Monthly Report
Tompkins County Council of Governments
for February 12, 2025
by Councilperson Robert Lynch
Enfield TCCOG Representative
The Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG) met on January 23, 2025.
TCIDA Composition: As the Enfield Town Board had directed by Resolution at its January Organizational Meeting, this representative brought to TCCOG Enfield’s recommendation that Tompkins County initiate efforts to expand membership on the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency (TCIDA) Board of Directors and specifically to designate a new member of that Board to represent rural municipalities.
Enfield’s resolution was introduced, but tabled that day. TCCOG will reconsider the measure in March. Some members wanted more information before voting.
Several questions arose during the resolution’s late-meeting discussion. Ithaca City representative Pierre St. Perez sought assurance that designating one new seat on the Board of Directors for a rural municipal representative would not jeopardize the City of Ithaca’s continued presence on the board. The City’s current representative technically fills only an “at-large” position.
Lansing Village Mayor Ronny Hardaway asked whether expanding the TCIDA Board from seven to nine members would pose quorum problems at monthly meetings. He also raised the rural/urban divide.
“What is the description of rural?” Hardaway asked. “How will the rural representatives be appointed from among the rural communities, and how long will their tenure be?” Hardaway continued, “This raises a lot of ambiguity as far as which rural municipalities will be voting for another community… in the case of solar projects.”
Nearly two weeks after TCCOG’s meeting, a committee of the County Legislature attempted clarity. The Housing and Economic Development Committee on February 5th unanimously recommended the TCIDA Board expansion, choosing less-specific language. The committee proposed keeping any newly-created membership positions technically “at-large,” including those for schools, rural towns, and the City. Once endorsed by the Tompkins County Legislature and forwarded to the New York State Legislature, TCCOG is expected in March to renew its consideration of the Enfield-submitted tabled resolution.
A lingering challenge raised by Mayor Hardaway, as yet unanswered, involves how a “rural representative” would be selected from among Tompkins County’s rural municipalities. I’d offered that perhaps various municipal candidates could apply to the County Legislature’s Chair for consideration.
Emergency Medical Services: For its third consecutive bimonthly meeting, TCCOG discussed coordinated funding for municipally- and privately-run ambulance services. The January conversation built on that of early-December during which member consensus coalesced behind some sort of county-wide ambulance tax. That tax would, in particular, subsidize the Dryden and Trumansburg municipal ambulance services which have found an increasing percentage of their calls coming from outside their jurisdictions, including from Enfield. With privately-owned Bangs Ambulance unable at times to keep up with call volumes, Dryden’s and Trumansburg’s gap-fill. (See the December 11, 2024 TCCOG Report.)
Rordan Hart, TCCOG Co-Chair and Village of Trumansburg Mayor, shared that in Governor Hochul‘s policy book that accompanied her State-of-the-State Address January 14th, Hochul had lent support to state legislation that would “define EMS as an essential service” and also require counties to map EMS services “that will allow New York State to identify and fill gaps in coverage.” Mayor Hart also reported that Hochul’s Executive Budget message earlier that week had proposed $5.2 Million be spent statewide toward EMS prioritization, an average of $90,000 per county. “It’s a start,” Mayor Hart said.
But while a county-wide ambulance tax has been viewed locally as the most equitable and viable cost-leveling tool, leaders locally seem at a loss as to how to make it happen. “There’s nobody here whose job it is to study and implement a county-wide ambulance tax,” Tompkins County Legislature Chair Dan Klein conceded. Klein begged to learn of some county in New York State or elsewhere that’s devised a workable intermunicipal ambulance funding model. “That would help us quite a bit to get started in the task; otherwise we don’t know who, when, or how it will start,” the chairman said.
But Dryden Councilperson Dan Lamb, like Mayor Hart an ambulance funding advocate, said that no other county in New York has attempted to establish an ambulance tax. For a comparable model, Lamb had to look as far away as Iowa.
Dryden has a town ambulance tax, and Lamb insisted it’s popular. Dryden’s ambulance assessment now stands at 80 cents per thousand. “We get complaints a lot about how we spend money on Town Government, but we’ve never had a complaint about our ambulance tax,” Lamb said. “We can do this countywide.” (This writer’s observation: Dryden is not Enfield.)
While Governor Hochul proposes $ 5.2 Million go toward EMS, Mayor Hart estimates the true need is $500 Million, still just two-tenths of one per cent of a $250 Billion state budget, a “drop in the bucket.”
“There isn’t a groundswell of support, there isn’t an outcry from the individual municipalities and the counties to have the state step into the EMS issue,” Mayor Hart conceded “Probably in the Assembly, there are a lot of Assembly members who feel this isn’t a dire issue,” he admitted. To that, Rordan Hart said he would “push back on that narrative.”
More than 50 percent of Dryden’s ambulance calls go outside its district. In Trumansburg, 15-20 per cent do similarly. “My biggest fear quite frankly,” Mayor Hart said, “is that if I am forced to say we will not send an ambulance on that next call because we need coverage here, and somebody dies as a result… I’d hate to be in the deciding end of something like that.”
With privately-run Bangs Ambulance a major player locally, Danby Supervisor Joel Gagnon asked whether a “public subsidy of a private operator” is possible. “My understanding” said Mayor Hart, based on prior his legislative conversations, is that “that is a non-starter.” Dan Lamb offered that perhaps County government could contract with Bangs to cover certain “zones,” and thereby make the practice legally and politically permissible.
A key sticking point remains drawing the City and Town of Ithaca into the discussions, especially since Bangs’ proximity provides the two relative comfort. Town of Ithaca Supervisor Rod Howe offered his cooperation. Gagnon suggested Tompkins County “convene the parties of interest” to reach agreement. Hart said Tompkins County’s Department of Emergency Response has “tried to make that happen.” With some hesitation, Hart added, “There has been some reluctance on the part of some—he didn’t say whom—to engage in those conversations. I think we’re at the point of legislation, not collaboration.”
Broadband: Nick Helmholdt, Principal Planner with Tompkins County’s Department of Planning and Sustainability, provided TCCOG an update on the county’s $11.3 Million application to New York State to expand broadband Internet to 553 currently unserved rural locations, effectively providing Tompkins County complete Internet service. There’ve been delays, he admitted, and no one knows exactly why.
Tompkins County submitted its grant application through New York’s Connect-all Office and its “County Partnerships Program” last May. “They’re reviewing our request and cost per location,” Helmholdt said. As to why no action, the planner answered, “We don’t have a clear indication.” Helmholdt acknowledged that other nearby counties have similar applications waiting. “It’s cold comfort,” he said, “but we’re not alone.”
“Is there something we could do to encourage the Connect-all folks to get moving?” Danby Supervisor Joel Gagnon asked. Helmholdt advised that if anyone knows administrators in charge, they should contact them. TCCOG took no formal vote.
“Has the state said why the decision’s taking so long?” Caroline Supervisor Mark Witmer asked. “In so many words, no,” Helmholdt answered.
One TCCOG member calculated Tompkins County’s plan would expend $20,400 of public money to reach each unserved household. Helmholdt admitted the figure sounds high, but really it’s “not out of the realm of reasonability,” he said, since the homes are out-of-the-way and thus costly to reach.
Solar Farms and Agriculture: Guillermo Metz, Solar and Agriculture Resource Educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension, updated TCCOG on a Solar Development Initiative, one promoted by local agricultural interests. It would, if adopted, require solar farm developers to pay a premium surcharge, an “adder to a baseline PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Tax agreement)” should they locate their solar arrays on “agricultural land, active or prime farmland.” Tompkins County’s Farmland Protection Board has promoted the initiative. Metz admitted the concept is “only in the conversation stage.”
Metz’s presentation prompted Danby’s Joel Gagnon to lament that there’s a “maldistribution” between good farmland and where infrastructure exists to tie solar farms into the grid. In Tompkins County, Gagnon said, the infrastructure tends to exist where the best farm land lies. But to the county’s south, such as in his town, Danby, land tends to be poorer, but the infrastructure largely doesn’t exist.
Groton Supervisor Don Scheffler had this reaction to the Solar Development Initiative’s prospects: “It’s been my experience in the last four years that they don’t care what the local people think or what we regulate or anything else. The Governor and the Legislature and (regulators like) NYSERDA are going to do whatever they want.”
TCCOG next meets March 27.
Respectfully submitted,
Robert Lynch, Councilperson
Enfield TCCOG Representative