News Briefs:
“Blame Musk, not my Tesla”
(Apr. 2): Striking compromise could become elusive. But the Tompkins County Legislature may seek to craft a “statement” setting guidelines for responsible public protest.
At the Legislature’s April 1st session and also at a committee meeting the week before, one-time Ithaca mayoral candidate Zach Winn, a Republican, complained of over-the-top anti-Trump demonstrations, including street blockades and damage to Tesla automobiles as well as to their public charging stations.
The response: “In my view, there’s a lot of reasons to be very upset with the CEO of that company (Tesla’s Elon Musk),” Public Safety Committee Chair Rich John, a Democrat, told the Legislature Tuesday. “At the same time, people who own Tesla vehicles should not pay a price for doing that. It’s their car, and you can’t easily just stop using your car,” he said.
Colleague Anne Koreman pressed the point. What’s “appropriate” protest, she asked? John said guidelines might tell demonstrators to stop short of “creating public hazards” or “damaging property.”
Legislator Shawna Black owns a Tesla. The Democrat said she bought it “to give back” to the environment. She informed John’s committee that first those on the Right were “flicking me off.” Yet now she finds liberals doing so.
I’d ask for “a little bit of grace at this point,” Black told the committee. “Not all of us are the enemy.”
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Tackling our Toughest Chapter
(Apr. 2): Of the eight-section Town of Enfield Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2020, it’s the chapter most controversial: It’s called, “Land Use.” And for an hour Wednesday night, the Town Planning Board waded through its pages.
Requested by Supervisor Stephanie Redmond and the Town Board to revisit the document, planners have embarked on a month-by-month, section-by-section inspection of the Comprehensive Plan for possible revision. They’re about half-way through.
Recommended “Land Use Actions” cited in the 2020 plan include limiting “high-density development,” scrutinizing “industrial land uses before approval,” and developing, defining and preserving the “Town Center.”
Planners recommended no specific additions to or deletions from the “Actions” list during the April 2nd session. Yet they raised questions.
In the broadest sense, they asked, How can you attain the stated, lofty goals in a place like Enfield without zoning?
“If we’re limiting high-density housing, we’re talking about zoning,” Board Chair Dan Walker conceded.
“Put a ‘Z’ by that one,” Board Alternate Greg Hutnik would remark from time to time, meaning the goal could be reached only through a land use law that many view as the third rail of Enfield politics.
And if a “Town Center” deserves preservation, one needs first to delineate its boundaries. In some places, a water district accomplishes that. Enfield, of course, has no public water.
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T.C. Legislature urges NYSEG Audit
(Apr. 1): Lansing’s Mike Sigler claims New York State Electric and Gas labeled as “seditious” a media report in which he and four other lawmakers—two of whom sit with him on the Tompkins County Legislature—urged a state investigation into NYSEG’s billing practices.
Now the full Tompkins Legislature has joined that “seditious conspiracy,” if one would call it that.
By unanimous vote among those who attended, the County Legislature Tuesday endorsed a bipartisan demand for an independent audit of the utility’s billing. Democrat Shawna Black, without advance notice, brought the resolution to the floor. Republican Sigler seconded it.
“I think it is frustrating for families that are just trying to survive,” Black said of the surprise bill increases many are seeing. “It really is like a runaway train,” she said.
“I don’t really think NYSEG has kind of grasped where people are and the anger that’s out there on this particular issue,” Sigler told the Legislature.
Republicans Randy Brown of Newfield, Lee Shurtleff of Groton, plus lawmakers from Chemung and Broome Counties had joined Sigler’s initial call, which drew the utility’s ire after an Elmira TV station picked up on it.
For those confronting inflation, “This is just a double whammy,” Brown remarked. “All of a sudden you get this $500 electrical bill that was $250 just a year ago.”
New York State regulators would presumably conduct the “forensic audit” legislators requested.
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