by Robert Lynch; August 6, 2025
It wasn’t exactly on point. But Newfield-Enfield legislator Randy Brown’s comment may have been the most memorable of any during a 45-minute debate Tuesday that ended with the Tompkins County Legislature voting to buy an out-of-the-way building in a Lansing office park, but deciding against putting the Board of Elections within it.
“I think the Center of Government building is not a strategic plan,” Brown, who chairs the committee tasked with building that $50 Million planned downtown office structure, told colleagues. “I think it’s a plan for our departments. We’ve gathered from our parking study that this really isn’t a building being built for the people. It’s being built for our employees which need a better space.”
The Tompkins County Board of Elections occupies some of that space. It must vacate its long-occupied quarters close to the County Courthouse later this year so that its Buffalo Street building can be removed to enable the Center of Government’s construction.
Randy Brown would say more that night about the Center of Government project and how those in his corner of Tompkins County view it. But first we’d best turn to what actually happened at the Legislature’s meeting of August 5 and explain why.
By a vote of nine-to-five, legislators decided to purchase a vacant, 13,000-square foot building at 31 Dutch Mill Road for $1.2 Million. It will serve as temporary offices for governmental departments that must relocate to facilitate Center of Government construction. Both the elections board and Tompkins County’s Department of Assessment must vacate. Both are quartered in “Building C,” 128 East Buffalo Street, slated for deconstruction.
Before they’d authorized purchase, lawmakers stripped away sponsor Lee Shurtleff’s original intention to move both Elections and Assessment to the Lansing site. Randy Brown was one of only two lawmakers who would have stayed with Shurtleff’s original script.
“I just feel that we haven’t looked at strategy of where does Board of Elections belong,” Brown observed. “Where do these front-facing departments belong, and how are they really to be more accessible to people? And I don’t think we’ve reached that at all.”
Tuesday’s decisions left unresolved where the Board of Elections should go, temporarily or forever. The resolution’s only insistence was that Elections would not relocate to Dutch Mill Road.
The Tuesday night vote followed a week of orchestrated, public outcry from people opposing the Board of Elections’ potential exodus to Lansing. The Tompkins County League of Women Voters weighed-in against the relocation. Nine of eleven people who addressed the Legislature at the start of Tuesday’s meeting opposed the move as well.
It’s “absolutely essential that the Board of Elections remain in downtown Ithaca to serve the people,” former Lansing Village Trustee and Deputy Mayor Diane Dawson—who acknowledged her relationship to current County legislator Deborah Dawson—insisted. Diane Dawson described Dutch Mill Road as an “industrial park” and faulted its lack of TCAT bus service.
“Ithaca is the county seat, and the Board of Elections should be at the county seat in Ithaca,” Dawson insisted.
One meeting speaker claimed that moving the Board of Elections, even temporarily, outside of Ithaca would require a referendum. Lansing legislator Mike Sigler disputed that assertion and maintained the County Attorney has opined otherwise.
“The work of the Board of Elections is not done and cannot be done totally online or by phone or by voter registration events, Sally Grubb, speaking for the League of Women Voters, stated. “During election seasons, many jobs have to be done in person,” Grubb maintained. “Satellite split offices” are “not feasible for the Board of Elections,” Grubb said, given the need for security, legal compliance, and teamwork.
Irene Weiser, expected to serve as Caroline and Danby’s legislator next year, opposed the relocation of any heavily-visited departments, not just Elections, to the Lansing building.
“It is important that the Board of Elections be easily accessible to all voters for all elections,” another commenter, John Hunt, stated. The Board “should remain within walking distance from Ithaca’s public transportation hub,” Hunt said.
Andreas Champlin, Statewide Systems Advocate for the Finger Lakes Independence Center, a disability rights group, questioned how those compromised would ever reach the relocated office. “There are no sidewalks. There are no curb cuts. I don’t know if I would be able to push a mobility device through that as an able-bodied human,” Champlin assessed of the Dutch Mill Road location’s drawbacks.
“The Board of Elections must be accessible, public-facing. Make it visible, have a big sign out front,” Connie Sterling Engman advocated.
In an odd and uncharacteristic act of pre-meeting preemption, County Administration officials had issued a news release earlier Tuesday stating emphatically that a Board of Elections relocation from downtown would not happen, Lee Shurtleff’s resolution notwithstanding.
“After listening to these (resident) concerns and reflecting on the importance of the BOE’s central role in upholding our democracy, the county has made the decision not to relocate the Board of Elections outside the city limits of Ithaca,” a Communications Department midday news release made clear (emphasis provided in the original).
“Keeping the BOE within the seat of government is not only a logistical necessity but a symbolic commitment to the values of transparency, accessibility, and civic trust,” the release continued.
The news release quoted Legislature Chair Dan Klein and Vice-Chair Greg Mezey, but notably not Groton Republican Shurtleff, the resolution’s author.
What’s more, before inviting public comments at the Legislature meeting’s start, Chairman Klein thrust onto the floor a heavily-revised version of the Shurtleff resolution. Klein’s became the version eventually adopted. The Chair’s action gave a public impression that the revised script, and only the revised script, would receive consideration.
As it turned out, Lee Shurtleff later moved his original version, only to see it amended to conform to the modification Klein had presented.
Leadership’s seldom-used preemptive move prompted this writer, Enfield Councilperson Robert Lynch, during his own three-minute speaking privileges, to observe that the press release’s unexpected, advance issuance “smacks of an insult to Legislator Shurtleff,” who should have remained unimpeded to advance his own initiative. Those in Tompkins County “have a Legislature that decides these things,” and do not operate under an “elected County Executive” form of government, the admonition continued.
As it was adopted, the amended Shurtleff resolution emphasized that “the Tompkins County Board of Elections will NOT be one of the county departments considered for relocation to 31 Dutch Mill Road,” further stating that, “It is the expressed intent of the Legislature to keep the Board of Elections primary location within the City of Ithaca.”
As to which remaining County offices find their temporary home at Dutch Mill Road, the resolution fails to specify. Some legislators expressed concern about that uncertainty. Ithaca’s Rich John signaled it explained his present opposition to the final resolution.
Joining John in opposing the purchase were legislators Shawna Black, Travis Brooks, Veronica Pillar, and Mike Sigler.
Shawna Black opposed the purchase, in part, because she saw the resolution “very vague.”
“I equally have a problem with us putting our County departments so far out, off of Warren Road. It’s way past the airport, it’s down a dead end,” Black complained. “We’re County Government; we have the center of government here in the City of Ithaca because for the most part it’s central to where we all live.”
Randy Brown raised the counter-argument, his words worth remembering.
“I represent Newfield and Enfield,” Brown reminded fellow legislators, “and not one person that I’ve spoken to likes to come down to Ithaca. They just don’t like it for whatever reason,” Brown stated.
“So for me,” Brown added, referencing the envisioned, pricey Center of Government, “as I represent people, and they voted for me, they’re just not excited.”
Legislator Brown cited the recently-completed Center of Government parking study. It predicted that only about 21 members of the public would visit downtown offices daily, and that includes visitors to the Board of Elections. Those people visit there now, he said. Brown also mentioned the Enfield Town Board’s July ninth resolution urging Tompkins County “seriously and thoughtfully” consider City of Government alternative sites outside of downtown.
Back in the 1990’s, Lee Shurtleff served for nearly a decade as an Elections Commissioner himself. He recalled parking challenges, even back then. “I struggled to find a parking spot for much of that time,” Shurtleff remembered. He also recalled having to “commandeer Gadabout buses” to “round up our elections inspectors” and bring them in for training.
“I think it’s a good place,” this writer, Lynch, told the Legislature Tuesday, standing alone in the gallery as the only one to defend the Dutch Mill Road choice for the Board of Elections. “I think it would be a good location, especially for us in the rural communities that don’t like having to… park four blocks from the Board of Elections in all kinds of inclement weather and sluff our way to the board to do our business.”
But in Downtown—somewhere in Downtown—the Tompkins County Board of Elections will stay. Tuesday’s purchase resolution makes no commitments as to which government departments will move to Dutch Mill Road. Expect County Administrator Korsah Akumfi to forward a recommended list of relocation candidates as soon as the second full week of August. Legislators could review, revise, and adopt the list as soon as their next meeting, August 19.
Meanwhile, expect officials to keep looking diligently for the Board of Elections’ next home, confining their search to downtown, as they must. Board of Elections must vacate its current place by October or November. Writing the Board of Elections next chapter may prove far from easy.
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