Fortress Tompkins

Legislature hardens parkside access to chambers; routinely ratifies shelter site purchase

by Robert Lynch; December 4, 2024

It used to be that if you wanted to get a Certificate of Residency or visit Tompkins County Administration, you just walked into the Old Jail building, climbed the stairs or rode the elevator to the proper floor and walked right into an office.  Former County Administrator Jason Molino put an end to that during the pandemic.  Instead of easy access, you instead had to stand streetside in the rain or snow, buzz an intercom, and hope somebody would let you in.  Post-COVID, no one ever changed it back.

And soon, the same aggravating, public-hostile security controls will expand in the building where the Tompkins County Legislature meets.

With only limited discussion and just one man’s dissent, the Legislature Tuesday endorsed a resolution authorizing facilities staff to “install a security camera/intercom system” at the DeWitt Park main entrance to the Governor Daniel D. Tompkins Building,” the place that houses legislative chambers.

By so doing, the County Legislature walked just one step short of imposing the burdensome magnetometer and bag-search procedures Ithaca’s City Hall has long required, surveillance implemented after an emotionally disturbed man famously threw his shoe toward former Mayor Carolyn Peterson at a Common Council meeting years ago.

“I don’t feel safe in this building, myself,” Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown stated as he endorsed the new, ground-level security controls. “Every time that door opens in back of me, I have no idea what’s going on,” Brown said.  “I hate having my back to the door.  So I think this is a smart thing to do.”

But the main entrance’s lock downstairs won’t actually protect Randy Brown a single bit.  State law requires open public meetings.  So Legislature Clerk Katrina McCloy told lawmakers she’d unlock the door remotely a half-hour before a meeting starts, then relock it after the session adjourns.  When Randy Brown’s attending, someone could still barge in.

“I don’t think it sends a very good message to the public,” Dryden’s Mike Lane, the evening’s lone dissenter, countered.  “I just think we don’t need to be afraid of the public.  That’s the message that it sends.”

When it comes to protecting legislative staff as well as building contents, what’ll be put in place now is but a second line of defense.  For years, legislative staff has had a similar “buzz-in” intercom at the legislative chambers’ second-floor entrance.  So all that the streetside door lock truly protects is a vestibule and stairwell to the building’s second floor. 

But these days, governments’ default posture always leans toward overprotection.  Maybe it comes from watching too much TV.  Or in this instance, maybe  County officials relied too heavily on a “Federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Security Assessment at First Entry (SAFE)” evaluation which Uncle Sam supposedly performed on buildings in the Courthouse Complex last March. “SAFE,” according to the adopted resolution, recommended the tighter controls.  At the time, nobody likely ever pushed back.  Cybersecurity nerds seldom consider issues like open government.

“As the years go by, we are in different times,” legislator Travis Brooks observed.  “I think people are under a false sense that if somebody came here to do harm, that we could get out, or that we could just press a button, or somebody could see it on the cameras and all of a sudden help us,” Brooks continued.  “We don’t have superheroes like that.  I don’t know why we don’t want to keep our staff safe and less vulnerable”

The County Planning Department occupies the ground floor of the Daniel Tompkins Building.  The Resolution states that planners had no objections to the new locks.  We’re told Planning, too, has a locked inner door.

But there’s an inherent danger in relying too heavily on blinders-on studies like the SAFE evaluation in setting your security priorities. 

Quite obvious to anyone who frequents the Governor Daniel D. Tompkins Building or any other Courthouse Complex structure is not the threat posed by unlocked doors, but rather the danger one faces of getting mugged at night in an increasingly dangerous downtown Ithaca, including  within DeWitt Park. 

What a common-sense observer would conclude the Courthouse Complex really needs is the brighter lighting of parking lots, sidewalks, and entranceways, including the one now set to receive those semi-redundant cameras and an intercom.

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The outcome was never in doubt, and the unanimous vote Tuesday among those present came as no surprise when the Legislature ratified the purchase announced last week of a decaying, metal-faced building at Ithaca’s 227 Cherry Street as the future site of a 100-bed homeless shelter.

No legislator spoke against the $1.1 Million purchase.  Rather, most members occupied the three-hour meeting’s final moments congratulating each other for their mutual compassion and foresight.

Dryden legislator Greg Mezey moved the purchase resolution “with excitement and enthusiasm,” he said.  From across the table, Lansing’s Mike Sigler asked the clerk to place Mezey’s adjectives into the record.  So it went.

“Of course we should do this; it’s the right thing to do,” Dryden’s Mike Lane spoke up.  Lane quoted an unnamed legislator from an unnamed county who said he was “envious” of what Tompkins was doing, because, in that legislator’s opinion, too many leaders elsewhere say “it’s not our problem.”

“Tompkins County has always had a forward-looking way of trying to handle difficult situations and to think about people,” Lane expounded.  “And even if we miss sometimes, even if we don’t make it right every time, we always try, and we put our money where our mouth is.”

Legislator Deborah Dawson requested and received assurance that the night’s action would not commit Tompkins County to a “low-barrier” model for the shelter, a standard which might lead substance abusers and the mentally ill to populate the place.

But the assurance to Dawson did not stop Mezey from keeping a limited-barrier threshold under discussion or prevent others from urging that rules still apply.

“Sometimes this term ‘low-barrier’ gets a negative stigma or connotation,” Mezey told fellow legislators.  “Just because we’re committed to looking at barriers doesn’t mean that we’re necessarily committed to a no-barrier or low-barrier shelter,” he said.  “How do we look at what those are and systematically dismantle some of these barriers that are hindering getting people out of homelessness?”

“I do have real concerns about how this is executed,” a somewhat hesitant, yet still supportive, Rich John responded.  “I don’t think the current approach is working very well… The evidence is that unrestricted drug use is really bad and dangerous and it’s killing people.  I think we do need a new approach.”

Rich John had another caution:  “I have real concerns for the residents of Nate’s Floral Estates (the planned shelter’s nearby mobile home park) and for the businesses on Cherry Street in the City’s Industrial Park.  We need to be very cognizant of those neighbors, both commercial and residential, and as we go forward protect their interests to the maximum extent we can.”

County Administrator Lisa Holmes clarified the construction timetable.  Most likely, she said, the current building would be pulled down next year, the new shelter started in 2026, with the shelter’s earliest opening likely in 2027.

“I think a lot of people think of this as an end and not a beginning,” Republican Sigler remarked of the approved land purchase.  “I’d like to think of it the other way around… as the beginning and not the end.”

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Previously posted on the shelter story:

Tompkins’ Brave New World of Homeless Housing

Reporting and analysis by Robert Lynch; November 29, 2024

Last Tuesday, November 26, Tompkins County held a news conference.  Its stated purpose was to reveal the County’s intention to purchase a pricey lot in Ithaca’s Cherry Street Industrial Park as the site for a long-term emergency shelter facility. 

But that announcement far understates the sweep and significance of what’s happening.  Tompkins County has plunged itself into the business of housing Ithaca’s homeless.  And from what we can discern from what County officials have said and written, we, ourselves, may have to shoulder much of the cost.

Here’s what to remember:  Our local government grew itself bigger this past week.  It took on a new societal obligation it may not have needed to undertake.  And did anyone ever ask our permission?

“Tompkins County is in a position to significantly strengthen our shelter system, giving as many people as we can a safe place to go and a reasonable path out of negative situations,” County Legislature Chair Dan Klein told the assembled media Tuesday.

“We agree with the vision of making homelessness rare, brief, and one time,” Klein stated. “This requires big thinking and strong partnerships.  And it also requires investment.”

Let’s start with that last part.  Tompkins County will pay $1.1 Million for a the one-acre lot, tucked away on a lonely stretch of Cherry Street not far from the so-called “jungle,” the place where many of Ithaca’s unhoused dwell in squalid, makeshift shacks and tents.  What stands at 227 Cherry Street now is a dingy, nondescript, tin-sided warehouse quartering the “Found in Ithaca” antique mall. (Until now, I’d never seen or heard of it.) The name overstates the building’s allure.  No doubt, “Found” would come down to make way for something much better, something in which the unhoused would live.

With the lot’s purchase presumably nailed down during prior closed-door sessions, the Tompkins County Legislature plans to ratify the acquisition at its next meeting, December 3rd.

A County-offered news release states that “more than a dozen sites were examined” before lawmakers settled on the “Found” lot.  Its “For Sale” sign still remained prominently at roadside Wednesday.

“Of all the locations available, I believe this is the best site although I thought the price was too high,” Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown assessed the purchase in an email to leaders of his constituent municipalities the day of the announcement.

We’re told in the news release that the chosen site’s proximity to “several existing homeless encampment areas and service providers” nearby propelled it to favored status.

Expect the purchase Resolution to receive little debate during the Legislature’s forthcoming meeting.  The resolution will likely pass without opposition.  For those casting the votes, the deal is already done.

“This Cherry Street development plan gives us a chance to look past the temporary solutions we’ve had to stand up and think big about what’s possible in the future,” County legislator Greg Mezey proclaimed at the media event.  “Having a purpose-built facility in the City will allow us to shelter people close to services, even bringing many of those services under the same roof as the shelter,” he said.  Expect Mezey to place the purchase resolution onto the Legislature’s floor Tuesday night.

It’s what lies ahead that matters.  Buying the land does not build the facility.  The $1.1 land purchase is a mere down payment.  Bigger commitments await.

 “An additional $1 Million is in the Tompkins County Capital Program for the local share of shelter development costs,” a Shelter Development Fact Sheet, distributed to municipal leaders and attached to next Tuesday’s agenda states.

The narrative adds, “Tompkins County will apply for New York State Homeless Housing and Assistance Program (HHAP) funds for up to $6.1 Million in 2025 to develop the shelter.”  At least, that’s the plan.

Noticeably absent from the factual narrative, or the news conference itself is any backup plan; a strategy outlining what Tompkins County would do if New York State simply says no.

Current vision calls for a new 20,000 square foot homeless shelter large enough to accommodate up to 100 people.  By comparison, the recently-closed St. John’s Community Services shelter on Ithaca’s West State Street provided only 26 beds.  What Tompkins County expects to build, therefore, could provide far more residential opportunities for “jungle dwellers”—or other unhoused persons—to relocate, assuming, of course, that they want to do so.

St. John’s officially closed in early-November, although legal actions delayed its shuttering a bit for a couple of its residents.  The nonprofit’s exodus followed a falling-out with some Tompkins County officials and Tompkins’ subsequent refusal to renew a contract with the agency that would enable St. John’s to continue to shelter the unhoused.

 What Tompkins County plans now is for a private consultant of sorts, MM Development Advisors (MMDA) of Rochester, to come in, see what’s needed, determine what’s best to be built, and then presumably build it.

“Tompkins County will work with MMDA and others to create a vision for the property and manage procedural activities related to land use,” the news release states.  It described MMDA as “an affordable housing development partner with experience developing shelter facilities.”

Once the shelter is built, Tompkins County plans to recruit a not-for-profit agency to run it. Nobody’s named the agency yet.

County Administrator Lisa Holmes told the news conference that the shelter’s design phase could commence by the end of 2025, but that “the process is contingent on state funding and buy-in from non-profits.”  Holmes is hoping that the non-profit operator “would be ideally part of the development team,” so that, she said, “they can help to develop from the ground up and come up with a plan with which to apply (state) funds.”  Holmes’ timetable would have the non-profit recruited this year.  Project development would begun thereafter.

Then, again, nothing can ever be assured or assumed, including Albany’s support.

A shelter completion date remains too tentative for anyone to predict.  In the meantime, Tompkins County is active on several fronts.  It’s retrofitted the former Key Bank building (now County-owned) at downtown’s Buffalo and Tioga Streets to meet state-dictated “Code Blue” requirements for cold-weather sheltering.  It’s also paying to shelter unhoused individuals at local motels.

Up to 90 beds for Temporary Housing Assistance clients are being secured from motel operators, we’re told.  The County’s Department of Social Services will operate the temporary housing program until a suitable nonprofit operator can be identified and contracted with.

What could complicate things, particularly in seeking State Government’s assistance, is the local preference for the kind of shelter that homeless advocates would like to see built.  Their preferred option would employ a so-called “low-barrier” model.  Envision it as a shelter where excuses supplant compliance, where exceptions override the rules.

What is your income?  Might it be too high for you to live here?  Do you plan to get a job or at least train for one?  Do you intend to get sober or seek substance abuse counseling?   These are fair questions to ask of anyone seeking a warm bed at public expense.  We’re told government funders like to hear encouraging answers.  In essence, does the unhoused person have a plan for moving out and then moving on?

But some local advocates for the unhoused find it constraining and discriminatory to ask tough questions only to receive equivocal answers. Activists like “low barrier.”  It’s more compassionate.

But when barriers pull away, state reimbursements may dry up.

“Under current state law, a low barrier shelter would likely need to rely more heavily on local tax dollars, as it would receive less state funding than a conventional shelter,” The Ithaca Voice’s reporter wrote after Tuesday’s announcement.

And that, of course, is where the local taxpayer swoops in. The property tax is always the funding source of last resort.

The million-dollar land purchase revealed this week may have been negotiated in secret.  But to the perceptive and informed among us, preparation for a County-run homeless shelter should come as no surprise.  The concept’s been discussed, though largely in abstraction, for many months. 

Still, the local taxpayer has never truly been pulled in.  There never have been—and there likely never will be—public hearings on whether to build a homeless shelter.  Nor will there be any referendum.  Tompkins County will just do it.  And whatever it does, however much it costs, the unreimbursed balance will simply be tacked onto your tax bill.

For that reason, many important questions demand meaningful answers.  And those questions should be raised now, not reserved for after it’s too late to turn back.

First, what is the true demand for this thing?  Has anybody ever performed a market study?   What fraction of those currently living in shacks in the woods behind Walmart actually want to live in a place with four sturdy walls and a roof overhead that doesn’t leak?  If we build 100 rooms will we find 100 willing takers?

Next, especially under the “low barrier” approach, how much of the annual expense will fall on us locals?

And what about the City of Ithaca’s involvement (or non-involvement) in the venture?  Ithaca, quite frankly, is where most of our county’s unhoused happen to live.  City Government, one would think, should have skin in the game.

“The City’s glad to see the progress the County is making, and we stand ready to continue to partner with them and contribute where we can now and in the future,” Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo told the news conference Tuesday.  “What’s clear more now than ever is that we all need safe, accessible, and supportive places for folks to go that we can develop,” Cantelmo said.

But nowhere during the news conference’s nearly half-hour of positivity politics was there ever the promise that City Hall will—or even that it should—contribute meaningful money toward the shelter’s land purchase, not to mention its later construction.

“The City stands willing to work with our County partners; the exact form of that has not been determined,” Cantelmo replied to one reporter’s (inaudible) question.  The mayor had gone off-script.  “We recognize the City is going to play a junior role in whatever occurs here” Cantelmo admitted. 

But why should that be,” those of us in Tompkins County’s rural reaches are tempted to ask.  And really, does “junior role” imply lip service, but no cash?

“The City of Ithaca can and should be a place for everyone,” the Mayor proclaimed in his prepared remarks.  Yes, just so long as no one else sends him the bill.

One final thought:  By purchasing an obscure, out-of-the-way, Quonset-of-a-hovel warehouse in an industrial park for its new homeless shelter, Tompkins County may be doing exactly what some of us may quietly wish for, albeit not tor admirable reasons,  We’d be tucking away a community problem into a forgotten corner.

Persons of compassion and charity often allege that what many of Ithaca’s more affluent prefer is to put homelessness out-of-site and hence out of mind.  Who sees those people who live somewhere in the swampy woods near the railroad tracks, anyway?  No one here to see; therefore, no one here to think about.

A more public-facing alternative, the argument goes, would jar the senses.  When County officials last month announced their plans to retrofit a former bank for a “Code Blue” emergency shelter just doors from the Courthouse—it’s a mere one block’s walk from the Commons—neighborhood objections erupted, protestations kept muted at times to retain sufficient political correctness. 

Will like complaints arise for a shelter at 227 Cherry Street?  Unlikely.  Few of us go there.  And that in itself raises an issue.  If the goal here is to proclaim “We’re all in this together,” and that housing insecurity should be out in the open for everyone to see, maybe the Found in Ithaca Antique Mall is precisely the worst building for our county to buy.  But buy it we will.

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Our Next Big Unfunded Mandate

Tompkins asks NY to classify EMS an Essential Service

Reporting and Commentary by Robert Lynch; November 26, 2024

The idea is one easy to love and hard to hate… until you consider its implications.  Tuesday, November 19th, the Tompkins County Legislature looked only upward, not to the downside. 

By a unanimous vote and after a bare six minutes of discussion closing a laborious, four-hour meeting, the Legislature called upon the New York State Assembly—and also, by implication, the State Senate— to “recognize Emergency Medical Services as an essential service” and when it does, “to take all necessary steps to ensure that this recognition is implemented statewide.”

In this Enfield Councilperson’s opinion, and knowing Albany’s predilections as he has for the past seven decades, that last command sounds downright scary.  It could prompt Albany overlords to dictate that every municipality, no matter how rich or how poor, have at the ready a fully-staffed ambulance service round the clock, or else pay someone else to provide one, every community paying the bill with its own town taxes.

Worst case:  Not only would your January bill carry lines for County Tax, Town Tax, and Fire Tax.  It would have an “Ambulance Tax” as well.

Dan Lamb, Town Councilperson in Dryden, has this fall pressed the EMS initiative harder than has anyone else.  Lamb hustled it through the Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG) on September 26^th.   I, Enfield’s representative, couldn’t attend that day.  I wish I had.  This misguided initiative cries out for a two-sided discussion.

“We would love your support for this call to New York State,” Lamb told the County Legislature in his follow-up advocacy November 19th, “because this is very important that we treat this service just like we treat fire service that government is responsible for maintaining.”

“And we don’t have uniformity throughout Tompkins County or throughout our towns in terms of what type of entity is operating and what standards they’re meeting,” he counseled.

“When you call 9-1-1, the call goes out and you just assume an organization’s going to show up there,” Dryden’s Lamb reminded lawmakers.”  The fire truck will show up, he said.  So the ambulance should do so as well.

The difference of course, is that there’s no private company that fights fires.  Government must do it.  But for us locally, there still exists the privately-run Bangs Ambulance Service.  Bangs answers most EMS calls within Enfield. 

Dan Lamb became the star of the Legislature’s meeting that night.  Nursing an injured foot and with another meeting yet to attend, Lamb was permitted to speak first.  He made his case and then left.  This writer, your Enfield Councilperson, got his turn to speak about 20 minutes later.  My remarks were not as prominently placed, perhaps.  But I hope I delivered them with comparable passion.

“I see the problem here as, yes, this is a product of good intentions,” I assessed Lamb’s pitch to the Legislature.  “But it also carries with it unintended consequences.  And that is the question of an unfunded mandate from the state.” 

“We in Enfield are in a little different position than Dryden is,” I contrasted our municipal postures.  “Dryden has a paid ambulance service…   We in Enfield do not have an ambulance service.  We cannot afford an ambulance service.  And if we were to try to undertake that kind of expense, it would break our budget.  And that’s the concern.”

Several hours after I had spoken, during what little debate legislators chose to give the matter before they voted, County Legislature Chair Dan Klein took exception to what I had said.

“I just wanted to say that the Councilperson from Enfield’s comments were not appropriate to this resolution, in my opinion,” Klein countered, “because we’re saying we believe mandatory coordination of EMS services at the county and inter-county level is the best method.  So we’re not asking for the towns to step in.  We’re asking for the counties to be given the responsibility.”

Criticism received and acknowledged.  But Dan Klein reads too much, I would argue, into the second, “resolved” paragraph of the adopted EMS recommendation.  A wiser, more realistic reading places the second paragraph as only a hesitant and wandering-away servant to the first. 

County coordination is a nice idea, yet it’s never a guarantee.  What matters most with this sort of thing is the mandate itself; the “do-it-or-else” clause.   And New York State has long proven that it can and will impose a requirement on local government any way it chooses.

Moreover, Tompkins County has shown itself not particularly receptive to the idea of running—and funding—its own fleet of ambulances to ply our county’s highways and back roads.  When Tompkins drew the boundaries last year for its Rapid Medical Response (RMR) service, its bare-bones EMT effort to gap-fill and prop up volunteer rescue squads, legislators categorically rejected a more-ambitious option of running ambulances.  A municipal ambulance service, it reasoned, would simply cost too much money.

“I think Robert Lynch has a point,” legislator Rich John commented during the resolution’s truncated discussion. “This might end up putting extra burdens on municipalities, but I don’t think we can determine that yet.”

Rich John chairs the Legislature’s Public Safety Committee, the one that oversees emergency services.  In his words, he’d like New York State to “step up the way it probably should” and bolster emergency medical funding.  His is a well-placed, lofty goal, of course.   But results are what matter, and the Empire State’s involvement in propping up home-town ambulance services hasn’t exactly won it any medals. 

Follow the money.  New York’s poor track record on EMS could spring from high-powered lobbying by private ambulance firms, services that lose money whenever those like Dryden’s shoulder more burden and transport more patients.

“But the alternative to this resolution, Rich John lamented before he voted, “is letting things sort of continue as they are, and that doesn’t seem to be working very well.”  John voted aye.

The Resolution that Rich John and everyone else supported that night deserved first a leisurely stroll through the local Legislature’s committee process, something it never got.  Instead, Dryden legislator Greg Mezey—no doubt, prodded by Dan Lamb and by other hometown interests—pushed the EMS endorsement onto the November 19^th agenda as a “member-filed resolution.”  The action provided neither the Enfield Town Board, nor any other body with like-minded concerns the opportunity to weigh in.

And there’s no immediacy here.  The New York State Legislature cannot consider or act on the EMS “essential service designation” until January at the earliest. 

But Dan Lamb’s words last Tuesday night provided more muscle than did anyone else’s.  Lamb’s salesmanship was artfully embedded within a message of compassion and innovative progress.  How could anyone not vote for something like this, was his theme.  Well, some have already resisted.  The New York State Assembly failed to adopt the measure last year, even though the State Senate and Governor Hochul had endorsed it.  Critics in the Empire State’s lower house must have had a reason.

“Anna Kelles is fully on board with this,” Lamb assured the County Legislature as to our local Assemblyperson’s support.  “It just needs more oomph, like a strong Resolution from Tompkins County,” the Dryden Councilperson exhorted.  

Dan Lamb drew forth a bit of that “oomph” from other voices on TCCOG that night.  An Ithaca Alderperson endorsed it.  Caroline Supervisor Mark Witmer spoke in the resolution’s favor, while acknowledging Enfield’s concerns that some cannot pay as much as can others.

“I think we have to do it in a way that’s sensitive to differences in density, that reflect differences in municipalities’ abilities to support initiatives with taxpayer moneys,” Caroline’s Witmer told the Legislature.

Again, like most, the Caroline Supervisor spoke more to the vision than to operational tangles. 

With Albany’s mindset, a one-size-fits-all solution often prevails by default.  Were New York to demand that counties—and counties alone—underwrite the expense and operational burden, or should New York couple the EMS mandate with heightened or near-total state funding subsidies to stem the hefty drain on town budgets, we would be talking about a much different beast here.  But sadly, we are not.

“And again, we can’t afford it in Enfield,” I reminded those in downtown’s chambers of the mandate’s prospective pain. “We’d either have to buy an ambulance; fund it 24/7 with paid people, no doubt; or contract with a neighboring municipality like the Trumansburg ambulance service, or maybe Bangs; and it would come out of the taxpayers’ budget,” I said.

A wiser course, I offered, would be to encourage state adoption of a funding plan for municipal ambulances much as the “CHIPS” program supports local road maintenance. That, too, has been suggested in prior state lawmaking terms, only to die a neglected, forgotten death.

Of course, like so many recommendations Tompkins legislators have endorsed from time to time, what passed its review during that third Tuesday in November may proceed absolutely nowhere.  An EMS “essential service” mandate will rise and fall based on what state lawmakers and the Governor choose to do, not what Tompkins County recommends.  Sometimes we in local chambers puff up our own chests a bit too much.

And maybe there’s something more than cost to consider.  What about intermunicipal harmony?

“I think this could lead to a rivalry between municipalities,” I warned the County Legislature, my thinking the consequences of some messy, mandated, cross-border compensation  scheme arising from state government’s intervention.

“You’ve got the poor areas who say we can’t afford it; the rich ones say, please pay us… And that could lead to a kind of a municipal civil war that I wouldn’t like to see.”

The Tompkins County Legislature has spoken.  Let’s see where things go from here.  There’s still Bangs.

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Reported Previously:

Make Groton Great Again?

BOE Breakouts color one Tompkins town red; Absentees affirm Enfield local laws

by Robert Lynch; November 19, 2024

As you radiate outward from the deepest dark-blue bastions of Ithaca, the Tompkins County political hue turns increasingly crimson, newly-released elections figures now confirm.

No, the western border Town of Enfield didn’t go for President-Elect Trump or for Congressman Marc Molinaro.  But in our county’s northeastern corner, the Town of Groton did go there—and voted for Trump big time.

District-by-district breakouts, released November 15th by the Tompkins County Board of Elections reveal that the former and future President carried Groton with 53.4 per cent of the vote. Vice President Kamala Harris earned only 44.6 per cent support.  That’s an 8.8 percentage point spread.  Grotonites gave Trump 1,518 votes, and Harris 1,269 votes. Thirty-eight people wrote in someone else’s name for President.

Groton was the only Tompkins County town where Trump voters outnumbered those for Harris.

Likewise, in New York’s 19th District race for Congress, Groton became the Republican outlier in Tompkins County.  Groton gave Republican incumbent Marc Molinaro 1,479 votes (54.4 per cent of those expressing a preference), to Democrat Josh Riley’s 1,241 votes (45.6 per cent).  Riley won the election overall.

No other Tompkins County town went for Molinaro.  Groton also became the only town in the county whose voters backed the relatively unknown Republican, Michael Sapraicone, over Democrat incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand for U.S. Senator.

Enfield, though rural like Groton, voted more in the Democrats’ favor.  The Board of Elections’ final breakout showed 1,047 Enfield voters (57.7 percent) supporting Vice President Harris, 742 voters (40.9 per cent) backing former President Trump.  Twenty Enfield voters wrote-in another name.

While Friday’s released results still carry the label “unofficial,” those tallies—which for the first time include absentee ballots legally received and counted after Election Day—are not expected to change.

The final data also confirmed the passage of Enfield’s three ballot referenda, those that will elongate future terms for Town Supervisor, Town Clerk, and Highway Superintendent from two years to four.  The change will kick-in with Town elections taking place in 2025.

Earlier, when same-day voting, early-voting and early-received absentee ballots were released in summary form Election Night, the only Enfield referendum that remained in doubt was that for the Supervisor’s office.  Election Night data showed the longer term for Supervisor leading by just 26 votes. At that time, 94 absentee or affidavit ballots remained to be received and/or analyzed and counted..

As it turned out, the updated tally actually widened the margin a bit for the Supervisor’s term of office. The margin of 26 votes expanded to 32.  The final tally showed 837 Enfield voters (51%) supporting the Supervisor’s term extension, and 805 (49% ) opposing it.

Of the three ballot referenda, each of them submitted to the electorate by a majority of the Enfield Town Board last July, extending the Town Clerk’s term to four years garnered the greatest support; 948 votes (57.5%) to 701 (42.5%).   Extending the Highway Superintendent’s term to four years won, 903 votes (54.5%) to 754 (45.5%).

This year’s referenda results proved different from those of just three years ago.  In 2021, Enfield voters rejected extending the terms for each of the offices.  (This writer/Councilperson, Robert Lynch, had opposed the referenda’s resubmission this year.)

In the races for Congress in the 19^th District and for State Senate in the Ithaca-to-Binghamton 52^nd District, Tompkins County’s voters became the engine that powered Democrats to victory.  Clearly, Congressman-Elect Josh Riley and Senate incumbent Lea Webb couldn’t have won without the vigorous kick-start that Tompkins’ Democrats provided.

 “In this district, in this moment, in this election—we came together to reject the politics of fear and division and lies, the old, tired political playbook of dividing people up and pitting them against each other, the politics of tearing people down just so the political establishment and the special interests can enrich themselves at the expense of the working class,” Josh Riley said in his victory statement election night.  “We rejected that.”

Incumbent Molinaro took several more days before he threw in the towel.

“Our race didn’t go the way we had hoped,” Molinaro stated in a three-minute video concession on X, delivered November 12^th.  He conceded only after the final count of absentee votes had confirmed his narrow loss.

“But let me tell you this,” Molinaro stated that night, “I am so proud of what we built together.  This campaign was more than just about winning a seat.  It was about standing up for the people who make this state great; who work hard, who love their families, who believe in the promise of New York and America.”

“I’ve always been proud of where I came from, and representing New York’s 19^th Congressional District for the past two years has been the honor of a lifetime,” Molinaro concluded his message.

But remember those exact words.  Congressman Molinaro comes from Dutchess County, now within the 19^th District.  Even before his concession, media reports had indicated that Molinaro was kicking political tires, evaluating his prospects in Elise Stefanik’s 21^st District, a district in which he does not live.

Republican Stefanik won her election November fifth.  But then she was tapped by President-Elect Trump to become U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.  If confirmed in January by the new Congress, Stefanik would need to resign her House seat.  That would open the door to a special election.  Political committees, not the voters, would pick the party nominees.  No law prohibits a candidate from competing outside his home turf.

“I am not done providing public service to the people of the state of New York, and quite frankly, considering what options might be available to me moving forward,” Molinaro told a Spectrum News broadcast November 12^th.  Our own district’s defeated outgoing Congressman is but one of several Republicans eyeing the Stefanik vacancy in hers, a GOP-dominated North Country district.

Enfield, like Tompkins County, backed Josh Riley in his successful bid to unseat Congressman Molinaro.  Final tallies showed 1,027 Enfield voters (59.4% of those stating a preference) supporting Riley, 701 voters (40.6%) backing Molinaro.

Marc Molinaro’s district-wide loss was relatively narrow, which is why he declined to concede until all the votes were counted.  The New York State Board of Elections reports that Josh Riley won by just 6,303 votes district-wide, amid more than 367,000 ballots cast.  Riley secured 186,944 (50.9%) of those votes, Molinaro 180,641 (49.1%).

Tompkins was among only four counties in the 19th’s 11-county district to give Josh Riley the edge.  And Riley’s victory margin in Tompkins County was by far the largest.  In Tompkins, Riley secured nearly three votes for every one given to Molinaro. The Tompkins results gave Riley 31,958 votes (74.3%), and Molinaro 11,043 (25.7%).

Mike Sigler put up a fight for State Senate, hoping to defeat Democratic incumbent Lea Webb.  He didn’t.  In fact, even though the Lansing legislator lives locally, Sigler won neither his home county nor even his home township.

In Lansing, Sigler polled 2,263 votes (36.9%) to Lea Webb’s 3,878 (63.1%).  Sigler lost Enfield, 695 votes (40.9%) to Webb’s 1,006 (59.1%).  In Tompkins County, Webb earned nearly seven out of ten votes cast; 30,891 (69.9%) to Sigler’s 11,820 (26.7%).

District-wide, Lea Webb won with 57.4 per cent support among those who decided between the two candidates; Sigler got 42.6 per cent support.  Within the 52^nd District’s two other counties, Webb won her home county of Broome just barely, prevailing by only about three percentage points.  Sigler won in Cortland County by more than seven percentage points.

“I am so deeply grateful for everything you gave to this movement,” Webb stated in an email message to her supporters November 19.  “Your hard work, your dedication, and your belief in the idea that real change starts with real people are what carried us to this moment,” she said.

“I set out on this journey two years ago for this office for a very specific purpose, and that is to empower the voices and lift up the voices of working families in our community, through policy, through investments, through practices,” Webb told WSKG following her victory Election Night.

“Congratulations to Lea Webb,” Sigler said in conceding.  “I wish her all the best in her next term, but it is my sincere hope that she will give serious consideration to the issues we raised during the campaign,” the Lansing county legislator added.  “There is clearly a huge swath of her constituents who would like to see different priorities out of Albany.”

In the contest for New York State Assembly, Democrat Anna Kelles won handily.  She stood unopposed on the November ballot, and a last-minute write-in challenge by Ithaca real estate agent Lindsay Lustick Garner failed to gain significant traction, either in Tompkins County, Enfield or elsewhere.

Enfield, like Tompkins County and New York as a whole, supported Proposition One, New York’s constitutional amendment supporting abortion and other human rights.

****

One footnote: Enfield has three election districts.  And the results suggest that the center district, District 1, where Enfield Center lies, leans more conservative than does either district lying next to it; either the one north from Mecklenburg Road’s Centerline to the Ulysses border (Dist. 2), or the one south of Enfield Center, Bostwick, and Harvey Hill Roads, extending to the edge of Newfield (Dist. 3).

Case in point:  In the race for President, District One saw Kamala Harris win by only nine votes, 284 to 275.  Northern Enfield (Dist. 2) went for Harris 64.8% to 33.6%.  District Three supported the Vice President with 57.6 per cent of its total, a 100-vote Harris advantage.

Within our own town, differences lie, perhaps.  But they’re differences never so much as in Groton.  Groton has proven itself different.

###

Rockwell resident invokes law to save his trees

by Robert Lynch; November 16, 2024

The ongoing standoff between a group of Enfield neighbors and Town Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins escalated another notch this week as one homeowner along Rockwell Road filed a Cease and Desist letter with the Town to halt aggressive pruning of roadside trees.

“Please be advised that this firm has been retained by Charles Elrod, owner of 101 Rockwell Road, Newfield, New York,” Ithaca attorney Raymond Schlather, partner in Schlather, Stumbar, Parks and Salk, wrote in a joint letter to the Enfield Town Board and the Enfield Highway Department, dated November 11^th.

“Mr. Elrod is concerned that trees on his property and on his neighbors’ properties may be removed or severely trimmed imminently as a part of the town maintenance of Rockwell Rd,” Schlather’s three-paragraph letter continued. “To be clear, Mr. Elrod has not authorized, and is not authorizing, the removal of any trees from his property.”

Enfield Town Board members first learned of the directive Thursday evening, November 14^th, when Elrod transmitted his attorney’s letter to the Town Board and Highway Superintendent, via email.

“Today the highway crew ravaged the trees across the road from our property,” Elrod, wrote in his transmittal.  “I can only assume that the intent is to work down our side of the road tomorrow, Friday Nov. 15,” he continued.  “We do not give the town permission to enter our property for the purpose of trimming or removing trees on our property,” Elrod stated firmly, reiterating his lawyer’s directive.

Enfield Supervisor Stephanie Redmond informed Town Board members Thursday evening that she would seek advice from Enfield’s retained legal counsel, attorney Guy Krogh.  To date, neither Redmond nor Highway Superintendent Rollins has offered public comment on the matter.

The Highway Department’s treatment of roadside trees along both Rockwell and adjoining Porter Hill Roads has been an Enfield hot-button issue since late spring.  It’s a controversy that’s pitted several roadside residents against Highway Superintendent Rollins and also at times against some Town Board members. It prompted a specially-convened meeting of the Town Board June 26^th.

Superintendent Rollins has insisted that state law grants him the authority to prune or remove trees within a three-rod (49.5-foot) right-of-way along Town-maintained roadways.  Complaining neighbors argue that the law is not as clear-cut as the Superintendent maintains, and they allege that Rollins’ workforce has at times trimmed beyond the permitted right-of-way.

A roadside inspection of Rockwell Road near Elrod’s residence at midday on Saturday (Nov. 16) revealed that while trees opposite Elrod’s house had been severely pruned, those on the south side of Rockwell Road, fronting Elrod’s home, had not yet been disturbed.  A Town-owned elevated lift, used for pruning, was parked on the road’s opposite shoulder east of the Elrod home.

Although the attorney’s letter was dated on the Monday prior to the Enfield Town Board’s Regular November Monthly Meeting two nights later, Town Board members stood unaware of it when they met.  The Rockwell Road tree issue received no significant discussion at the Wednesday session, and neither Rollins nor any concerned resident attended the board’s meeting.

“At the special town board meeting this summer, Mr. Rollins stated that he always contacts landowners before trimming trees on their property,” Elrod wrote in his Thursday transmittal. “We know this to be untrue.  For the record, Mr. Rollins has not contacted us about any trimming which would take place on our property,” Elrod insisted.

“Kindly refrain from removing or severely trimming any trees on Mr. Elrod’s property without first consulting with Mr. Elrod,” attorney Schlather wrote in his letter to the Town.  “If it turns out that any trees that are owned by Mr. Elrod are removed notwithstanding the above notice and request, Mr. Elrod will hold you and anyone who cuts down the trees fully responsible for all damages available to him under the law, including punitive damages,” Schlather advised.

“Mr. Elrod believes that his neighbors are similarly concerned, and also may hold accountable all parties who are responsible for any such unauthorized tree removal,” the attorney concluded.

On its face, any subsequent legal action Charles Elrod might take would likely confine itself to roadside areas fronting only the complainant’s property.  However, based on the attorney’s final statement, Elrod may reserve the right to broaden his oversight to other portions of Rockwell Road as well.

Rockwell and Porter Hill Roads became the focus of this year’s tree-pruning complaints as both were listed for “permanent improvements” in Rollins’ highway funding request submitted to and authorized by the Town Board in January.  Under the Superintendent’s standards, roads targeted for such permanent improvements receive shoulder improvements, ditching, and foliage removal as well as resurfacing.

Although state law may not demand that trees within a town’s right-of-way be given a “buzz-cut” treatment, thereby removing any overhanging limbs—otherwise known as the road’s “canopy”—Rollins has generally adopted such aggressive pruning as a purported best-practice.  Among his arguments, the Superintendent has maintained that overhanging branches impede wintertime sunshine from melting accumulated snow.

Although the late-June Town Board session on tree pruning drew a larger resident turnout than has any since, Rollins’ anticipated resumption of pruning brought renewed criticism at the Town Board’s October ninth meeting.  At that session, the topic’s most prominent speaker, Julie Magura, a tenant at the Elrod residence, directed her questions to the Board.

“People have said time and time again that they were not informed,” Magura stated to the issue of which trees Rollins’ crew plans to cut and when they plan to cut them.  “There’s a sense of powerless and expectation,” she argued, “like you don’t know when the Highway Department’s going to come down and cut your trees.”

Magura complained that cutting sometimes extends beyond the 24-foot rights-of-way as measured from the road’s centerline. 

“There have been some people that have brought up the issue that if they’re not notified and their trees are cut beyond that line that they will call the police, because that’s trespassing,” Magura warned the Board.

Supervisor Redmond then came to Rollins’ defense.  She claimed that the Town’s attorney had advised her that crews can remove “obstructions” beyond the right-of-way if they’re “a threat to traffic.”

“No,” Magura countered the Supervisor, “he’s not legally allowed to go on someone’s property and cut trees that are beyond the line when they are not a danger of falling; that they’re not obstructing.”

Magura alleged that Highway crews have cut healthy trees posing no danger to anyone.

“Basically, the residents in Enfield, the Town of Enfield, are shit out of luck, and I’m sorry to be crass,” Magura asserted, “with the Highway Department doing what he (Rollins) wants.”

Buddy Rollins did not take the criticism well.  Nor did Stephanie Redmond or some other members of the Enfield Town Board.

Councilperson Jude Lemke invited Magura to lodge an Article 78 action against Rollins’ behavior, should the resident deem it arbitrary, Lemke seemingly confident the law stands on the Superintendent’s side.

“This is not appropriate for our Town Board,” Redmond countered when Magura raised the prospect of litigation.  “If you want to take that action… that’s your personal choice,” the Supervisor insisted.  “But this is not something that the Town Board has purview over,” she said of Rollins’ authority.  “There’s nothing else the Town Board has to offer at this point.”

“I hear you loud and clear,” an increasingly frustrated Magura replied.

“I would interject, though, that conversation is a heck of a lot cheaper for this town than litigation,” this writer, Councilperson Robert Lynch, observed.  “So I would consider we keep the dialogue open to forestall a lawsuit.”

“I don’t understand why we would want to continue to have discussions,” Redmond answered.  “If there was an actual item that the Town Board could do and we were being asked to do it, then people are welcome to come here and do that.  But just to come here and reiterate the same thing over again doesn’t really help.”

The tree cutting issue hasn’t been discussed in Enfield circles since mid-October—until now.

Charles Elrod’s attorney hangs much of his legal argument on a 2008 local case decided by the same appellate court that would review on appeal any new lawsuit brought against Enfield.  That case, Bauer v. County of Tompkins, at least to the lay reader, calls into question the so-called “three rod rule” relied on so heavily by Rollins. 

Deciding in response to Tompkins County’s plans to “reconstruct and widen [a] highway’s driving lanes and shoulders” adjacent to petitioner Merry Jo Bauer’s property, the Appellate Division, Third Department in 2008 sided with the owner.  A unanimous Third Department wrote that the lower court, “correctly concluded that the road is a highway by use and is only as wide as its actual use for public travel.”

The Third Department cited as precedent a 1961 Court of Appeals case also referenced by Elrod’s counsel.

“In this instance, the trees along Rockwell Rd. are beyond the portion of the road used by the public, and therefore outside of the public right of way,” Raymond Schlather wrote in the Cease and Desist letter sent to Enfield Town officials. Therefore, in the attorney’s opinion, the trees at issue remain beyond Rollins’ reach.

Where matters proceed from here remains uncertain, even to this writer, a member of the Enfield Town Board.  The Town Supervisor has sought legal advice, any of which deserves to be kept in confidence until the Town Board’s majority votes to release it publicly.  The Board is not scheduled to reconvene until December 11^th.  No special meeting has been scheduled.

Meanwhile the pruning lift remains parked along Rockwell Road.  Rollins and his crew may revisit the rig this coming week.  The next step remains with the people who hold its keys.

###

Election Night News:

Enfield Extended Terms Laws Pass

Riley; Webb win local races; Molinaro not conceding

by Robert Lynch; November 5, 2024; Updated November 6, 2024

Enfield voters Election Night did something that they refused to do just three years earlier:  They extended the length of future terms for three Enfield Town offices to twice their current length.

Unofficial, and slightly incomplete, election returns released Tuesday night indicate voter approval for a trio of renewed ballot initiatives, changes submitted by the Enfield Town Board this summer.  They would  lengthen future terms for Town Supervisor, Highway Superintendent, and Town Clerk from two years to four.

In 2021, the Town Board attempted a similar change, only to see voters reject the proposals.

This year’s voter endorsement of the change varied strikingly depending upon the office involved.

Extending the terms for Supervisor passed just barely, 809 votes in support, 783 votes in opposition, a mere 26 vote margin of victory.

By contrast, extending the term for Town Clerk won by a landslide; 920 votes (57.5%) in support, 681 votes (42.5%) in opposition, a 239 vote margin.

For Highway Superintendent, 875 voters (54.5%) supported longer terms, 732 voters (45.5 %) opposed the extension.

The closeness of the Supervisor’s referendum matters.  Uncounted absentee and affidavit ballots, yet to be opened, could alter the ballot measure’s outcome.

A spokesperson for the Tompkins County Board of Elections reported Wednesday afternoon that as many as 58 absentee ballots, ballots sent to Enfield voters in recent weeks, had yet to be received.  In addition, the validity of 36 affidavit ballots has yet to be determined. Thus, potentially as many as 94 Enfield votes could be added to the “win” or “lose” column of any unofficial total released Tuesday.

The elections board spokesperson said that while the absentee ballots have to have been postmarked by Tuesday, Election Day, their receipt by the Board of Elections as late as November 12^th could qualify them for inclusion in the final tally.

None of the 94 absentee or affidavit ballots will be counted until November 13^th.

The Board of Elections’ unofficial returns, released shortly before 11 PM Election Night, included both same-day voting and early voting preferences, as well as most absentee ballots already received.  Given the margins reported Tuesday night in the ballot measures affecting Enfield Town Clerk and Highway Superintendent, the additional votes still to be received and/or counted would be insufficient to impact the outcome of those referenda.

In late July, the Enfield Town Board endorsed the ballot initiatives for longer terms, considering them as a combined package.  The Board’s vote then was four-to-one supporting the change, with Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) casting the only vote in opposition.  The Board’s majority argued that longer terms would give newcomers a better ability to learn the responsibilities of their office before seeking reelection. Supporters also said it would reduce the frequency of campaigning.

Councilperson Lynch raised several arguments for his opposition.  One of those arguments was that Enfield voters had expressed their preference only three years earlier, and that asking them for this, a second time in only three years questioned the electorate’s judgment and insulted voters’ intelligence.

Enfield Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, Town Clerk Mary Cornell and Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins each openly supported the expanded-length terms.  The change that voters endorsed Tuesday would not affect Redmond’s, Cornell’s or Rollins’ current two-year terms, only the terms for those who secure their offices thereafter, positions to be decided in the 2025 elections.

Because of new state laws adopted in 2023, laws that will transition most local elections from odd-numbered to even-numbered years, candidates elected to the three Enfield offices subject of this year’s Enfield ballot measures would serve three-year, not four-year terms when their initial terms commence in January 2026.  But the terms would change to four-year terms in election cycles thereafter.

****

Tompkins’ Blue Wall:  Give the overwhelming Democratic dominance of Tompkins County’s electorate credit for propelling local Democratic candidates for Congress and State Senate to apparent victory. 

First term Democratic incumbent Lea Webb defeated Lansing County Legislator Mike Sigler in the 52nd District State Senate race.  Senator Webb’s district includes all of Tompkins County.  A similar large Democratic-friendly margin gave 19^th District Congressional candidate Josh Riley the edge toward defeating Republican incumbent Congressman Marc Molinaro.

As of early Wednesday, Molinaro had refused to concede the race, given the narrowness of Riley’s win.  He’d lost by only 3,678 votes, one percent.

“While we would have liked to end tonight with more votes, we want to be sure every absentee and affidavit is counted,” The Mid-Hudson News reports Molinaro as stating Election Night.  “We’re so close that we’re going to conclude tonight and wait for those affidavit and absentee ballots counted.” Spectrum News, as reported by The Ithaca Voice, recorded Molinaro as stating.

The 19^th Congressional District comprises 11 counties in whole or in part. The district encompasses territory extending from Enfield on the west to the Massachusetts border on the east.  New York State Board of Elections data, compiled Wednesday, gave Democrat Riley majorities in four of those counties, Republican Molinaro the edge in the remaining seven.

By far, Tompkins County gave Riley the largest cushion of victory.  Of those choosing one candidate or the other, Riley won support from more than 74 per cent of Tompkins County voters (31,958 votes), compared to Molinaro’s 25.7 per cent (11,043 votes) among the Tompkins electorate.

Consider, by contrast, the rural parts of neighboring Cortland County that are included in the restructured 19^th District.  In that part of our adjacent county, Republican Molinaro did his best of anywhere, securing 63 per cent of the vote.

Josh Riley claimed majorities in Broome, Columbia, and Ulster counties, as well as in Tompkins.  But his Binghamton-based Broome County margin was far lower than it was in Tompkins.  In Broome County, Riley secured just 924 votes more than did incumbent Molinaro.

State Senate:  Tompkins County legislator Mike Sigler thought he had the issues and the momentum to oust one-term Democratic State Senator Lea Webb from office.  He didn’t.  In fact, Sigler lost badly.

While Republican Sigler fared competitively in Cortland County and that portion of Broome County included in the 52^nd Senate District, he got crushed in deep-blue Tompkins County.

Districtwide, Lea Webb prevailed with more than 57 per cent of those expressing a preference for State Senate.  Sigler earned only 42.7 per cent support.  Webb’s margin of victory was 74,740 votes to Sigler’s 55,690.

In Tompkins County, Webb secured 30,891 votes (72.3%) to Sigler’s mere 11,820 (27.8%).

Tuesday night, Sigler conceded to incumbent Webb, expressing grace, but also words of caution.

Congratulations to Lea Webb,” Sigler released in a statement.  “I wish her all the best in her next term, but it is my sincere hope that she will give serious consideration to the issues we raised during the campaign,” Sigler added.  “There is clearly a huge swath of her constituents who would like to see different priorities out of Albany.”

“Unfortunately, we came up short and did not win the election,” Sigler conceded.  “But that’s okay. The sun will rise tomorrow and it’ll be a wonderful day with (his wife and children), Sarah, Elena, Cora and Hazel.”

Mike Sigler actually won more votes in Cortland County than did Webb.  In Cortland County Sigler earned 1,584 more votes.  But he lost by almost the same number in that portion of Broome County that’s part of the 52^nd District.  So the margins of victory and defeat outside Tompkins County became largely a wash.  Tompkins County’s mammoth Democratic majorities pulled Webb to victory.

State Assembly:  Incumbent Anna Kelles ran unopposed on this year’s 125^th District Assembly ballot.  Her district includes Tompkins and Cortland Counties.  But during the final two weeks before the election, a newfound competitor, Lindsay Lustick Garner, launched an impromptu write-in campaign.  It fizzled.

District-wide, Kelles earned 41,959 votes to a write-in candidate’s (presumably Garner’s) 1,100 votes.  In fact, far more voters (13,724) simply left the State Assembly line blank.

Almost all of Garner’s presumed support came from Tompkins County, where her sudden candidacy gained more press.  In Cortland County, only 62 write-in votes were cast for Assembly.

As in recent past elections, Tompkins County maintained its roughly seven-to-three split between Democrat-to Republican votes.  In fact, the partisan split this year approached a margin of three-to-one.

In the race for President, Kamala Harris received more than 73 per cent of all Tompkins County votes cast.  In the U.S. Senate race, Kirsten Gillibrand earned 75 per cent support.

In the presidential contest, the Election Night unofficial tallies showed 821 voters wrote in some different candidate for President, that or those persons’ names not specified.

In the Finger Lakes’ areas second, hotly-contested congressional district, State Senator John Mannion ousted one-term Republican incumbent Brandon Williams in the Syracuse-centered 22^nd Congressional District.  The Williams-Mannion district, now redrawn, extends as far south as the City of Cortland and southern Cayuga County.

District-wide, among voters expressing a preference, Mannion bested Williams 183,473 votes (54.1%) to 155,496 (45.9%).  Mannion did slightly better than Williams in Cortland County, but lost to the incumbent in Cayuga County. Media reports indicate Williams has conceded the race.

###

“We’re Smashing the Piggy Bank”

Enfield Board adopts budget; taps $125,000 to throttle the tax levy

by Robert Lynch; October 23, 2024

The Enfield Town Board held a Public Hearing on its proposed 2025 Budget Wednesday night.  It then adopted that budget, and in the process pulled a full $125,000 out of its savings account—the General Fund Balance—to offset spending increases and tamp down a tax hike that might otherwise run away.

The hearing drew just one attendee, a man who arrived late via Zoom and had no firm opinion on the budget either pro or con. 

What followed thereafter were two, four-to-one votes; one of them to approve the final 2025 Budget; and the second to reject a Resolution submitted by Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer).  The Resolution would have locked last year’s building permit receipts from the giant Applegate Road solar project, $94,350, into a “Building Construction and Upgrades Reserve,” thereby confining the money’s use to long-term capital projects, rather than to everyday expenses.

“You’re smashing the piggy bank,” Lynch said multiple times as Town Board majorities, led by Supervisor Stephanie Redmond, defended subtracting $125,000 from the General Fund Balance to avoid an otherwise larger increase in next year’s taxes.   Redmond’s four-vote majority also opposed the new reserve fund.  The majority prefers the permitting fees float within the General Fund to help stabilize taxes in future years.

Despite the Board majority’s tapping of fund balance, the 2025 Enfield Town Budget will still carry a 6.12 per cent increase in the property tax levy.  Additionally, perhaps controversially, the budget also increases by a full ten per cent Highway Department salaries, including that of Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins.

Next year, Rollins own salary will rise from its current $75,264 to $82,790.

Other Town employees will receive lesser raises.  Supervisor Redmond and Town Board members will each receive raises of three per cent.  Redmond’s pay would rise from $26,265 to $27,053.

“Anything that can be done to keep the budget as low as possible will be greatly appreciated,” Marcus Gingerich, the Public Hearing’s lone speaker from outside government, said after some initial hesitation.

Gingerich admitted he knew little about the budget.  He did not comment on the salary increases proposed.  And after Redmond pressed him for an opinion, Gingerich, though equivocal, appeared to lean toward keeping the solar money flexible, rather than in locking it into a reserve account.

In March 2023, Applegate Road LLC, better known by its parent firm, “Norbut Solar Farms,” purchased three identical building permits to construct a combined 15 Megawatt solar array on South Applegate Road.  Except for annual in-lieu-of-tax (PILOT) payments to Enfield that many in government find too stingy, the $94,350 building permit fee marks the largest— and arguably the only—one-time payment from Norbut that the Town of Enfield will ever receive.

“The Town of Enfield owes to its residents the responsibility to be judicious with its one-time receipt of the afore-stated Applegate Road LLC building permit purchase payments and not to deplete those one-time revenues on day-to-day expenses,” Lynch’s rejected Resolution asserted.”

“This is one-time money,” Lynch told the Board. 

But for Supervisor Redmond and others, the argument fell on deaf ears.

Instead of squirreling the Norbut money into a reserve account, as Lynch had proposed, Redmond insisted that the Norbut payments are better spent providing short-term tax relief.  By the Supervisor’s math, the Norbut windfall would exhaust itself with next fall’s 2026 budget.

“You’ve already spent that money and then some,” Lynch reminded Redmond, noting that the 2025 Budget draws $125,000 from Fund Balance.

Redmond defended her preference for tax moderation.  She clung to a rationale recorded during her October 2023 budget presentation.  She’d said she wanted to use the solar money little by little, year-by-year until the Town’s  2011 Highway Facility is “off-bond” and Town finances free up.

Lynch countered that the multi-year depletion of the permit fees was only Redmond’s recommendation and that the Town Board had never taken a vote to endorse it,  Lynch also said that other capital projects will come along after the Highway building is fully paid.  The Highway building’s aging furnace could fail, he said.  And Lynch also repeated his request for a “Cold Storage Facility,” (an unheated barn) to shelter Enfield’s expensive construction machinery.

Redmond answered that Lynch and the Town ought to pursue grant opportunities for the furnace and storage building, remarking members’ time might be better spent than “being on Facebook” (presumably, in writing stories like this one.)  Redmond insisted grant money’s out there.

“And Santa Claus is coming, too,” Lynch shot back.

Supervisor Redmond had initially proposed Highway Department raises of  five per cent in her Tentative 2025 Budget, a document first presented the Town Board September 18th.  But because of real-time, on-the-floor negotiations between the Board majority and Highway Superintendent Rollins that September night, Rollins secured for himself and his staff raises twice as large as what the Supervisor had first proposed.

Rollins mentioned during Wednesday’s budget hearing that the ten percent increase for him and those he oversees doesn’t tell the whole story “because the guys are taking over maintenance of cemeteries,” Rollins said.

True, in the horse-trading of September 18^th, Rollins did agree to exchange for the higher raise a promise that Highway staff would resume mowing town cemeteries, a task performed in recent years by a private contractor.  Yet those purported added responsibilities would still be done as a part of the staff’s normal workload, not performed as unpaid overtime.

Neither at its Regular October 9^th Board meeting, nor in Wednesday’s post-hearing deliberations, did the Enfield Town Board alter a single line of the budget revisions it had made during its initial review session of mid-September.  At the earlier October meeting, Councilperson Lynch had sought to alter as many as ten budget lines—in each instance proposing reduced increases—reductions addressing salaries for staff and elected officials, first-ever stipends for Planning Board members, and the Town’s annual subsidy to the Enfield Valley Grange.  Board majorities then had rejected each of Lynch’s amendments. 

No additional modifications were advanced this more recent Wednesday before the Board’s majority, over Lynch’s objection, called the question and hurried the vote.

Discussion then ended just as Lynch had prepared to detail the line item he’d most wanted to delete.  It’s Highway Superintendent Rollins’ planned purchase of a new pickup truck, a vehicle to replace the Chevrolet 3500 HD the Town purchased in 2020 for just over $46,000, but which its replacement may cost $73,000 or more.

In prior meetings Lynch has maintained that the current vehicle is in good shape and that its replacement is both unnecessary and sends a bad message to the community in a tight budget year.  Redmond and Rollins counter that the Town should adhere to a normal replacement schedule, trading pickups every five years or less.

Though effectively authorized through a budget transfer to buy the truck last February, Rollins said Wednesday he has yet to place the pickup’s order.  “I’m working on it,” Rollins said, implying he’s mulling over which truck to buy and when.  But even were he to place the order today, the Superintendent advised the Board, he couldn’t take delivery until next April or May.

As to the Fund Balance draw, Wednesday’s budget adoption drains Enfield General Fund savings by its largest amount in recent years.  The $125,000 budgeted reduction compares with $26,000 subtracted from the General Fund Balance in 2022, $75,000 in 2023, and $60,000 for the current year.

Spending and revenues carry unpredictability.  Thus, a budgeted subtraction from fund balance only estimates the actual withdrawal of funds at year’s end. 

Helped, of course, by the Norbut money, Enfield’s General Fund Balance remains resilient.  Even with the latest-approved $125,000 reduction, the account would still, by best estimate, hold $379,080 at the close of next year.  A long-standing policy requires a quarter-million dollars be kept in the account at all times.

To support his argument Wednesday, this Councilperson marshaled the words of the Tompkins County Legislature’s arguably most zealous budget hawk, Deborah Dawson.  She’d taken her own case against fund balance tapping to a committee-of-the-whole on October 8:

“There are so many reasons why I don’t like this annual discussion about whether or not we should suppress the tax levy by using Fund Balance,” Dawson said, as quoted Wednesday night.  “I don’t think it’s transparent to our taxpayers.  I think it allows us to spend a lot of money in ways that the taxpayers don’t feel and so they don’t see and so they don’t come in and say, ‘Wait a minute; I don’t like the way you’re spending my money’.”

Deborah Dawson voted against Tompkins County’s budget as it has handed up October 15^th.  Councilperson Lynch, likewise, voted against Enfield’s version of the budget Wednesday.  He was the only one to do so.

“Taxpayers, I tried,” Lynch closed the discussion after the budget vote was called.

###

Tompkins County’s side of things:

Tompkins rounds-down levy hike to 3%

But your home’s taxes may rise by more

by Robert Lynch; October 18, 2024

Sometimes, in some years, and with issues as exhausting as this, the Tompkins County Legislature commends itself with a round of applause after it votes.  This week, even though Legislature Chair Dan Klein seemed to have anticipated applause, no one clapped.  Instead, what followed the reading of the tally was silence—seven seconds of silence.  “Very good,” Klein ended the pause with a somber voice drained of emotion.  He, like everyone else in the room, was done in.  The meeting went on.

Just like the rest of the country, the Tompkins County Legislature proved itself divided this week.  The issue was taxes, and the margins couldn’t have gotten much closer.

By a vote of eight-to-six, the Legislature adopted Tompkins County’s Tentative Budget and sent it on to a Public Hearing near month’s end.  It’s a $252 Million spending package that would increase the total property tax levy by an even three per cent.

Yet still, because home assessments have risen much faster than have those for other types of properties, an average homeowner’s tax bill next January could rise by three times that multiple.

“I’m very proud of our Legislature, even though we had such a close vote,” Budget Committee Chair Mike Lane said soberly after the roll-call had secured for the budget just enough votes to pass.  “And we’ll listen to the public when they come talk to us.”

By nearly anyone’s observation—except maybe by those who actually perform the task— crafting a Tompkins County Budget is far more complex than it needs to be.  Some counties attempt it over just one weekend.  Tompkins County lawmakers take more than six months to finish their work. 

There’s a first-step “budget retreat” held in late-April; followed by departmental conferences throughout the summer.  A County Administrator’s presentation to the Legislature comes just after Labor Day.  Next, there are department-by-department PowerPoint outlines during an endless parade of meetings during September.  They’re capped off by a trio of marathon number-crunching sessions by a legislative committee-of-the-whole as October begins.  Whew!  No wonder everyone’s tired.

And out of the final of three “Expanded Budget Committee” sessions October 8th, there emerged a recommended Tompkins County Budget that would have hiked the tax levy by 3.29 per cent. 

Yet when lawmakers convened their official voting meeting last Tuesday, they couldn’t leave their committee recommendation alone.  They revised the tax increase once again.

“I think we’re not being unreasonable in any way by adjusting somewhat to limit the tax increase on our constituents to a three per cent level,” legislator Rich John counseled.  “I just think that’s reasonable.”

To cut the tax levy by a slim fraction to reach an even number, John requested the Legislature tap $155,000 from Tompkins County’s eight-figure fund balance, its piggy bank, the account holding tax collection surpluses from years past.  The debate began.  And it produced another closely-divided, razor-thin vote.  Not all stood in accord.

“In my view, it’s not enough,” Groton’s Lee Shurtleff said of John’s minor-scale reduction.

“I think that three per cent is still too high,” Enfield-Newfield’s Randy Brown concurred.  “I think that people are really struggling, as evidenced by the lack of spending that generates sales tax revenue.”  (Legislators had gotten a sour sales tax report earlier in the meeting.)

“This is just another straw on their back,” Brown said of the revised three per cent increase.

Brown also believes Tompkins County has underestimated potential investment income.  “I think we’re going to be two-and-a-half Million Dollars over budget on interest income alone,” Brown predicted.

“So I just think that putting money in our own coffers versus helping the people out is the wrong thing to do,” Newfield’s hometown legislator concluded.

Randy Brown voted against Rich John’s rounding amendment and then against the budget itself.  Enfield’s other legislator, Anne Koreman, also opposed the amendment, but supported the budget.

All three Republicans on the Legislature, including Brown, voted against the budget.  Likewise, each opposed the amendment.  Their conservative consensus held that the downward adjustment was just too small.

By comparison with what passed the Legislature this week, the same body one year ago had authorized a two per cent levy increase, and no increase at all during the two years before that. 

A two per cent increase was the initial goal legislators had given County Administrator Lisa Holmes at their Budget Retreat last April.  Holmes found it hard to meet the directive and at one point had recommended a budget that would have raised the levy by almost 4.5 per cent.

As County officials did the math on the fly at their meeting’s end, a three per cent increase in the tax levy would collect just over $55 Million in property taxes next year.  For the hypothetical “median price home” in Tompkins County, the County portion of the tax bill would raise charges by $119.60, up to $1,441.79.

Taxpayer advocates quickly qualify that a three per cent overall increase understates its kitchen table impact.  Assessment inflation has pushed up the median home’s value by 20.5 per cent this past year.  The median value was only $249,000 a year ago.  Now it’s $300,000.  Residential assessments have risen faster than have those for other real estate.  Therefore, a three per cent increase in the overall tax levy could translate into as much as a nine per cent tax rise for an average homeowner. 

Joining Anne Koreman in the final vote to support the three-percent budget were fellow Democrats Rich John, Susan Currey, Veronica Pillar, Shawna Black, Amanda Champion as well as Budget Committee Chair Mike Lane, and Legislature Chair Dan Klein.  Had any one of them voted differently, the budget would have lost.

To be clear, not everyone who voted against the budget—or the rounding amendment—did so because they found the tax increase too high.  Deborah Dawson faulted the majority for tapping even a tiny bit of fund balance to make the numbers work.

“If you’re going to say, ‘Well, I’ll sell that principle for X Dollars,’ then the question is no longer are you for sale, the question is what’s your price?  I’m sorry, but I don’t have a price on this one.  I think this is a bad thing to do,” Dawson complained

“We just found out we’re probably going to be down a million dollars on sales tax alone,” Dawson continued.  “And I don’t know what kind of economic circumstances we’re headed into.  So, as usual, I’m a ‘No’ on this, and y’all will do what you’re going to do.”

Dawson and former Legislature Chair Shawna Black often agree on things.  Tuesday night they did not.  Black voted to advance the budget to Public Hearing and for Rich John’s minor adjustment.

“If this is the way that we can provide a little bit of relief… and make it a nice, even number, then we can do that,” Black reasoned.

Mike Lane reminded everyone that what had passed last Tuesday is only a “tentative budget,” not the “final” one.  Only after the Public Hearing October 30^th can the budget gain final adoption.  History shows that the Legislature amends its proposed budget little, if at all, post-hearing.  And the Public Hearing, itself, often gets little attention.  In some years, no one speaks.

But of course, this budget year has proven different.  Just ask anyone on the Ithaca Board of Education.  This year, the ICSD first-round budget saw rejection by seven out of ten district voters.

And another fact to remember: For those of us in Enfield, the Tompkins County tax isn’t the only tax we’ll pay in January.  Enfield’s Town Board October ninth handed forth a budget imposing its own 6.12 per cent increase in the tax levy.  And the Enfield Fire District’s smaller levy will rise by 28 per cent.

Simply put, it’s a bad budget year, worse than most.

###

Biggest-ever Enfield Fire Budget OK’d

by Robert Lynch; October 17, 2024

Yes, what a difference a year makes. 

In October 2023, about a score of people attended a Public Hearing on the newly-formed Enfield Fire District’s first-ever budget.  That night, seven of them spoke to the budget (this Enfield Councilperson among them).  The atmosphere was charged.  The fledgling Board of Fire Commissioners—appointed by the Town Board only two months earlier—was desperately in search of its sea legs, unsure of itself more than otherwise.  The Enfield electorate, meanwhile, was sharply divided on both fire service spending, and most particularly, on whether to buy and bond a more than $800,000 fire truck or else send it back to its Iowa factory.

This past Tuesday night, by contrast, at this year’s Fire District Public Hearing, the relative silence proved deafening.  Aside from the four or five regulars who attend the current Board of Fire Commissioners twice-monthly meetings, the massive room was empty.  Just one hearing attendee appeared and spoke. (She requested that her picture not be shared here.) This lone speaker read a budget-critical statement written by her husband.  Coincidence or not, her husband is a former member of the previously-appointed Board of Fire Commissioners.

The budget hearing was open and closed within five minutes.

About an hour later, after trudging through some routine business, the Board of Fire Commissioners approved its 2025 budget, the largest fire budget Enfield has ever seen.  It totals just over $620,000, up 28.3 per cent from the 2024 Budget its predecessor Board had adopted last year.

“We’re all under the same tax crunch,” Board Chair Greg Stevenson said after the vote was taken.  “I don’t think the commissioners are tone-deaf” to taxpayer concerns.

But that big, pricey fire truck’s cost still looms over the Enfield Fire District and its taxpayers.  Its decade-long bond financing kicks in next fiscal year.  Its $126,576 in first-time charges for principal and interest are what make the 2025 Enfield Fire District Budget so weighty.  In addition, continuing charges loading down the budget include more than $72,000 in financing for another fire truck still under a bank loan, and $75,000 to lease its fire house from Enfield’s volunteer fire company.

“Commissioners went through the budget with a fine-tooth comb,” Stevenson insisted.  “There’s not a lot of fat in this budget,” he informed the meeting.

And as for the past controversy over the $825,000 pumper engine’s purchase and payment, Stevenson insisted the matter’s been “put to bed.”

“Approval to bond 602 (the pumper) was on the ballot in 2023,” the chairman reminded everyone. Voters approved the truck’s bonding.  “It’s behind us,” Stevenson reiterated.

Marcus Gingerich’s wife had left by the time Tuesday’s vote was called.  Gingerich had been appointed to the Board of Fire Commissioners by the Enfield Town Board in August of last year. He was one of five Commissioners the Town Board had to appoint to get the fire service’s new governance structure operational.  He was not a firefighter, but rather just a private resident some on the Town Board seemed to trust to cast a critical eye to Fire District spending.

But when the Fire District held its first elections for all five seats that December, Gingerich did poorly.  He finished ninth among ten candidates running.  He was the only appointed board member who’d chosen to compete for election, but then lost.

“As someone involved last year in projecting the budget for years to come while taking into consideration future capital needs, I don’t understand why such a dramatic increase is actually necessary,” Gingerich wrote in his hearing statement read into the record.  “I didn’t think it was necessary to break $600,000 until at least 2032,” Gingerich continued. “Yes, it would require making tough decisions.”

Never stated outright within Gingerich’s complaint, yet implied nonetheless, was that the former Board Commissioner may fault the current Board for paying off the pumper truck too quickly.  Gingerich’s appointed Board had envisioned 20-year bonding for the truck.  Last March, at both Stevenson’s and a new attorney’s urging, the elected Board opted for shorter, ten-year bonding.  Shorter-term bonds lessen the truck’s overall, long-term cost, yet heighten the immediate payments due each year.

“We kept payments down as much as we could,” Stevenson told the largely-empty hearing room Tuesday.  “I’d like to have gone for seven or five (year financing), he reminded everyone.  But that fast a payback, the Chairman acknowledged, would have led to “consternation at our public hearing.”

Tuesday’s Board of Fire Commissioners’ decision constitutes final action on the Enfield Fire District’s 2025 Budget.  Enfield voters get to elect one member of the Board of Fire Commissioners this December, but they get no vote on the budget.

The adopted budget would impose an Enfield fire tax rate of just under $1.90 per $1,000 of assessed valuation.

In his statement, former Commissioner Gingerich chose to go back four years and compare the proposed—and now established—2025 tax levy to that of 2021.  He  maintained that the levies for 2022 and 2023 “are possibly somewhat anomalous and thus may not be a good benchmark.”

“If one looks carefully at the budget, it represents a 58 per cent increase over 2021,” Gingerich said of the 2025 spending plan.  “This makes me question whether this Board truly has the best interest of the residents of Enfield in mind.” 

Gingerich reflected on the budget before him, “Does it concern you at all as to the amount of financial strain this may put on some residents?  I certainly doubt whether any residents have seen or will be seeing these kinds of increases in their personal incomes.”

“I hope you are carefully considering all sides of this,” Gingerich concluded.

Marcus Gingerich’s spouse prefaced her reading by saying that her husband was ailing that night and could not attend the Public Hearing in person.  She’d left the meeting before she could be asked whether Marcus might run again in the December Fire District election and seek to regain his position as a commissioner.

###

Posted Previously:

Committee targets 3.29% TC levy hike

by Robert Lynch; October 11, 2024

Tompkins County’s annual budgeting process always begs for the exclamation, “Cut to the chase!”  And if you feel like shouting those words, just be glad you’re not on the Tompkins County Legislature.

During three exhausting, mind-numbing, eye-glazing marathon sessions within the past week, our county’s 14 legislators massaged, subtracted from—but mostly added to—County Administrator Lisa Holmes’ recommended $252 Million 2025 County Budget. 

Tompkins County budgeting is never an easy exercise.  Too many departments and agencies want to hang added ornaments onto an already-overloaded financial Christmas tree.  Too many legislators simply want to talk.  Combined, the three meetings ran a total of nearly 12 hours.

Now, eleven days into this October, the legislative committee-of-the-whole that engineers the budget process has handed forth a proposal that would raise just over $55 Million through property taxes.  It would hike the tax levy by 3.29 per cent from that of the current year.  For those fortunate enough to own a $300,000 home—the median value in Tompkins County, we’re told—the budget would add $123.66 to your County tax bill, raising it to $1,446.

“Essentially we’re hitting the people with a 9.3 per cent increase in their property tax bill if we pass this,” Groton Republican Lee Shurtleff pointed out shortly before he voted against the budget this past Tuesday.  Shurtleff compared median homeowner assessments this year to last.  Home assessments have inflated much faster than have those for other properties.

Tuesday’s committee vote on the recommended budget was 7-6. (Legislator Travis Brooks was excused that day.)  Each of the Legislature’s three Republicans opposed the recommendation, along with Democrats Greg Mezey and Rich John.  At the last minute, Legislature Chair Dan Klein, another Democrat, switched his vote and joined the opposition.

What emerged from the meeting is a mere recommendation, odd as that is since all legislators participate in the so-called Expanded Budget Committee.  Its recommendation requires ratification at a regular Legislature meeting to become an official “tentative budget” and to earn the right to a Public Hearing near Halloween.  The Legislature next meets Tuesday, the 15th.

Before taking their final vote, the committee debated for almost an hour, and then defeated legislator Greg Mezey’s last-minute amendment.  Mezey would have drawn nearly $1.5 Million from Tompkins County’s massive fund balance, applied $409,715 of it to back “one-time funding” for add-on appropriations, and used its just over $1 Million remainder to decrease the tax levy by two per cent from that otherwise imposed.  Mezey’s motion lost five votes to eight.

Of those representing Enfield, Democrat Anne Koreman opposed the amendment, yet supported the budget.  Republican Randy Brown did just the opposite.

The drive-by reader may question how the proposed tax increases now under discussion got so small. There’s a reason.

When she first presented her recommended budget to the Legislature September third, Administrator Holmes had proposed a 4.34 per cent levy increase, just below the state’s specified—and largely symbolic—4.5 per cent “tax cap,” as that cap’s computed this year for Tompkins County.  What’s changed since then is a pair of under-reported corrections and adjustments that Holmes briefly outlined to the Legislature October first.  The County Communications Department’s initial reports on committee deliberations failed to acknowledge either.

“This is kind of a ‘could’a, would’a, should’a,” Holmes described to the Legislature October first as she revealed that budget planners had suddenly found an extra $950,000 to play with.

First, there’s a “market adjustment” affecting salary reimbursements, Holmes said.  “The amount we receive from New York State for eligible reimbursement… we did come under budget for what we projected by about $450,000,” the Administrator explained.

Holmes said the administration and finance staff had also “detected a discrepancy in the debt service schedule” for a “Green Facilities” project.  Essentially, somebody accidentally had counted some obligations twice.  “We caught it before it happened,” Holmes explained.

“It’s kind of nice to have an October Surprise that’s good news from our own administrative staff and Finance,” Budget Committee Chair Mike Lane reacted that night.

So with newfound money in hand, the trio of arduous, bean-counting committee caucuses began.  Holmes’ mini-windfall had cut the projected levy increase to 2.56 per cent.  But then, bit-by-bit, stuff—lots of stuff—got added in.  The levy increase crept up to 2.63 per cent by the end of meeting one; then jumped to 3.40 per cent by meeting two; then fell back to 3.29 per cent by the final session.  All the adjustments become too numerous to mention.  Here are a few of them.

Sunflower House is a post-incarceration transitional residence run in part by OAR (now bearing the cumbersome, nondescript name “Opportunities, Alternatives and Resources”).  Sunflower House advocates fought hard for continued funding at a Tompkins County Budget Forum September 30^th.  They’d sought $77,680 from the budget for the home’s operations.

“I think it would be good for us to have this program continue, legislator Veronica Pillar said in Sunflower House’s support October 3^rd.  “If Sunflower House is closed, then we’re just going to see the same folks (former inmates) in our shelter or on the street and really struggling and being less healthy.”

Pillar proposed budgeting the full $77,680.  But then Pillar’s colleague, Travis Brooks, urged amending the appropriation to three-year funding of $45,000.  Pillar accepted the change as a friendly amendment.  The amended appropriation quickly passed.  No one complained at the time.  But Sunflower House’s supporters complain now.

“This will have devastating consequences for our most vulnerable populations, especially for those reentering society after incarceration,” Dr. Paula Ioanide, a local professor and reentry services advocate, told The Ithaca Times, as it reported October 10^th.  “Sunflower Houses is facing a funding shortfall, and without securing additional resources, the program may not be able to continue.” 

Security staffing at County facilities got heightened, perhaps controversial attention.  By a 7-6 plurality vote (with Mike Sigler excused), the Legislature recommended $227,139 be spent to hire a Security Manager, a full-time security officer, and another officer to work part-time. 

The manager, to be stationed at the Department of Emergency Response in Lansing, would be “monitoring cameras across the county for all locations,” Holmes said.  The full-time officer would be stationed primarily at the Mental Health facility on Green Street, the scene of recent problems.  But the part-timer, Holmes said, could be deployed “if there needed to be coverage for a Legislature meeting, for instance.”  A guard at Legislature meetings would make news.

 “Having someone monitor cameras, I don’t understand how that moves us that much closer to being safe,” Travis Brooks said.

Brooks missed the next meeting.  But Sigler attended it, and said he may later resurrect the security spending, likely to help scuttle the idea.

Commuter pay for legislators will apparently end in the face of austerity.  With six voting support and seven in opposition, the committee rejected Anne Koreman’s motion to continue paying lawmakers when they travel to and from home.

“We don’t get a lot of pay,” Koreman complained, citing her current $22,000 part-time salary.  “I don’t have an office.  My office is at home.”

Others, including Greg Mezey, worried aloud that legislative commuter pay sets a double-standard.

“We don’t offer reimbursement for any of our staff who may make a little bit more than we do in some situations that are maybe driving from Candor or Spencer or other places,” Mezey countered.  “So why we would put ourselves in a different position, I don’t understand.”

“I don’t see the equity in treating ourselves differently from how we treat our regular employees,” Deborah Dawson concurred.  “I just don’t think we’re more special animals than everybody else.”

Time for an ounce of levity: “If we built the Center of Government at the mall, it would considerably shorten my commute,” Lansing’s Mike Sigler quipped.  A $40 Million new office building was, quite frankly, an argument left for another day.  But Sigler, too, opposed commuter compensation.

About 400,000 additional dollars got tucked into the Tompkins County Budget over those three meetings.  Mezey’s futile, final Resolution made on that last day of deliberations would have paid for all of the extras from fund balance savings and have drawn nearly $1.07 million additional to give taxpayers what he said was a needed break.  It would have cut the tax levy’s increase to 1.29 per cent, lower than inflation.

“Just because inflation is one number doesn’t mean we have to run up and try to catch it,” Mezey argued, as he defended his amendment on that final day.  “We are going to over-collect.  We are going to underspend. We are going to add additional fund balance.  So why, why pass the burden back to the taxpayer when we don’t have to?”

It’s not just County Government that’s tugging at taxpayers’ sleeves, Groton’s Shurtleff reminded everyone.

“I hear it every day in my community about the property taxes,” Shurtleff said.  A levy increase of $136 may seem benign to some, he acknowledged.  But “if we do $136, and my Town Board does $136, and my Village Board does $136, and God forbid, the School District does $272, twice that, I’ve just taken one of my constituent’s Social Security checks for the next year.”

“If you don’t want to tax your constituents, then you’re probably in the wrong job,” the Town of Ithaca’s Amanda Champion pointedly shot back.  Champion was among the eight who opposed the amendment.

So did Lansing’s Deborah Dawson.  Dawson argued that tapping fund balance to reduce taxes sends a deceptive message.  It hides reckless spending while dissuading taxpayers from getting angry, coming to meetings, and spouting off.

 “I don’t think it’s transparent; I don’t think it’s honest; and I don’t think it’s sustainable in the long run,” Dawson said of Mezey’s proposal.  “But you all will do what you will do, and I will vote against the budget.”

Dawson didn’t need to vote against the budget that day because Mezey’s amendment failed.  Former Legislature Chair Shawna Black called the fund balance tapping ploy “a dangerous shell game.”  Enfield-Ulysses’ Anne Koreman insisted it’s “artificially lowering the tax rate.”

“I think we’ve done a really bad job if we’re going to be doing this at the end,” Koreman said of tapping savings last-minute to tamp down taxes.  “It costs a lot to run government.”

Some, like Ithaca’s Rich John, sought compromise.  He’d have accepted a three per cent levy increase, but not one as low as Mezey had proposed.  “It cuts a little too much,” John said of the Mezey reduction.  John’s compromise never got to the floor—not yet.

Compare the Mezey 1.29 per cent tax increase with the two per cent hike adopted one year ago and the zero per cent increases in each of the two prior years.

Budget Committee Chair Mike Lane, like Dawson, a budget hawk, joined the majority chorus for making tax increases a little higher this year.

“You can’t be all things to all people,” Lane lamented near the close of the final day’s discussion.  “The fund balance is something we must protect,” he insisted.  “You don’t raise employees’ salaries to try to meet inflation without having to raise the revenues and pay for them.  Or we don’t pay for everything we buy from pencils to police cars, which are more expensive, without having to raise the revenues to pay them.”

Lane prevailed; Mezey did not.  Five-to-eight.  Amendment failed.  The fund balance would not be touched, at least not in theory.

****

Cut to the chase? We haven’t gotten there yet.  Remember that what transpired these first two weeks in October yielded only a recommendation.  Legislators will cast their first, binding budget votes come Tuesday, the 15^th.  They’ll then send the budget to a hearing.  And post-hearing, they could still amend it further in November.

History teaches us that Tompkins’ legislators have an uncanny knack for upending their committee’s exhausting labors impulsively, just as though what they’d worked so hard at had never happened.  Spending could still tick up, and the tax figure could wobble up or down—likely down toward what was offered, yet not embraced, that final committee day.  Tompkins County’s annual budget ritual, messy as it is, has just taken a pause in the drama.  It isn’t over yet.

###

Posted Previously:

Schoharie Administrator tapped to succeed Lisa Holmes

Korsah Akumfi may have eyed job before

by Robert Lynch; October 4, 2024; expanded reporting at 6:55 PM

In an announcement surprising by its speed, Tompkins County announced Friday morning the appointment of its next County Administrator.  Korsah Akumfi will assume the position currently held by the retiring Lisa Holmes.  He’ll take over the job December 9^th, according to a news release from the Tompkins County Department of Communications.

Nonetheless, if media reports are to be trusted, they suggest the Administrator-designee has been offered the job before.

Akumfi, African-American, comes to the position from Schoharie County, where he currently serves as County Administrator and Budget Officer.  He’d previously served as assistant to that county’s administrator.

In Friday’s statement, Dan Klein, Chair of the County Legislature, praised Akumfi’s background in budget development and as administrator of a New York State county.

“Korsah comes to Tompkins County with recent experience in local government in New York,” Klein stated.  “Tompkins County is excited to have his experience at Schoharie and his background in customer service and financial management.”

The Friday statement indicated that the Tompkins County Legislature will likely vote on Akumfi’s appointment at its next meeting, October 15.

Lisa Holmes, who’d served in the top administrative position since 2021—initially on an interim basis—announced her impending retirement on April 10^th.  At the time, Holmes planned to serve through year’s end.  Friday’s announcement would slightly speed up Holmes’ planned departure.

“I am honored to have been selected to serve as the County Administrator for Tompkins County,” Akumfi said in Friday’s statement. “Tompkins County is a vibrant, progressive community, and I look forward to working with the County Legislature, county staff, and community partners to build upon the county’s many strengths and to address key priorities.”

Akumfi added, “My goal is to hit the ground listening, to gain a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing the county, and to develop collaborative solutions that will have a positive impact on both current and future generations of Tompkins County residents.”

As Lisa Holmes was named Tompkins’ first female County Administrator two years ago, Akumfi would become its first County Administrator of color.

If one is to rely upon the printed record, Korsah Akumfi has sought the Administrator’s job in Tompkins County previously.  Indeed, one report indicates he was offered it.

The Cobleskill Times Journal reported in late-October 2022 that the Schoharie County Board of Supervisors had voted on a Friday to offer Akumfi its own County’s Administrator’s job.  The paper stated that “Mr. Akumfi said after the meeting that he needed the weekend to consider the offer—and weigh it against one from Tompkins County for the administrator’s position there.”  Akumfi eventually accepted the Schoharie County appointment.

Lisa Holmes had been named Tompkins County Administrator that previous March, elevated from her prior Deputy Administrator’s post.  Technically, Holmes remained on probationary status.  Yet no one on the County Legislature outwardly expressed any disapproval with her performance.  Therefore, the timing of Akumfi’s purported statement to the Schoharie press about a Tompkins County job offer, quite plainly, seems odd.

Of course, the paper may have misinterpreted Akumfi’s message, or Akumfi may have embellished it.  To that point, at least one, if not two Deputy Administrator positions within Tompkins County remained open at the time. And Holmes had admitted she was having a hard time filling them, given the high cost of housing in Tompkins County.

Whatever the circumstances, quite likely our newest County Administrator has at least shopped for a governmental job here before.

Although not stated explicitly, Tompkins County’s administrator-designate may be foreign-born.

The Department of Communications’ statement cites Akumfi’s previous finance-related roles in Ghana and in the United Kingdom.  It also stated that Akumfi has served in several workforce and employment-related positions at the New York State Department of Labor.

Korsah Kofi Akumfi’s resume includes his holding a Master of Public Administration degree from Binghamton University with a stated emphasis on economic development, local government management, and public policy and finance, according to the Tompkins County news release.

In June, the Tompkins County Legislature, upon the advice of the County’s Commissioner of Human Resources, elevated the starting pay of any new Administrator it would hire to a “high-end limit” of $180,000.  By contrast, when Lisa Holmes was officially promoted to her current position in April 2022, the Administrator’s “red-lined” salary—higher than scale— stood at $160,000. 

The County Legislature in June also provided its future new hire a $10,000 relocation bonus.  Rules require a County Administrator to reside within Tompkins County.

Akumfi’s current pay is lower.  The Mountain Eagle and Schoharie News places the salary for Schoharie County Administrator at $137,000, set to rise to $139,740 next January.

The Mountain Eagle also reports that Akumfi was just re-appointed to his current job, albeit by a less-than-unanimous majority.  Several Schoharie County Supervisors reportedly opposed the incumbent’s two-year reappointment, for reasons the paper did not state.

Conciliatory, Akumfi acknowledged he can’t please everybody.

“In my role, it’s something you expect,” the reappointed Administrator said of the divided vote during his brief post-meeting interview with The Mountain Eagle. “My job now is to reach out to those individuals (who voted no) and find out what their concerns are and make sure I address them,” he said.  “I’m excited. There is a lot of work to do in the county. There are a lot of ongoing projects, so I’m excited about what lies ahead.”

That was then.  Quite simply, plans have now changed.  The “work” and “ongoing projects” that generated Korsah Akumfi’s excitement will need to relocate—along with him—some 120 miles to the west.

Why some of those on the Schoharie County Board of Supervisors chose not to embrace their African-American Administrator remains unstated by the Albany-centered media.  When they originally elevated him from Assistant to the Administrator in 2022, reports say two Supervisors opposed his promotion, while another dozen on the board supported it.

The closest thing to a controversy arising during Akumfi’s brief tenure was a 2023 dust-up with Schoharie County’s Health Director which wedged the Administrator between that director and the Board of Supervisors over COVID-19 guidelines.  It was Akumfi who in January of that year had to sign Health Director Amy Gildemeister’s separation letter and lock her out of her office, according to the Albany Times Union.

The State Health Commissioner insisted that the Supervisors lacked the authority to do what they did.  But Akumfi, acting at lawmakers’ behest, terminated Gildemeister anyway.

Tompkins County legislators, in the weeks prior to Friday’s announcement, conducted interviews with several candidates to fill the job of the retiring Administrator Lisa Holmes.  At an Enfield Town Board meeting in September, legislator Randy Brown stated that only one of the three finalists—apparently Akumfi—came from within New York State.  Brown’s statement implied that no one employed from within Tompkins County Government had made the final cut.

According to his current posting on LinkedIn, Korsah Akumfi states, “My expertise includes project design and management, data analysis and interpretation, sales, exceptional customer service, and development of research mechanisms, from design to implantation.  I enjoy conceptualizing ideas motivated by a utilitarian mindset.” 

Akumfi continues, “My associates identify me as a driven, enthusiastic individual with a positive mindset, and a proactive attitude when dealing with issues and facing difficult decisions.”

The posting states that Akumfi has served as Schoharie County Administrator from October 2022 until the present.  He began as Assistant to the Administrator 13 months before that.

In serving through early-December, Lisa Holmes will guide the 2025 Tompkins County Budget through its scheduled final adoption.  Her successor will take over shortly thereafter.

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Budget Message to Tompkins: Prioritize People

by Robert Lynch; October 3, 2024

Young people handed out cut sunflowers; corny, colorful props, perhaps, yet still symbols of a human service agency that bore the flower’s name.  And those sunflower activists weren’t alone.  Monday was the people’s night in Tompkins County Legislative Chambers.  The 2025 County Budget was up for an informal dissection.  And for the most part, those who filled seats in the legislative gallery wanted to make sure that their chosen cause got its sufficient slice.

“Foster a budget that puts people first,” Sasha Raffloer, a worker at the Tompkins County Library, said in support of retaining five or more library positions poised to be cut in the face of austerity.

This was the Tompkins County Budget Forum; an annual, less-than-formal ritual that legislators aren’t required to hold, but do so anyway.  The budget’s official Public Hearing comes later.  Hardly anyone attends the Public Hearing.  Most of the budget slicing has already occurred by then.  Agency advocacy after-the-fact serves little useful purpose.

But the Budget Forum is different.  The County Budget right now remains very much a live ball.  A persuasive pitch by the right person can win an agency a supplemental appropriation—an “Over-Target Request (OTR)” in budget-speak.  In the least, it can keep an existing OTR from being stripped away.

Such was the meeting’s context.  And 2025 will be a tight budget year.  Last April, the Legislature told County Administrator Lisa Holmes to contain her next year’s tax levy increase to two percent.  She didn’t.  She blew past the directive big-time.  She recommended to the Legislature in early-September a more than quarter-Billion spending plan that would hike the tax levy 4.34 per cent. 

So far, nobody’s much complained that the Legislature’s April directive was largely ignored.  Budget Committee Chair Mike Lane has made it clear that his starting point is Holmes’ “recommended” budget, not that leaner alternative that she dutifully prepared to comply with her order, but now conveniently sets to the side. The alternative “Two Percent Budget” would have required many departments to cut their spending by five per cent.  Some department heads balked.

Yet if tradition holds, the recommended budget will grow even fatter by the time it’s adopted.  And that’s where Monday’s advocates stepped in. 

Twenty-one people spoke to the Legislature Monday night; some in chambers, some on Zoom.   Legislators, themselves, sat in silence.  Only the Budget Committee Chair, Mike Lane, spoke as moderator.

Administrator Holmes began the forum with an abbreviated summary of the 2025 budget she’s recommended.  Holmes largely repeated the message she’d first given to the Legislature September third.  No add-ins; no turn-arounds; no surprises.

Of those who addressed the budget, only former Ithaca Mayoral candidate Zach Winn urged that spending be cut.  Winn would prefer the legislature adhere to its earlier-proposed—though now largely-tossed aside—directive to keep the tax levy increase at just two per cent.  “The current fiscal mess of the County is unsustainable,” Winn said on Zoom.

But Republican Winn was the outlier.  A score of others who joined him in chambers or online carried a different message: reach out to us with a more generous helping hand.

Remember those sunflowers?  Sunflower House, a transitional living program for the previously-incarcerated, drew the most frequent and passionate support. Dave Sanders, Executive Director of the former Offender Aid and Restoration (now bearing the more PC, yet painfully nondescript and contrived name, “Opportunities, Alternatives and Resources” or “OAR”) spoke in its behalf. 

Sanders protested a prospective $40,000 (five per cent) cut in in the OAR budget.  Together with reduced Sunflower House assistance, it would cut 16 per cent of his total budget, Sanders said.  That’s despite the fact that demand for OAR’s services has risen by 68 per cent in the past 20 months.

“I would like the county administration to think about funding Sunflower House,” Sanders pleaded.  “I hope the Legislature will look beyond costs and recognize the humanity of the most vulnerable people in our community.” 

As far as cutting costs, the Executive Director would have Tompkins County look inward on itself.  He claimed Administration Department expenses have risen 213 per cent since 2017.

Michael Rhymes spoke.  Rhymes said he’d spent 39 years in prison, purportedly for a crime he didn’t commit.  He spoke to Sunflower House funding.

“I know you’re talking about money and you’re talking about budget, but what’s the cost of a human life?” Rhymes asked.

“People in prison: when they get out, so much pressure.  And if they’re not cared for or treated humanely, they tend to revert back to what they did,” Rhymes, the ex-inmate, continued.  “Believe me, I’m an expert on prisons.  I’ve been around every kind of person you can think of.  And the majority of them want to come home, they want to do right, but who’s supporting ‘em?”

Speakers spoke in support of the police-monitoring Community Justice Center, the “Unbroken Promise” minority advocacy agency, the County Library, and Tompkins Learning Partners.  Most talked not of dollars, but of programmatic passion.   One woman urged funding for a program to teach constitutional rights literacy.

And on the flip side, the money-draining Ithaca Tompkins Airport took a hit.

Former Enfield Supervisor aspirant Amanda Kirchgessner urged the Legislature to close the airport’s customs facility.

“Cut it out.  Get rid of it.  Do what you have to do,” Kirchgessner said.  “Are you ready to listen to us?  Five years ago we said don’t do it.  How much have we paid?  It’s superfluous and we’re subsidizing the feds.”

Whether they listened to Kirchgessner or not—more likely, they listened to the bean counters—the County Legislature voted Tuesday, one night later, to close the customs facility.  It cost Tompkins County $273,000 last year to run it, but returned to the County a mere pittance.

Nonetheless, airport grievances drove deeper.  Administrator Holmes’ recommended budget would shovel $642,000 into airport accounts to shore-up its flight-starved operations and pay its debt.  To several at the Budget Forum, airport money is money ill-spent.

“The airport has been failing for several years to meet its operational costs,” Bethany Ojalehto Mays told lawmakers.  “It is economically unviable,” she insisted.  Moreover, “Flying is one of the primary ways that affluent people pollute the world,” she said.

The idea caught on.  Amanda Kirchgessner and her mother, Marnie, also a former Enfield political leader, supported airport operational cuts.  So did Sophia Finn.

“If we are going to meet our goals as a community, we really need to focus on the human services and the good work of the employees of the County and of the programs to lift up the most vulnerable in our community,” Finn maintained.  “You prioritize the people as opposed to the airport or other not-as-crucial capital expenditures.”

That most costly, looming capital expenditure, a $40-60 Million Downtown Center of Government office building, never came up in Monday’s discussions.  It’ll be paid for in pieces.  According to budget documents, 2025 will be sort of a “bye” year for the building.  Architects and engineers must first do what’s needed.  Eight-figure spending, nevertheless, could commence in 2026.

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Yes, legislators sat in silence to hear what the passionate had to say Monday night.  This Thursday, October third, they begin that slice-and-dice exercise; voting on what to add, along with what, if anything, to subtract. 

Whether any lawmaker truly listened to what was said by the score of speakers at the Budget Forum remains to be judged by later actions.  Those sunflowers may stick in a few memories or maybe in many of them as budget meetings move forward.  Then, again, they may already have been tossed into the legislative trash can.

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