchasing authority and the Town Board’s final vote, Supervisor Redmond went out of her way to accommodate Rollins’ sudden request.
To be clear, the Town of Enfield intended to buy the ten-wheeler eventually, starting next year. The Town’s Capital Plan, renewed annually, most recently last fall, called for a $200,000 down payment to be made in 2027, with three, annual $73,442 loan payments thereafter. Budget math puts the truck’s total projected cost at $420,336, principal plus interest.
Monthly financial records before the Town Board June 10 suggested a $404,572 balance in equipment reserves, more than enough to speed up a purchase that hadn’t been planned for yet another year. The custodian of those records, Town Bookkeeper Blixy Taetzsch, wasn’t in the room that night. So Redmond texted her at home, invited her into the meeting remotely, and she joined.
“I would say, yes, go for it,” Taetzsch advised the board after giving the balance sheet an ever-so-quick inspection. “If you don’t do this now, you’re not going to have it (the truck) in service when you need it,” she reasoned. “And I do think there’s enough money in the reserves.”
Yet the review was hurried and more than a little unsettling, especially given the magnitude of the outlay. Why Rollins could not have anticipated the supply chain logjam and approached the Town Board a month or two earlier never arose in the discussions.
Two factors drove Superintendent Rollins to seek accelerated purchase of the ten-wheeler, a machine that won’t make its way to the Enfield highway barn for two more years.
First, there’s the business divide between the company that manufactures the truck and the firm that later attaches the needed add-ons like the box and snow plow. The cab and chassis manufacturer finishes the basics within a few months of order, but then the unit sits idle for up to two years awaiting the rest of what’s needed.
Nonetheless, the truck’s manufacturer wants its money up-front. And yes, there’s a waiting list.
Rollins told the board that one truck maker, Freightliner, is already booked for the year. A second manufacturer, Western Star, as of meeting night, had only 19 openings left for the year. By waiting another month, Rollins predicted, those slots would be filled by other buyers.
As for the second reason, Rollins prefers to purchase a current year’s model, not a 2027 truck. Governmental rules will impose new and costly emissions standards next year, he warned. They’d add $20,000 to $30,000 to a truck’s price, he predicted. And untested, they could pose problems.
“I move we postpone this decision for at least a week,” Lynch proposed when the purchase resolution (such as it was) reached the floor. His postponement effort died for lack of a second.
Having failed to give the purchase some breathing room, Lynch then moved to fund the acquisition in part by delaying a budgeted $165,000 mower tractor’s purchase until next year. Buying that tractor has proven controversial in its own right. Again, the motion received no second.
And yet what happened June 10 served as a telling example of how Enfield Highway Department equipment often gets bought. Decisions often arrive with minimal deliberative forethought and seat-of-the-pants snap judgments. Whether it should be that way really doesn’t matter. That’s the way it’s done.
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Far less contentious, although with an outcome less predictable, the Enfield Town Board June 10 sent a renewed appeal to the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) seeking an updated traffic study into what’s probably Enfield’s most dangerous intersection, the crossing of Applegate Road with Mecklenburg Road, NY Route 79.
NYSDOT last studied “Applegate Corners” in 2024. State review followed numerous accidents and a December 2023 Enfield Town Board request that state and county traffic engineers” consider any and all improvements that would enhance traffic safety at that intersection.” Suggested remedies then included “upgraded signage, pavement modifications, and/or the installation of new traffic control devices, such as an overhead blinker.”
New York undertook the study. The Department of Transportation, of course, never installed the blinker. Nor did it approve another Enfield request to lower the speed limit on Route 79 east of the intersection to below 55 Miles per Hour. (The limit is 45 MPH west of the crossroads.) But by November of 2024, Scott Bates, the agency’s Regional Traffic Engineer, had promised installation of “low-cost improvements,” primarily new signage, which he determined to be “feasible.” They were later installed.
The Town Board’s most recent attention has turned to a new problem. It’s a recently-set electrical pole at the intersections’ southeast corner, a pole that blocks driver visibility of cross-traffic. It’s worse because the pole that it was supposed to replace has yet to be removed.
“It is the most dangerous intersection in Enfield,” Councilperson Lynch, sponsor of this latest Resolution, told Board members. “It’s a dangerous, terrible intersection.” Lynch continued. “It’s not really a question right now of people being able to stop. It is a question of people not being able to see.”
“That pole is very obstructive,” Lynch told the Town Board. And when driving Applegate Road it’s often impossible to see Route 79 traffic until you’re actually in another vehicle’s path. “People have died there already,” Lynch said. “Something has to be done. I don’t know what it is. I’m not a traffic engineer. But we really need to make that intersection safer.”
The “Resolution Requesting an Updated Traffic Study” at Applegate Corners passed the Town Board unanimously. It asks state and county agencies “to address the need for additional improvements, including but not limited to traffic control devices, foliage removal within the state- or county-maintained right-of-way, and/or the directing of New York State Electric and Gas Corporation to relocate its recently-installed electrical transmission pole to a location posing less of a safety hazard.”
Other Enfield Town Board business handled June 10:
- Tax Cap: By a four-to-one vote, the Town Board set a Public Hearing for July 8 to consider overriding New York State’s tax cap on next year’s tax levy. The hearing’s scheduling comes even though planning of the 2027 Budget has yet to begin and the tax cap for Enfield has yet to be set.
“What’s wrong with doing it in October when we’ve got a budget?” Councilperson Lynch asked.
“Because it kind of pushes everything really tight,” Supervisor Redmond explained. Holding the hearing early, Redmond argued, assures “we have all of our i’s dotted and t’s crossed.” And we don’t “have to push it up against the deadline” or “clog up our meetings” should the need for other hearings arise, Redmond asserted.
“Let’s just do it and get it out of the way,” the Supervisor concluded.
“This is basically thumbing the nose at the taxpayer,” Lynch answered. “We don’t know what the tax cap is. We don’t know what the budget is. We don’t know how much the levy’s going to increase because the budget hasn’t been written yet. So why override the tax cap? It’s kind of a cavalier action. I can’t vote for it.” He didn’t.
- Highway Department Wastewater: Taking parallel action to resolve an ongoing problem that could quickly prove costly, the Town Board approved a lone bid by a Schenectady firm, Precision Industrial Maintenance, to haul away drain wastewater from the Enfield Highway Garage. It’s waste water accumulated mostly from washing down trucks. And it’s water the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Facility (IAWWTF) has refused to accept since late last year.
The hauling contract is pricey: $2,725 per service call—generally once per month— plus 25 cents per gallon of water disposed. The fluid goes all the way to Schenectady. When the IAWWTF had accepted the Drainwater, a monthly pumping generally cost about $900.
Meanwhile, the Town Board authorized a Cortland-based laboratory, Microbac, to test of the drain water. Testing could enable Enfield to eventually obtain a permit and resume using the Ithaca disposal plant. Authorization to pay Microbac its more than $2,300 testing fee awaits final approval of testing procedures by IAWWTF officials.
- FLAIR Powerline Project: The Town Board endorsed a recently submitted “Joint Proposal” by New York State Electric and Gas Corporation, the New York State Public Service Commission and other state agencies toward resolving citizen complaints over the “FLAIR” electrical line reconstruction near the Newfield-Enfield border. Enfield’s adopted Resolution describes the Joint Proposal as a “compromise” that advances both the utility’s interests and Enfield residents’ demands for “economic well-being, health, and community enjoyment.” (See separate reporting.)
- SkateGarden: And on the heels of a $5,000 anonymous gift, accepted May 26, the Town Board appropriated $500 from that fund toward purchasing trees and possibly playground equipment to expand opportunities at Enfield SkateGarden, across from the Town Hall, and make it more than just a skateboard rink. As it took that action, the Board tabled until its July meeting a broader Resolution that would accept and adopt the Cornell Design Connect student recommendations as the “conceptual design model to guide future improvements” at SkateGarden. The tabled measure would also ensure that “all substantial improvements” at the skate park occur only with Town Board consent.
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Powerline Critics Score Win
NYSEG “FLAIR” redo brings shorter poles, familiar design
by Robert Lynch; June 15, 2026
“I was shocked that they were so thoughtful.”
Newfield Town Board member Christine Seamon, reacting to NYSEG’s sudden redesign, June 11.
When New York State Electric and Gas Corporation (NYSEG) rebuilds the high-tension electrical line we drive under near Teet’s scrap yard on Enfield’s Black Oak Road or across Millard Hill Road in Newfield, it’s likely to look nearly the same going forward as it’s always looked for nearly the past century.
In a sudden about-face move that’s surprised just about everybody, NYSEG late last month revised plans for its 21-mile “FLAIR” powerline reconstruction. The change would dramatically reduce the height of the project’s replacement poles from those first proposed and revert to the familiar, twin-pole “H-frame” support configuration that the current line utilizes.
The utility’s change, conveyed in a “Joint Proposal,” filed with the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) by NYSEG and staff attorneys for various state agencies May 28, has or will likely quell public and governmental opposition to the project. The company had initially planned to replace the long-familiar, parallel-draping H-frames with much taller steel monopoles, structures that some residents complained would destroy their scenic views and devalue their properties.
Yes, the adage, “Everything old is new again” applies here.
“I was shocked that they were so thoughtful,” Newfield Councilperson Christine Seamon remarked at her Town Board’s June 11 meeting. “If you bought this property with a pole there, there’s going to be a pole there,” Seamon acknowledged. Still, that said, the situation would become no worse than it’s ever been.
“FLAIR,” an acronym for “Finger Lakes Area Infrastructure Reliability” Project, was advanced by NYSEG to the Public Service Commission in December 2024. FLAIR would rebuild a 20.6 mile-long, 115 kilovolt transmission line, so-called Line 982, on the utility’s existing 100-foot wide right-of-way (ROW) and connect a substation in the Town of Montour, Schuyler County to the Coddington Substation south of Ithaca. The right-of way slices through Enfield’s southwestern corner and across a longer swath of northern Newfield.
NYSEG documents state that the wooden-pole, H-frame line was first built around 1930. It’s stood largely undisturbed ever since. What NYSEG seeks now from the PSC is a “Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need.” The certificate represents an official agency determination that the reconstruction would inflict little environmental or aesthetic harm and also serve the public good.
Both the Newfield and Enfield Town Boards in January submitted formal comments in the proceeding, each local government critical of the original “monopole” design that NYSEG had proposed.
The monopoles, which stack the three transmission wires essentially on top of one another, rather than hang them side-by-side, would have elevated support structural height to an average 95 feet above ground, compared to the 55-foot high wooden H-frame supports that exist now. The amended, H-frame poles, now advanced in the “Joint Proposal,” would stand only an average 75 feet in height. They’d be taller than what’s there now, yet still an average 20-25 feet shorter than the monopoles.
“It’s good news,” Enfield Councilperson Robert Lynch (this story’s author) advised Enfield Town Board colleagues as the board met June 10. “It might be a little more intrusive than it is at present,” he admitted, “but it’s far less intrusive than the 95 foot metal monopoles.”
By a unanimous vote June 10, the Enfield Town Board adopted a Resolution, written by Lynch as Board liaison to the PSC’s FLAIR proceedings. The Resolution affirmed the Town Board’s support for the NYSEG and agency Joint Proposal and for the amended reconstruction design it advanced.
“Resolved, that the Enfield Town Board hereby endorses the Joint Proposal … and urges the New York State Public Service Commission to grant an Article VII Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need for the Finger Lakes Area Infrastructure Reliability (FLAIR) Project, conditioned on NYSEG’s adherence to the revised specifications embodied in the Joint Proposal,” Enfield’s adopted Resolution states.
“This Town Board believes the Joint Proposal… stands as a fair compromise between NYSEG’s needs to meet increased electrical demand and the public interests of Enfield residents to protect their economic well-being, health, and community enjoyment and to minimize the FLAIR proposal’s earlier-identified adverse impacts,” Enfield’s Resolution stated.
Town Clerk Mary Cornell promptly filed Enfield’s adopted Resolution with the New York State Public Service Commission.
One night later, Newfield Supervisor Michael Allinger advised his own Town Board of the May 28 NYSEG revision. Allinger’s announcement prompted brief Town Board discussion. The Newfield Board took no further action.
A “Ruling Regarding Process and Procedure,” issued by the Public Service Commission June 5, allows any interested party until Wednesday, June 17 to file statements in support or opposition to the May 28 Joint Proposal. Parties also have until June 29 to submit replies to those statements.
Signatories to the Joint Proposal include NYSEG, and staff attorneys for the New York State Department of Public Service, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets.
In a video conference convened June 4 by James Costello, the PSC’s designated Administrative Law Judge in the FLAIR proceeding, a conference in which Enfield’s liaison, Councilperson Lynch, was its only municipal participant, agency and municipal representatives expressed general support for the changes NYSEG had made. No known opposition surfaced then or has thereafter.
Should the Commission grant a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need after this month’s comment period has closed, NYSEG’s timetable, at least as originally advanced, calls for line reconstruction to begin early in 2027. Work would finish and the new line energized by the end of 2029.
As part of its 2024 original filing, the utility’s application figures initially redacted, but subsequently made public in part, NYSEG projected the FLAIR reconstruction would cost just over $88 Million. The estimate had been based on monopole construction. Revised cost projections did not issue with the May 28th changes. Nonetheless, the Joint Proposal states that “the Settlement Revisions are not anticipated to materially increase Project cost above that set (previously).”
For nearly a year after NYSEG’s initial filing, the FLAIR project hung only in the shadows. It received little attention despite NYSEG’s mandated outreach efforts. It took a family from Newfield to elevate FLAIR to the point of controversy.
And it was Shaun Brown, a young Bishop Road resident turned community activist, who along with his mother, Ann, went house-to-house in northern Newfield last fall alerting neighbors of what NYSEG had proposed. Shaun Brown also alerted Enfield officials. Both mother and son attended an Enfield Town Board meeting last November. They also spoke before a larger gathering of Newfield residents at a Newfield Town Board meeting November 20.
Shawn Brown told Newfield’s November meeting, “In their application, NYSEG (has written) the project will not interfere with the policies and plan outlined in the Town of Newfield’s Comprehensive Plan. This is a gross misrepresentation, and is demonstratively false,” Brown alleged.
More than a dozen Newfield residents spoke before the Newfield Town Board that November night. Many were angry at the utility and worried that the tall, ugly, steel monopoles, would scar the scenic views to which they’d become accustomed.
“My whole life, I’ve dreamed of having my house on a hill with a scenic view,” Kirsten Hamburg of Douglas Road told the Newfield Town Board that night. “These aged poles were a concession for me, but I was fine with it because it blends in with the tree line,” Hamburg said of what had become familiar. Yet of the proposed monopoles, she said, “I cannot handle a ginormous pole in my backyard.”
With very few now aware of the utility’s November 28 sudden about-face, widespread community reaction of this latest design change has yet to surface. But tellingly, prior to the administrative law judge’s video conference June 4th, Shawn Brown suddenly withdrew his active participation in the FLAIR proceeding. Brown opted instead to remain listed only as a “passive party.”
“I take a position of non-opposition regarding the Joint Proposal and the redesigned project,” Brown emailed Judge Costello the day of the conference. “I will not be a signatory to the Joint Proposal, nor do I intend to file testimony, briefs, or objections against its adoption by the Commission,” Brown wrote the administrative law judge.
That said, it was probably Brown’s activism, that of his mother, the resistance of numerous other residents, along with the—strikingly similar—critiques by the Newfield and Enfield Town Boards that brought from NYSEG the concessions that surprised those in and out of local government.
“I hope that we in the Town of Enfield and some in the community, mostly in Newfield, made some progress and did some good,” Councilperson Lynch told the Town Board June 10, the night the Town Board’s resolution of support was adopted.
“The Joint Proposal includes certain revisions to the Application, which the Signatory Parties agree improve the Project with respect to constructability and potential visual impact,” the PSC released in a four-page summary of the Joint proposal June 2. “This design change proposed in the Joint Proposal allows the Project to meet modern reliability and safety standards while minimizing changes to the landscape and maintaining consistency with existing infrastructure…” the summary continued.
The original December 2024 FLAIR proposal would have used 159 separate steel monopoles to carry electricity from Montour Falls to Ithaca. The revised design would reduce that number of monopoles to four, each of them to be used in Newfield, but only to cross Cayuga Inlet.
“Although the four steel monopole structures proposed for the area of the Project ROW near Cayuga Inlet will be greater in height than the H-frame structures proposed elsewhere along the ROW, the use of monopoles in this segment will help to avoid areas subject to high erosion rates, as well as wetland, stream, and significant natural community resources,” the Joint Proposal’s text states.
But of the final design—the totality of the changes NYSEG has made with its submission of May 28—the Joint Proposal states: “Based on a review of the Evidentiary Record, including the Settlement Revisions, the Signatory Parties have determined that visual impacts from the Project will be minimal and therefore no mitigation is necessary.”
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And the moral to this story may be this: Whether you’re a private citizen or a backwater town board, sometimes raising a ruckus brings results, even in convincing the big, rich, and powerful to change their plans. Indeed, sometimes the results may even surprise you.
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Posted previously:
Tied tax vote at Tompkins Budget Retreat
Lawmakers huddle and ponder how to escape 17% levy hike
Reporting and Analysis by Robert Lynch; May 23, 2026
There was pizza. Lawmakers dressed down. Minutes weren’t taken; votes not recorded; cameras never rolled. And likely the only reason the meeting was kept public was because state law demands that it must. Not that it really mattered. Members of the Ithaca press corps were found nowhere in the room. Year after year, they never come.
On Tuesday, May 12, the Tompkins County Legislature held its annual Budget Retreat. It’s convened far away from legislative chambers, held again this year at the Whole Health Department near the airport. The retreat accords County Administration its first opportunity to sketch for lawmakers an initial outline of a next year’s county budget, a document legislators won’t adopt until November.
And if you’d hoped for firm word as to how much money leaders will spend or how much they’ll tax you, the session provided little guidance. When Legislature Chair Shawna Black called for an impromptu straw vote on whether the tax levy should rise by more than five percent or by 4.9 percent or less, members tied seven-seven. The retreat adjourned. Legislators went home.
Welcome to the birth of the 2027 Tompkins County Budget. And if the budget retreat’s collective temperament points the way, the coming months will bring as much of a challenge as had occurred last year. Estimated spending increases stand too high. And, painful cuts will be needed to bring property taxes down to what one legislator termed a “swallowable” increase.
“Our current projections indicate about a 17 percent proposed tax levy increase above the 2026 adopted levy to fund service at the current level,” County Administrator Korsah Akumfi stated, May 19, one week after the retreat, speaking when legislators next convened for their regular twice-monthly meeting. County Administration will recommend a budget with a levy increase well below 17 percent, Akumfi assured lawmakers.
Neither Akumfi nor legislators May 19 mentioned the retreat’s 7-7 straw poll split. Remember, Ithaca reporters never attended that earlier conclave.
Tompkins County’s 2027 Budget isn’t adopted until fall. Past practice calls for County Administration to meet with department heads over the summer, receive departmental requests, reduce them as needed, and then present an administrative recommendation to the Legislature just after Labor Day.
What follows is a seemingly endless round of exhaustive meetings. Legislators convene as a committee-of-the-whole. They listen to department heads, re-examine appeals, and subtract from—yet more often, add to—the Administrator’s numbers. Legislators hold hearings, jigger tax rates, and then adopt a final budget a week or two before Thanksgiving.
Yes, the Tompkins County Legislature makes the budget process more complicated than needed. But in the modern era, that’s the way it’s always been. The May 12 Budget Retreat served as the starting point.
The seven-seven split on taxes was more than symbolic; it was substantive. It reflected a philosophical divide among lawmakers, as many as half of whom were newly-elected last fall. The Legislature is two members larger now. If leading politicians is like herding cats, Tompkins County’s clowder has now become even harder to corral.
Moreover, wise minds from the past have now exited. Former Budget Committee (and Legislature) Chair Mike Lane, a fixture for much of the past three decades, retired last December. Lane’s time-tested wisdom was sorely missed the night of the retreat.
Example: Could Tompkins County impose a progressive property tax, newly-seated legislator Iris Packman asked? Could it levy steeper rates on higher-priced parcels? Hers was a question born of legal ignorance and regulatory naiveté. No, County attorney Maury Josephson answered. Aside from state-designated exemptions for categories like farmers and seniors citizens, differential taxation isn’t lawful.
Among the 15, often freshly-scrubbed legislators, two camps emerged at the retreat. (Ulysses-Enfield’s Rachel Ostlund was excused that night.) There was the “Oh My God, this budget is too high” group, but also the “People are hurting; we must meet their needs” faction. The division may spill into the fall.
The May 12 Budget Retreat stretched almost three-and-a-half hours. It began with Administrator Akumfi’s hour-long, 62-slide PowerPoint presentation. His slideshow covered financial trends and “cost drivers” such as state mandates, negotiated salary increases, and capital program requirements. It assessed how what’s needed or expected would impact the budget and taxes.
“Did I miss the cost containment slide?” Dryden legislator Greg Mezey asked at the close of the presentation. “There is a fundamental flaw in this process,” Mezey reacted. “I wish we had some recommendations on cost containment,” he said.
Mezey continued. “Is there a plan to do a funded agency review?” he asked. Akumfi’s projection of a 17.56 percent tax levy rise based itself on a “Maintenance of Effort” (MOE) budget. MOE essentially continues each department’s or agency’s existing programs into the next year and adjusts upward for inflation. Mezey would have each department or agency justify keeping what it already has.
“Something has to be cut, but what it is” will have to be determined, Akumfi acknowledged. His was an open-ended answer.
Last summer, the Administrator had projected that a Maintenance of Effort Budget, if adopted for 2026, would have hiked the tax levy by just over 20 percent. The MOE plan was never adopted. By fall, after legislators had tinkered and tapped prior years’ savings, their final adopted budget carried only a 3.59 percent tax levy increase. (At one point it was a fraction of a percent lower.)
Still, the MOE budget the Administrator presented at this year’s retreat excluded additional, expensive “cost drivers.” Or he could only provide educated guesses about them.
Gas and diesel prices stand as an “emerging and uncertain” cost, Akumfi acknowledged. The MOE budget also skirted making good on a promise to raise all employees to a “living wage,” a possible $1 Million adjustment. And the proposal made no provision for first-step expansion of the Rapid Medical Response (RMR) program, turning it into a quasi-ambulance service.
“If you try to run a county-wide ambulance service, you’re going to add 100 FTE’s (full-time equivalent employees),” Groton’s Lee Shurtleff warned. “It’s unfathomable we’re thinking of going into that service,” Shurtleff, former director of Tompkins County’s Department of Emergency Response, RMR’s oversight agency, stated.
Days before, Governor Hochul had proclaimed agreement on a state budget. But details remained too sketchy for Akumfi to factor. And the MOE budget failed to provide increased funding for the TCAT bus service, Tompkins Cortland Community College, or offer government-supported nonprofit agencies cost of living increases.
“We are still suffering the effects of the pandemic in this community,” Legislature Chair Shawna Black advised fellow lawmakers. Black mentioned mental health services and the Sheriff’s Department’s crime fighting efforts. “We’ve added a whole ‘nother department in the RMR program,” Black noted. “I love it, but it costs a lot of money.”
Shawna Black was among the seven who cast their non-binding votes in favor of a five percent or higher tax levy increase. Ithaca City representative Judith Hubbard, a legislative freshman, was another.
“I think we’ve been doing a very good job of trimming the budget,” Hubbard observed. But “we’ve trimmed essential maintenance,” she said.
Hubbard, perhaps more so than anyone else, focused on those left behind, people in danger of losing vital services unless government—Tompkins County government—steps up to help.
“We want to maintain a vibrant county government that serves the people,” Hubbard stated. “We’re going to have to have a big increase in the tax levy,” she predicted. School district tax levies have risen by far more than has this county’s, Hubbard maintained. “We’ve stayed at two to three percent.”
But taxes are a cost of living, too, others observed.
“We will need to pay more in taxes,” Ithaca legislator Travis Brooks admitted. “But homeowners on fixed incomes don’t have money to pay extra,” he pointed out. Brooks represents some of Ithaca’s poorest neighborhoods. “The assumption is that if they own their home, they can pay the taxes. Some people can’t,” he said.
“Seniors, they’re really struggling,” Enfield-Newfield’s Randy Brown said in agreement. Brown related that a constituent of his is so strapped that she has to visit her neighbor’s house to use the phone.
“We’re talking of replacing a car that’s three years old,” Greg Mezey said, citing standard procurement policy. As for taxpayers, he said, “They’re driving a car that’s ten years old.”
If a legislative grievance emerged the night of the retreat, it was that Korsah Akumfi must do more to rein in department heads. He must remind them who is boss. He must tell them that we’re all in this thing called County Government together.
Lee Shurtleff referenced “silos,” bureaucratic fiefdoms, and he blamed the county’s long-used “target-based budgeting” policy for fostering them.
Akumfi put it differently: “We need a ‘buy-in’ from departments in some of the things that we do,” he said.
For tax-conscious Greg Mezey, the Administrator’s explanation was backwards.
“At some point, you’re the County Administrator, we’re the Legislature,” Mezey bristled. “If only the department heads want to do it, we do it?” Mezey asked. “Who’s the tail and who’s wagging who?”
Akumfi agreed that departments need to keep spending within their budgets, yet conceded sometimes they do not.
“We need to be able to contain these moneys,” Akumfi admitted. Departmental leaders need to be convinced that their department isn’t “my department,” but instead “a collective.”
“It’s difficult to re-engineer their thinking,” Akumfi recognized.
Be “more vocal in your ‘No,’” Mezey counseled the Administrator.
Payrolls are growing fast in the Administration’s projected budget. Wages and benefits would rise by $5.8 Million, a 6.2 percent increase. Three-quarters of the expected rise would come from costlier fringe benefits. Akumfi would keep 2027 employee headcounts about the same as now, at about 850 persons.
“If we don’t flatten it,” Lansing’s Mike Sigler said of the payroll number, “we’re going to have this discussion every year.”
New York State’s tax cap for the 2026 budget was 3.59 percent, and the 2026 levy increase fell just under it. Akumfi predicted at the retreat a smaller tax cap, 2.75 percent, for the year ahead.
“I would like to go for the cap,” Sigler said when asked how high next year’s tax levy should rise. He’d keep it at 2.75 percent and no higher, well beneath the current year’s levy increase.
“I would put in a hiring freeze,” Sigler said. “How many people would we have to cut to get to the cap?”
Sigler also threw out the option of suspending for one year so-called “over-target requests,” those unplanned departmental and agency increases that always crop up.
Tompkins County may save money on the roads we drive. Mezey advanced the idea of combatting rising petroleum prices by delaying some paving projects until next year. Perhaps the Iran War will be over by then, and asphalt prices may fall, he said.
One week after the retreat, at a Legislature meeting accorded wider public access, the Administrator spoke more about economies and of doing something to lower the 17 percent tax hike that all concede no one would accept.
“What we have communicated to the departments is for each department to submit specific cost reductions or controls and also revenue enhancement proposals that will support us to close that gap,” Akumfi informed legislators.
The Administrator alluded to “personnel cost management,” and to what he called “shared services and consolidation,” not only “across departments,” but also “with municipal partners.”
What would such shared pain feel like? Would it ask towns like Enfield to newly contribute to services like Rapid Medical Response? No elaboration came forth.
There could be a second budget retreat in July. There was one last year. By mid-summer, state mandates will become better known; cost increases easier to calculate; departmental requests firmer in focus.
“Are we hunkering down like most of Tompkins County is doing?” legislator Mezey asked the Administrator as the early-May retreat rolled on and on. “Can we contain costs?”
Of any on the Legislature, Lansing’s Deborah Dawson is best known for preserving accumulated savings and for refusing to surrender when department heads or human service agencies beg for more money than she thinks they should get. She’s also blunt.
“We cannot afford to go on this way,” Dawson told retreat colleagues and anyone else who cared to listen. What we’re doing is “not sustainable.” she said.
Yet at budget time, come September, past experience her teacher, Dawson forecast what will happen: “Nobody is going to rein this budget in,” she predicted. Her advice: “You’re going to have to suck it up.”
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