February 2023 TCCOG Report

Monthly Report

Tompkins County Council of Governments

for February 8, 2023

by Councilperson Robert Lynch

Enfield TCCOG Representative

The Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG) met on January 26, 2023 under its new bimonthly schedule. Apart from its own reorganization, TCCOG took no formal actions that date. However, the group did receive a detailed report from County Director of Assessment Jay Franklin regarding the numerous property tax exemptions made available by New York State and not always accessed by municipalities despite their availability.

Tompkins County Associate Planner Darby Kiley updated TCCOG on progress toward a consultant’s study regarding Tompkins County’s potential role in consolidating code enforcement responsibilities. And the TCCOG membership, at my motion, elevated Trumansburg Mayor and TCCOG Representative Rordan Hart to become Vice Chair, putting Hart in TCCOG’s line of leadership.

Assessment: Given his appearance at TCCOG, I sought to follow-up on my earlier inquiry to Jay Franklin concerning the prospect of the Town of Enfield convening its own Local Advisory Board of Assessment Review. It comes as the Tompkins County Legislature on January 18^th suspended indefinitely its convening such town-based advisory boards at the County’s initiative. Jay Franklin had told me following a January committee meeting that he’d confer with the County Attorney about the legality of Enfield’s assembling such a home-grown panel. At TCCOG, January 26, Franklin effectively nixed the idea. In response to my renewed question, Franklin stated this concerning a town-initiated Board:

“I don’t think it would be appropriate, because we wouldn’t be treating all of our residents the same. And that’s one of our tenets of what my office does is everybody is treated the same. So, if one Town were to offer some sort of other pseudo-assessment review process, I don’t think that really would be appropriate. It really would give that property owner a false sense of something may happen if they went there and provided their information to them.”

Given that the Department of Assessment would likely decline to send professional staff to advise any Local Board Enfield might convene, it seems unlikely an Enfield-assembled Local Board would serve any worthwhile purpose.

Jay Franklin presented to TCCOG a three-page summary of available Real Property Tax Exemptions, each made available by state law, many of which require a Town to exercise its discretion to authorize. Franklin’s attached spreadsheet made evident that many towns, including Enfield, have simply never decided whether or not to permit many exemptions. One of the exemptions is the newly-offered Volunteer Firefighter and Ambulance Worker Exception, an exemption being considered by our Town Board tonight. But many other exemptions stand available, if accessed and Board-authorized; exemptions for such things as capital improvements, historic preservation, and “Green Buildings.”

Franklin said he often gets the question about exemptions, “Why haven’t more places opted into them?” Franklin’s answer, “Honestly, I don’t know.” Often, he surmises, municipal leaders wait for Tompkins County to act first. Franklin said history has taught him to wait until Tompkins County avails itself of an exemption before requesting a local municipality to consider adopting it as well. However, with the Volunteer Firefighter Exemption, Franklin moved ahead of Tompkins County for sake of time.

Regarding the Volunteer Firefighters’ Exemption, Franklin noted that some volunteers might be wise not to claim it only because it would preclude their also claiming a $200 state income tax credit, separately available. You can’t claim both. Franklin said taxpayers can contact his office to help decide which of these two exemptions would save him or her the most money.

Franklin made the point that when both Tompkins County and a town opt into the Firefighters Exemption, it becomes more attractive for the property owner to take that property exemption instead of the income tax credit. The exemptions essentially leverage each other.

“The big one would be school districts,” Franklin stressed, pointing out that if schools opted into the exemption as well, the “sweet spot” of a home’s assessed value making the property exemption outweigh the income tax credit would drop considerably. Should school districts also opt in along with the county and the towns, “then you’re really talking savings here,” the director said.

Enfield currently “opts out” of the “Solar/Wind/Farm Waste Energy Exemption,” found under Section 487 of the Real Property Tax Law. Because Enfield chose years ago to “opt out” of this exemption, any Payment in Lieu of Tax (PILOT) Agreement for solar or wind farms must be negotiated by the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency, not the Town. Enfield’s Town Board has discussed whether it remains best to be an “Opt Out” municipality. Franklin’s written narrative described the exemption this way: “There are a lot of bad exemption statutes, but this one takes the lead. You are in the exemption until you opt out.” Enfield, of course, has opted out.

Caroline Supervisor Mark Witmer said that on advice of counsel, his town may examine all the available tax exemptions at one time and write a local law that consolidates into one document all of the various exemptions his town chooses to permit its residents to access.

Building Code Enforcement: Darby Kiley of County Planning advised TCCOG that Tompkins County has selected the LaBerge Group to conduct a study of potential consolidation of building code enforcement functions, an opportunity that may hold interest for some municipalities more than for others. Kiley’s asked all municipalities to complete and submit a survey addressing code enforcement challenges. Kiley said her plans call for convening in-person roundtable sessions in about a month to address, in her words, “workflows, needs, barriers, and opportunities for collaboration.”

“We really want these studies to meet your needs as a municipality, Kiley told TCCOG. What are your challenges in code enforcement, and what do you see as opportunities,” she asked. “We do not have a predetermined outcome for this,” she stressed. Based on member comments last week from the Enfield Planning Board, some in Enfield governance may prefer County Government to remain as distant as possible from involvement in local code enforcement.

TCCOG’s next meeting is March 23.

Respectfully submitted,

Robert Lynch, Councilperson

Enfield TCCOG Representative

Taking A Stand, a tab on the top menu, provides my take on various issues of community concern in Enfield; commentary on our Town’s Current Events. I hope my words will prompt robust debate.

Highlights :

May 2024: Priority One: Our Boeing Problem; (Addressing poor academic performance in Enfield Elementary School and elsewhere in light of the district’s current budget controversy.)

November 2023: Flycars, Fund Balances, and “Flat-Broke” Towns; (Addressing a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature on the merits of cost-sharing for a Rapid Medical Response Service.)

September 2023: Think Before You Act (They Didn’t); (Addressing the Tompkins County Legislature to urge delay in proceeding with a Center of Government.)

August 2023: Democracy, Clinging by a Thread; (Addressing the Enfield Town Board on the controversy surrounding its appointment of Enfield’s initial Board of Fire Commissioners.)

July 2023: I am Impatient. They are Hungry. (Addressing the Tompkins County Council of Governments regarding the Tompkins County Food System Plan’s “Roadmap” and how it needs improvement.)

Prior postings and statements, (2019-2022) are now included in the Commentary Archives.

Check out the latest local stories from Enfield and Tompkins County attached to the Latest News tab.

Recent Postings:

May 31: Newfield BOE cuts “shop” to spare budget

May 29: Recast ICSD budget to hover levy below Tax Cap

May 24: Newfield to revise, revote school budget

May 22: Board eyes cuts after big budget loss; No-increase “Contingency” among three options weighed

May 22: ICSD Budget loses 2.4 to 1

May 16: The Elephant in the Schoolhouse; Ithaca Board of Education Braces for Budget Defeat

May 13: ICSD’s Understated “Post-Porn” Debate

May 10: The Fields amidst the Fuss; Ulysses Planners’ pushback nearly derails Ag. District add-on

May 1: Budgeting with “Discipline;” Tompkins legislators target 2 per cent tax levy hike for ’25

Apr. 24: Dan, the Cable Guy; Enfield taps Pittsburgh hired gun to haggle with Haefele

Apr. 18: Finding a Fiscal Off-ramp; ICSD Board trims budget, levies, amid taxpayer backlash

Apr. 11: ICSD Board scratches its head to soothe the budget bite

For previously-reported stories, visit the Reporting Archives tab. Stories are archived by the month(s) of their posting.

(Updated Nov. 20): Somebody attempted to steal $7,321.34 from the Enfield Fire District. And the culprit has yet to be caught.

Fire District Treasurer Cortney Bailey informed the Board of Fire Commissioners Tuesday night that someone prepared a fake check drawn upon the Fire District’s account. The thief forged Bailey’s signature and that of a Fire Commissioner, and attempted to cash the check at a bank out of town.

Wednesday morning, Board of Fire Commissioners Chair Greg Stevenson clarified that the money wasn’t actually stolen. Stevenson stated that the “washed check” was caught by the bank before the transaction was completed. The Fire District’s bank, Tompkins Trust, notified Bailey of the attempt last Thursday.

“I reported it to the police,” Stevenson told the Board Tuesday.

“We’re going to try to catch the person that did it,” Bailey stated.

“Mark Butler (the District’s lawyer) said don’t count on it,” Stevenson cautioned. “Butler said we’re the fourth client that he’s had fraudulent checks issued” in recent days.

Deputies were seen entering and exiting the fire house during Tuesday’s meeting, conferring privately with the treasurer.

Bailey said that because of the attempted theft, the Fire District must establish a new account and tear up all of its existing, unused checks.

(Nov. 18): The time when a job-hungry Congressional aspirant respected home district lines is long past. Remember Claudia Tenney?

Multiple sources report that Congressman Marc Molinaro, defeated in this month’s re-election bid in his home 19^th District, is shopping around, eyeing a potential run for the North Country House seat likely soon to be vacated by Elise Stefanik, should she be confirmed as President-Elect Trump’s choice for U.N. Ambassador.

“A source familiar confirmed to the Washington Examiner that Molinaro is in the mix to be Stefanik’s successor,” the paper reported on Veteran’s Day.

“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,” Republican Molinaro told a Spectrum News broadcast one night later.

Assuming Stefanik secured Senate confirmation in January, she’d resign the House and Governor Hochul would need to call a special election. There’d be no primary. Party committees would pick their nominees. The candidate need not live in the district.

Unlike the politically-blended 19^th District—where Democrat Josh Riley will serve in Congress come January—Stefanik’s Adirondack-centered territory is ruby-red. In view of that, several other Republicans also consider running.

Less often from now on

(Nov. 15): They’re still unofficial, yet not expected to change.

Final tallies, released Friday by the Tompkins County Board of Elections, show that all three Enfield ballot propositions, those extending future terms of Town Supervisor, Town Clerk, and Highway Superintendent, secured voter approval, although the Supervisor’s term extension just squeaked by.

Friday’s revised tallies included for the first time the absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day, though received by elections officials up until nearly a week after the polls had closed.

The Enfield Supervisor’s term change cleared by just 32 votes (837 to 805, or a mere 51 to 49 per cent margin.)

Voters endorsed giving the Highway Superintendent a 4-year term, 903 votes to 754, a nine percentage point spread. The Town Clerk’s term fared best; 948 votes to 701, a 247 vote difference.

Nevertheless, in each referendum, 150 or more voters simply left the ballot issues blank.

Incumbents current terms aren’t affected. Extended terms for each of the Enfield offices will kick in with the 2025 elections. There’s the possibility that the initial terms filled in ’25 will be shortened by a year to conform to a state election year change. But the Albany initiative remains under review by state courts.

(Nov. 13): At a meeting devoid of controversy, the Enfield Town Board Wednesday approved a two-year extension of its ongoing animal control contract with the Tompkins County SPCA.

Board members made no mention of concerns, voiced at their mid-October session, about a management culture at the Hanshaw Road animal shelter that one former volunteer described as existing “contrary to Tompkins County’s list of values and principles.”

Instead, Town Clerk Mary Cornell—labeled by this Councilperson as Enfield’s “Dog Czar”—said she was satisfied with the agreement now that an intermunicipal SPCA Advisory Board on which she sits had met for its first time in years and supported the agreement’s terms.

Enfield’s annual charge for SPCA dog control services will remain at $16,737.

The Town Board also completed review and forwarded to its attorney a long-discussed revised Dog Control and Licensing Law.

Members skirted prior controversy involving pet-owner liability. And while the SPCA demands that euthanasia remain an option for unclaimed impounded canines, the Board inserted words expressing the law’s intent that “any unredeemed dog shall be offered for adoption whenever practicable.”

Expect the Enfield Dog Law to go to Public Hearing in early-2025. / RL

(Nov. 12): Three County legislators dominate its membership. An Ithaca City Alderperson holds a seat as well, as does a representative of organized labor. Now the Ithaca Board of Education seeks to resume its membership on the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency (IDA), the powerful governmental board that grants big-bucks tax abatements.

“Some sort of school district or school board representation on the IDA is very much warranted,” ICSD Board member Jill Tripp said Tuesday. She moved a Resolution asking the County Legislature to add a permanent school board voting position on the IDA Board. All seven Ithaca School Board members attending Tuesday’s meeting endorsed the idea. The IDA’s expansion may require state legislation.

The Ithaca School Board once held a position on the IDA. Why it relinquished membership in 2005, some were not sure. Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell recalled it was ICSD’s own decision.

Eversley Bradwell referenced the IDA’s recent massive abatements given Ithaca’s Chainworks redevelopment. ICSD is the “largest taxing entity, so it’s affected,” the Board President said.

“The ICSD, along with other school districts in Tompkins County, has a vested interest in the decisions made by the TCIDA, as these decisions impact the funding available for essential educational programs, services, and infrastructure,” the adopted Resolution states.

Dominick Recckio (credit Ithaca Times)

(Nov. 8): Not so long ago, a modestly-paid mayor used to administer the City of Ithaca single-handedly. Not so, anymore.

Wednesday, Nov. 6, Common Council appointed Dominick Recckio, Tompkins County’s Communications Director since 2020, to fill a newly-created post of Deputy City Manager. In his new job, Recckio will earn $143,750 annually, assisting a City Manager who earns even much more.

The Ithaca Times reports Wednesday’s vote was not unanimous. Three alderpersons dissented, essentially arguing the job wasn’t needed.

Recckio’s experience lies in public relations, not law enforcement. Nonetheless, it’s reported Recckio’s first responsibility will be police oversight, most notably implementing racially-sensitive reimagining initiatives. He’ll also address Ithaca’s homelessness crisis.

The Times quotes Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo as saying Recckio’s hiring is one of the final steps towards “settling into our new form of government.”

That may be true. But that “new form” is one in which elected politicians talk platitudes and highly-paid staff shoulders the load.

Welcome aboard, Dom. City Hall is a changin.’ / RL

Baffled by silence: Dan Klein

(Nov. 8): It’s gotta’ frustrate a couple of Enfield agencies that fought so hard for cash from the Tompkins County Community Recovery Fund, yet came up dry.

The Recovery Fund’s Advisory Committee this week resolved to recommend that up to $175,000 of the fund’s original $6.5 Million total, about 2.7 per cent, be repurposed for the County’s “Fleet Procurement Program” because agencies originally funded have yet to use the cash.

The committee identified five recipients as potential losers. A TC3 tuition reimbursement program is one of them. Another, the New Roots Charter School, could forfeit $93,000.

Advisory Committee and Legislature Chair Dan Klein said it’s often because agency leaders refuse to return funding officials’ phone calls.

“I don’t quite understand it either,” Klein told the committee. “But I guarantee it’s not for lack of trying; we want to give this money to people, but if they don’t do their part, we can’t.”

Enfield’s Community Council and Fire Company had vied for support from the Recovery Fund, yet never secured final approval. It’s too late now.

Washington’s rules require federally-subsidized contracts be finalized before year’s end. The unspent money would likely buy a couple of trucks, one for the County Highway Department.

Restroom to the rear. The makeshift shelter’s new “potty trailer.”

(Nov. 7): Tompkins County chose not to declare a Homelessness “State of Emergency.” But that doesn’t mean it’s providing mandated emergency shelter facilities exactly like clockwork.

In a conference call to local elected leaders Thursday, County Administrator Lisa Holmes revealed that the St. John’s Community Services shelter on West State Street will cease operations November 8^th, one week earlier than first planned. Media reports say St. John’s will close its doors to residents the afternoon of Thursday, the 7^th.

But Holmes also told the call’s attendees that the makeshift Tompkins County Code Blue Shelter, the one at the former bank building near the Courthouse, won’t be ready until November 25^th. That’s later than first planned. It’s a staffing issue.

Holmes described the bank-based downtown shelter as a “stopgap measure.” A permanent, pricier shelter is the long-range plan.

As for those displaced by the accelerated St. John’s closing, Holmes said “hotel rooms have been secured for most of those residents.”

But as for a “warming center,” also at St. John’s, the administrator said the Department of Social Services lobby will be employed during DSS office hours. The former bank, once finished, will warm the unhoused from 4 PM until 8 AM weekdays and all day, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.

There’s yet another issue: dogs. “We do not have the capacity to handle animals at the Code Blue Shelter,” Holmes stated. “We’re working with the SPCA,” she added.

(Nov. 6): It’s been an off-and-on plan since August. Wednesday night, the Enfield Town Planning Board gave it the go-ahead.

Planners unanimously granted Enfield contractor Patrick Head site plan approval for a cluster of four “tiny houses” near the corner of Enfield Center and East Van Dorn Roads.

“The Project involves the construction of four, 2 bedroom approximately 720 Square Foot homes on a 1-acre site,” the Planning Board’s authorization states. “The buildings will be supplied water from a common well and will utilize a shared onsite wastewater treatment system located on an adjacent 1-acre lot that has been approved by the Tompkins County Health Department.”

Head had originally advanced his tiny-house idea three months ago, He then quietly withdrew his plans thinking he’d sell the one-acre parcel as a single lot. That, too, got sidelined, and Head returned to his original plans.

The Planning Board in the past has lauded the tiny-house concept as an efficient way to expand Enfield’s affordable housing stock.

Wednesday’s approval came at one of the shortest Planning Board sessions in recent memory, barely a half-hour. One member admitted he’d been up too late watching election returns the night before.

(Nov. 3): Is a high school athletic field truly open to the public, or just to the people school officials say should be there?

Democratic Congressional Candidate Josh Riley got his hands slapped this past week after he recorded a campaign ad on the stands of the Union-Endicott High School Stadium. School officials complained, forcing Riley to take down the commercial, one in which he’d talked with his former football coach.

“As a public institution dedicated to education, we maintain a neutral position and do not endorse or support any political candidates or parties,” The New York Post’s Vaughn Golden reports a school district spokesperson as stating.

“Our focus is on providing a quality education and supporting the well-being of our students, regardless of external political influences,” the statement continued.

Broome County, where Union-Endicott is located, has a much more politically-blended constituency than does Tompkins County. Golden reports some residents there questioned the school’s involvement in the ad. It had none, and told Riley he hadn’t gotten permission to shoot on school property.

Riley’s campaign took down the ad the same day as the district raised the issue.

Golden reports that Riley’s campaign had also attempted to hold a press conference on school grounds, but was asked to move to the sidewalk.

What’s not stated is whether the “no politics” policy at U-E was written, or just impromptu.

Mayor Robert Cantelmo (courtesy Ithaca Voice)

(Oct. 26): It makes Enfield politics look placid by comparison.

One night after our Enfield Town Board sparred over granting its Highway Superintendent a ten percent raise, Ithaca’s Common Council members took sides over granting their mayor a pay hike of 108 per cent!

As reporter Jimmy Jordan documents in his 1,900-word story in The Ithaca Voice, the Thursday, Oct. 24^th Council session first saw the raise for Mayor Robert Cantelmo fail in a tie vote. But then one member changed his mind and requested reconsideration, prompting three Council members to walk out in disgust, partly in hopes they’d kill the meeting for lack of a quorum.

They didn’t. The measure to raise Cantelmo’s annual salary from $30,000 to $62,500 won first-round approval, six votes to one.

“This is the worst behaved council I have ever worked with, least professional, and least dedicated to the job,” The Voice quotes Alderperson Ducson Nguyen, Council’s longest-tenured member, as saying.

Alderpersons Margaret Fabrizio, David Shapiro and Phoebe Brown were the walk-outs. Each represents the upper-age range of a governing body that’s incredibly young.

The raise is part of the City’s next year’s budget. The budget—and the Mayor’s salary—won’t become final until November. The pay change may also require a local law.

Last year, Ithaca’s mayor earned $61,489. But then City Hall brought in a highly-paid City Manager and reduced mayoral responsibilities to constituent service and running meetings.

Nonetheless, Cantelmo says he still works full-time and wants full-time pay.

Lindsay Lustick Garner

(Oct. 25): With less than two weeks to Election Day, she’s getting a late start. And given the 125^th Assembly District’s Democratic dominance, she’ll have an uphill climb.

But Ithaca real estate agent Lindsay Lustick Garner has declared as a last-minute write-in candidate to challenge two-term Assemblymember Anna Kelles.

Announcing Wednesday with a 47-second video on Facebook, Garner alleged that Democrat Kelles “does not represent our needs as a community.”

“We are screaming at the rooftop for help,” Garner, a self-identified Democrat, states in her video. “(Kelles’) policy on crime has made it more dangerous for us all.”

In taking on cashless bail and also New York’s electric school bus mandate, Garner easily parallels her message with that of Republican State Senate nominee Mike Sigler, whose Ithaca-Cortland district and Kelles’ partially overlap.

But Garner tells 14850 Today she’s running as an Independent and likes it that way.

Of the Democratic Party, “I no longer feel that’s where I belong,” she insists. “The two party system is failing us.”

Up until now, Anna Kelles has breezed toward reelection in an uncontested race. No Republican ran against her either this year or in 2022.

Those who support Lindsay Lustick Garner must remember her name, and then write it in at the bottom of the ballot’s fifth column.

(Oct. 24): Sometime in recent days, a large-diameter limb, constituting most of a dying maple tree at the eastern edge of Budd Cemetery on Enfield’s Gray Road, fell.

When it did, the limb dislodged from its base the upper portion of a large granite monument and clipped off that monument’s topmost ornament.

The limb also fell upon a smaller, adjacent gravestone and may have damaged that as well.

The Town of Enfield owns Budd Cemetery. Alerted to the incident at its October 23^rd Budget Meeting, the Enfield Town Board authorized debris clean-up and the repair of any headstone or monument damage.

Payment for the repairs will come from the Town’s Cemetery Fund, if not from insurance. The Enfield Highway Department, which under the newly-adopted budget will assume cemetery maintenance in 2025, may cut up and remove the wood.

Ahead? Dem. Josh Riley

(Oct 23): If you believe in opinion polls, Democrat Josh Riley could unseat freshman Republican Congressman Marc Molinaro in the 19^th Congressional District.

An Albany TV station (WNYT) commissioned a SurveyUSA poll of district voters. It reported Tuesday that “a total of 46% said they were voting for Riley and 42% chose Molinaro. Twelve percent of likely voters told SurveyUSA they have not made up their minds.”

The station’s poll reported a large gender gap, with Riley leading by 12 points among women and Molinaro two points among men.

There’s an odd generation gap in this survey. The Republican nominee actually fares better among those 18 to 34, Molinaro leading Riley by 13 points. Riley does better among those older, but his margins trail off as the demographic ages.

Of the more than 700 voters surveyed, SurveyUSA found immigration and abortion to be among the top issues. Of those who support a federal law to restore abortion rights, an overwhelming 88 per cent back Riley. But among those choosing to let each state decide the issue, Molinaro drew support from two-thirds of those polled.

(Oct. 21): Yes, in the tightly-contested Webb-Sigler State Senate race, the negative politics has begun. And no, it ain’t pretty.

The NYS Democratic Senate Campaign Committee—think Downstate Party bosses—have begun flooding the airwaves with inflammatory ads against Democratic Senator Lea Webb’s Republican opponent, Mike Sigler.

The ads link to a Democratic-contrived website just as low-rent as the ads themselves: therealmikesigler.com.

The website labels Sigler “a reckless landlord who aligns with extremists, wants to cut Social Security and roll back reproductive rights.”

Have your wallet handy. Because if you want to fact-check many allegations the site links to, you’ll have to crawl behind The Ithaca Journal’s paywall. Webb’s people probably figure you won’t.

But many insinuations scream out for context. Sigler didn’t vote “against an assault rifle weapons ban” on the Tompkins County Legislature. Instead, he opposed one of those “feel-good’ local endorsements of a national ban. Sigler said that “reclassification of certain types of weapons would be better.”

And the County Legislature has no control over Social Security. The comment about maybe raising the retirement age was plucked from a WRFI radio interview during Sigler’s 2022 Congressional campaign, his position far more nuanced when consumed in its totality.

“When they go low, we go high,” Michelle Obama once said. Don’t tell that to Lea Webb’s Downstate handlers. / RL

Social Services Offices

(Oct. 18): Tompkins County officials disclosed Friday they may declare a State of Emergency because of an ongoing sheltering shortage for the unhoused that suddenly got much worse.

“St. John’s Community Services (Ithaca’s primary homeless shelter) has notified Tompkins County that they will no longer operate the shelter facility… as of mid-November,” County officials revealed in a statement.

“Tompkins County is assessing additional options for ongoing shelter operations. County officials are considering the declaration of a State of Emergency to mobilize additional resources and flexibility to provide shelter,” the statement continued. The County said it will offer “alternative sheltering approaches.”

Already, Tompkins social workers faced an impending crisis. New York’s “Code Blue” mandate requires communities provide shelter when nighttime temperatures fall below freezing.

Tompkins County plans to repurpose the former Key Bank building downtown as a Code Blue shelter. But despite the mercury’s dropping, the bank’s renovations won’t be done until early November. 60-80 people could be sheltered there, but not before the work’s done.

Friday’s statement directs anyone in need of shelter to contact the Department of Social Services on West State Street. But again—Oh, Government—the offices are only open weekdays, 8:30 to 4:30.

DSS gives a number to call, (607) 274-5348. But whether it’ll be answered weekends, the statement doesn’t say.

Brown: “Still too high.”

(Oct. 16): Call it a round-down, if you will. But Tompkins County legislators Tuesday, by a pair of razor-thin votes, set as next year’s tentative budget a plan that would raise the tax levy by an even three per cent. Their action revised a committee recommendation of a week earlier that would have hiked the levy by 3.29 per cent.

Modest as it appears on the surface, the three per cent increase, critics argue, could raise the average homeowner’s county taxes by nine per cent because of skyrocketing residential assessments.

To lessen the increase, lawmakers drew $155,000 from Tompkins County’s bulging fund balance. Some argued that shouldn’t be done. Others said the levy’s reduction was too little.

“I think three per cent is still too high,” Newfield-Enfield’s Randy Brown stated. “I just think that putting money in our own coffers versus helping the people out is the wrong thing to do.”

Deborah Dawson stood on the issue’s other side. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a price on this one,” the Lansing Democrat argued. “I think this is a bad thing to do.”

Tompkins lawmakers raised the levy by two per cent one year ago, but by nothing for a couple years before that. The tentative budget now goes to a Public Hearing at month’s end. It would still face revisions thereafter.

Admin.-designate Akumfi

(Oct 15): The vote was quick with no objections. The appointee’s acceptance speech took even less time, barely half a minute.

The Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday confirmed Korsah Akumfi as its new County Administrator. He’ll arrive in early January to succeed the retiring Lisa Holmes.

“I’m very excited to be here,” said Akumfi, who’s been Administrator in Schoharie County for the past two years. “I’ve been looking at Tompkins County for a long time,” the appointee said in his off-the-cuff remarks. “I’m happy to be here finally.”

News reports from Schoharie suggest Akumfi was in 2022 offered the Tompkins County job, but turned it down to become Schoharie’s Administrator.

“I’m excited about the work,” Akumfi told the Tompkins Legislature. “Looking forward to it, and we’ll see how it goes.”

Korsah Akumfi was reportedly the only candidate from within New York State to be a finalist for the position Holmes will soon vacate. His starting will be about $180,000 annually.

(Oct. 15): If a loser in last year’s race for Enfield Fire Commissioner hadn’t objected, nobody would have.

Marcus Gingerich, appointed to a temporary seat on Board of Fire Commissioners in 2023, only to come in ninth in a subsequent election’s ten-way contest, made the only statement—read by his wife—at Tuesday’s brief Public Hearing on the Enfield Fire District’s more than $620,000 next year’s budget.

After the hearing closed, the four commissioners present adopted the budget unanimously, the final step needed for the plan to take hold for next year.

The budget is the Enfield fire service’s biggest ever, up 28.3 per cent from the current year, the increase largely because of first-ever bonding for an expensive fire truck.

“There’s not a lot of fat in this budget,” Commissioners Chair Greg Stevenson said after the vote. “I don’t think the commissioners are tone deaf” when it comes to the taxpayers, he said.

But Gingerich would disagree. When on the appointed Board, he’d have had the fire truck bonded over a longer span.

“I didn’t think it was necessary to break $600,000 until at least 2032,” Gingerich wrote in his statement. “This makes me question whether the Board truly has the best interest of the residents of Enfield in mind.”

Rockwell Road trees

(Oct 11): Several critics of the Enfield Highway Department’s tree-cutting practices—which Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins insists he’s done by-the-book, consistent with state and local law—verbally sparred with Rollins at the Enfield Town Board’s meeting October 9th. Cutting along Rockwell Road was the focus.

But out of the ongoing stand-off, something new and significant may have sprouted.

By a unanimous 4-0 vote, the Town Board adopted a resolution that could lead Enfield to establish a “Conservation Advisory Council.” Wide-ranging in scope, and governed by state law, the council would, under the Resolution’s adopted wording, “advise in the development, management and protection of (Enfield’s) natural resources.”

State law makes it clear the council would wield no power beyond that to recommend.

Two draft resolutions fought for adoption that night. Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) first submitted a version targeted toward protecting roadside trees. But the Board’s majority favored—and adopted—Councilperson Jude Lemke’s briefer, generically-worded, alternative.

Under the measure adopted, the Town Supervisor will investigate requirements to establish the council through talks with the Town’s attorney.

“If only we’d had it for Breezy Meadows,” this Councilperson, Lynch, said of the council and the controversial, now-approved northwest Enfield subdivision.

(Oct. 9): Making no changes from a meeting three weeks earlier, the Enfield Town Board adopted a nearly $2.5 Million Preliminary Budget Wednesday and sent it on for a Public Hearing in two weeks.

The spending plan—still not final until after a post-hearing vote—would increase the property tax levy by 6.12 per cent.

The Board voted 3-1 to advance the budget. Councilperson Robert Lynch (this writer) opposed adoption saying he could not support the budget unless further cuts were made. (Councilperson Melissa Millspaugh was excused.)

The budget preserves ten per cent pay raises proposed for Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins as well as for his Highway Workforce. Less substantial raises would be granted the Town Clerk, Town Supervisor, and Town Board.

Lynch pressed colleagues for reduced increases, ten adjustments in all. Each was rejected, most without even receiving a seconding vote. The Board majority even refused to eliminate first-ever minor “stipends” for members of Enfield’s Planning Board, though several Planning Board members had said one week earlier that they don’t want the money.

The Town Board could still revise its budget after the October 23 Public Hearing. But Wednesday’s action locks-in some expenses.

Shurtleff: It’s a 9.3 % hike.

(Oct. 10): At the close of three, grueling, eye-glazing meetings, a committee comprised of all Tompkins County legislators Tuesday recommended adoption of a more than quarter-Billion dollar 2025 budget, one that would raise the property tax levy by 3.29 per cent, an increase of about $123 on a $300,000 home.

The recommended levy increase falls below the 4.34 per cent rise that County Administrator Lisa Holmes had first recommended, largely because her staff had found $950,000 in previously unaccounted-for funds just days before the trio of budget sessions began.

The final committee vote Tuesday was 7-6, with one member excused. Three Democrats joined all three Republicans in opposing the recommendation. Enfield representative Anne Koreman supported the proposal; Randy Brown opposed it.

Taking assessment inflation into account, one of those dissenters, Lee Shurtleff, remarked, “Essentially we’re hitting the people with a 9.3 per cent increase in their property tax bill if we pass this.”

Before the final vote, legislators beat back Greg Mezey’s proposed amendment that would have tapped nearly $1.5 Million from the County’s large fund balance, partly to pay for new, one-time funding, but mostly to cut the tax levy increase by two full percentage points.

Legislators are set to ratify their committee revisions next Tuesday. Yet while the recommendation passed with seven votes in committee, it will take eight votes to do the same on the Legislature’s floor.

Dave Sanders (Sept. 30)

(Oct. 8): Advocacy works. Just ask Dave Sanders, Executive Director of OAR, the advocacy agency that operates “Sunflower House,” a transitional home for the previously-incarcerated.

Of the more than a score of speakers at a Tompkins County Budget Forum September 30^th, Sanders and his fellow Sunflower House supporters were the most frequent and vocal as activists lobbied the Tompkins County Legislature for add-ons to next year’s County Budget.

A Department of Communications news release Monday confirmed that Sunflower House had gotten much of what it wanted.

By a unanimous vote, the County Legislature, meeting as a committee-of-the-whole October 3rd , recommended increasing the 2025 budget by $45,000 in three-year, one-time funding to help Sunflower House pay its rent. The agency’s two Ithaca buildings house up to 12 people at a time.

“If Sunflower House is closed,” Veronica Pillar warned fellow legislators, “then we’re just going to see these same folks in our shelter, or in the street, and really struggling and being less healthy.”

No legislator opposed the Sunflower House add-on. OAR hopes to tap opioid settlement money to meet some of the rest of the home’s financial needs.

OAR’s supplement was only one of approximately 20 budget amendments—most of them spending increases—addressed during the committee’s four-hour Thursday meeting. Budget sessions continue this week.

(Oct. 7): There’s a way to do things and a way not to. This was the latter.

To commemorate the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and to denounce the Israeli retaliation to it, a pro-Palestine group at Binghamton University has announced a “Week of Rage.” Posting on Instagram, the group, “Students for Justice in Palestine,” stated its plans for an October 7^th student walkout, a “Culture Poetry Night” the following day, and a “Vigil” the day after.

But the inflammatory name given these presumably-peaceful protests prompted a rapid response Monday from Republican State Senate candidate Mike Sigler, a staunch defender of Israel.

“On the one year anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that left 1200 innocent people dead, it’s shocking to see a group at Binghamton University call for a ‘week of rage’ in clear support of Hamas and their terrorist actions,” Sigler stated in a news release.

“From the flyer, it’s clear that this is not a call for peace or for advancement of Gaza, but for a ‘week of rage’ against Jews on Binghamton campus,” Sigler added.

The Republican’s opponent, State Senator Lea Webb, has yet to weigh-in on the matter.

Yet one concludes that cooler heads on the Binghamton campus could have negated this peaceful event’s incendiary implications. Maybe organizers sought just what they’ve gotten. / RL

We’re at the top of the Top-10 list; $35.4M

(Oct. 4): If Marc Molinaro or Josh Riley hits you up for money in the next few weeks, sorry to tell you, they don’t need it.

AXIOS, the political tracking group, just released its list of the most expensive House races. Our District, NY-19, remains at the top. Democrats ($18.6 Million) are slightly outspending Republicans ($16.8 Million.) But with $35.4 M washing around, the difference probably doesn’t matter.

The next closest money race is an open seat in Michigan at $32.8 Million.

The big take-away, says AXIOS, is that Democrats are outspending the GOP in nine of those ten races, and that total spending in just those ten contests is coming close to what George W. Bush spent on his entire 2004 Presidential campaign.

“Money won’t decide who controls the Congress, but it provides a clear advantage,” AXIOS says.

Yet, consider this: Our Binghamton-straddled district is in a relatively cheap TV market. Money tends to just trip over its own shoelaces.

If you want to propel Josh or Marc to victory, maybe best join a phone bank or knock on doors. Donations here hold diminishing returns. /RL

(Oct. 3): It may be needed, but it won’t be pretty.

Briefing Tompkins County legislators Wednesday, a Deputy County Administrator indicated that when the County opens its temporary “Code Blue” wintertime downtown homeless shelter next month, clients will need to go to the bathroom outdoors.

“(The Facilities Department) is working with contractors to install fire alarm systems, remove the teller stations in the former bank building, cover the glass walls for privacy protection and enclose the entrance which will lead to the outside bathroom facilities,” Bridgette Nugent told the legislative committee.

“Facilities staff is also checking and activating lighting around the building and installing additional security cameras,” Nugent said.

The administrator did not detail whether the outdoor restrooms would be port-a-johns or something more elaborate.

Having failed to find a non-profit provider for Code Blue shelters, Tompkins County announced last month plans to repurpose the former Key Bank building, just steps from the Courthouse, to meet a state mandate to shelter the unhoused when nighttime wind-chill adjusted temperatures fall below 32 degrees.

Kit Kephart, Commissioner of Social Services, told the committee that her department still targets a November 1 opening for the shelter, though she admitted that “some sort of arrangements” may need to be made before then.

The Code Blue shelter would only operate 7 PM to 7 AM. When it’s cold daytimes, Kephart said, a “warming area” may also be needed, maybe at the Salvation Army’s Friendship Center.

(Oct. 3): When the Enfield Town Board resumes budget deliberations October 9th, it will start with a higher tax number than when it last left off .

“Sorry I don’t have better news!” Town Bookkeeper Blixy Taetzsch wrote Town Board members in an email Wednesday.

She’d refined her estimates, those first stated in Supervisor Stephanie Redmond’s Tentative Budget, presented the Town Board—and then revised by it—September 18.

Redmond’s first draft had called for an 8.85 per cent increase in the combined General and Highway Fund tax levy for 2025. After a series of informal Town Board adjustments, never actually voted on, the levy increase fell to something around 5.2 to 5.4 per cent. That’s where the Board left it.

Taetzsch’s Wednesday revisions ticked the increase up to 6.12 per cent.

Why? The bookkeeper blames the New York State Retirement Fund, a gremlin beyond Enfield’s control. The September draft projected a $6,200 increase (16%) increase in Highway Fund retirement premiums from the current year. The revised budget puts that increase at $17,700 (up 46.2%). Taetzsch admits the current year’s budgeted retirement cost fell a little short of what’s needed as well.

In Enfield, a small dollar difference can leverage big percentage changes. Next Wednesday’s meeting will determine whether the Town Board lives with the pain or instead cuts some more.

(Oct. 2): It doesn’t happen too often in politics: a public servant refusing to take money offered him or her. But it happened Wednesday night in Enfield.

At Alternate Greg Hutnik’s earlier suggestion, Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond had proposed in her 2025 Tentative Budget for the first time awarding minor “stipends,” tax-exempt compensation, to each member of Enfield’s Planning Board. The Planning Board Secretary, Town Clerk Mary Cornell, would also receive $1,200 annually for her extra duties keeping the Board’s minutes.

On Monday, Hutnik changed his mind.

“While the gesture is nice, I believe that it is unnecessary, especially for a town with a small tax base and one that is not being swamped with development cases to review,” Hutnik wrote the Town Board concerning the stipends. “Moreover, the Planning Board members do not expect this kind of reciprocity,” he wrote.

Wednesday, Hutnik shared his opinion with the Planning Board itself. And its members agreed.

“I’m not worried about getting a couple hundred bucks a year,” Rich Teeter remarked. “I don’t need the money.”

“I’m fine with that,” Board Chair Dan Walker echoed. “Every dollar they (the Town Board) spends comes out of my tax dollars, too.”

For Hutnik, the math isn’t that simple. He’s proposed that the $1,800 in member stipends go toward paying the Board Secretary more, up to $3,000.

The Town Board will make the final call.

Mezey: “Cut the cord.”

(Oct. 2): In a decision that may eventually rip the “International” off the name of the Ithaca Tompkins International Airport, the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday voted to close the money-losing airport customs facility.

“We’re not in a position to keep throwing good money after bad,” legislator Greg Mezey observed. The closure, Mezey said, represents “a mature decision for us to recognize when it’s time to cut the cord and move in a different direction.”

The customs facility opened four years ago. It lost $273,000 last year. And there’ve been only 26 international flights to the airport since the start of this year.

“We’re hiring a full-time TSA person to sit there and wait for 26 flights for the year,” legislator Shawna Black said. “That’s absolutely a waste of resources.”

Lack of a customs house could complicate what few international flights come here. There are no current international commercial routes. All the flights are private.

Only Mike Lane dissented in the 13-1 closure vote. “I don’t know exactly why the enterprise of our airport is under attack in the last couple of years simply because it’s suffered under pandemic,” Lane remarked. “I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of reasonable expectation to continue to support the customs house.”

The airport’s director acknowledged the customs facility could reopen should conditions change. But Roxan Noble cautioned the feds might then demand renovations.

Josh Riley (courtesy AP)

(Sept. 27): As Governor Kathy Hochul dithers on whether to use her executive power to remove indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams from office, our district’s Democratic Congressional candidate has made no secret of his preference that Mayor Adams should resign immediately.

19^th District hopeful Josh Riley—running to unseat Republican Congressman Marc Molinaro—issued a statement Thursday to the news source Politico, releasing it on the same day that federal prosecutors unsealed a five-count indictment charging Adams with offenses including receiving kickbacks from foreign interests.

“Upstate New York is facing serious issues, and the last thing we need is more corrupt downstate politicians compounding the problems, exporting their chaos, and abusing the public’s trust,” Riley told Politico. “Eric Adams should resign immediately.”

Riley was only one of four New York Congressional challengers who quickly stated either that Mayor Adams should resign or who strongly implied that he should.

As of early Friday, Adams had refused to step down as he strongly professed his innocence. Governor Hochul, meanwhile, had declined to intervene.

(Sept 27): It’s a decision that will lead to lost hair at many a Town Board meeting throughout the Finger Lakes, including in Enfield. In fact, it already has.

By a unanimous vote at their meeting Thursday in Cayuga Heights, municipal members of the Greater Tompkins County Municipal Health Insurance Consortium (“Consortium”) ratified their leadership’s recommended increase in health insurance premiums for covered municipal employees by 14 per cent. Members gave the matter no discussion and offered no resistance.

The rate increase had been telegraphed for weeks and is already baked into the Town of Enfield’s tentative 2025 budget. Governments pay the premiums, not the employees.

“All of us in the health insurance industry are feeling the effects of the high cost of claims,” Consortium Executive Director Elin Dowd wrote the Board in a statement shared at the meeting. Dowd insisted “the Consortium is still the most cost-effective way to receive high quality health care for your employees.”

In a separate action, the board approved continuation with Excellus BlueCross BlueShield as the third-party administrator for the Consortium. Here, there was some discussion. This Councilperson, representing Enfield, initiated it. Had other companies been considered, I asked.

Board Chair Rordan Hart, Mayor of Trumansburg, defended the continued affiliation, maintaining Excellus has the largest local provider network, and as a nonprofit, may best keep administrative charges in check. A unanimous vote followed. /RL

“An absolute freaking hit.”

(Sept. 26): The Enfield Community Council Board Thursday tallied its take from the September 14^th Harvest Festival. It netted just over $3,200. The largest share came from the chicken dinners it sold.

“The Bounce House was an absolute freaking hit,” ECC President Cortney Bailey exclaimed, talking about the blow-up exercise gym for children, first appearing at the festival this year.

Receipts were good, but they’ve been better. So the Board discussed how to change things up for next year. What about a parade?

”Ever since the fire company stopped (having a carnival) everyone has missed the parade,” Bailey observed. “I think it would bring in a ton of people.”

But parades also take a ton of planning. One volunteer—not present at the meeting—has reportedly agreed to organize the event. She’d invest a year to plan. The ECC Board will revisit the idea come spring.

Sadly, this year’s Festival cake wheel proved disappointing. So did the quilt give-away. “It may be time to reimagine that raffle,” Bailey said of the latter. The problem, quite frankly, is too few ticket-selling volunteers. One idea floated: sell tickets online.

Gondek: It’s a mandate.

(Sept. 24): School spanking, of course, has been banned for decades. But what takes its place, one learned Tuesday, becomes hard to define.

The Ithaca Board of Education that night adopted for its “first reading”—meaning it’ll be re-visited later—a policy prohibiting “corporal punishment,” but sanctioning “Limited use of Timeout and Physical Restraint.”

A word salad quite obviously tossed by some educational academic—with likely help from a politician or two—the 3,000-word policy leaves the casual reader clueless. A sample dictate:

“Positive, proactive, evidence- and research-based strategies through a ‘multi-tiered system of supports’ must be used to reduce the occurrence of challenging behaviors, eliminate the need for the use of ‘timeout’ and ‘physical restraint,’ and improve school climate and the safety of all students….”

Jennifer Gondek, ICSD’s Director of Special Education, explained that the policy comes by way of a state mandate—of course—with changes principally revising training and incident reporting.

Physical and Timeout Restraint practices occupy much of what’s drafted. But here’s the disconnect: “We don’t have Timeout Rooms,” Gondek said of Ithaca’s practice.

“If we‘re not removing people to calm-down rooms, maybe our policy should state it,” School Board member Jill Tripp responded. “I don’t want Timeout Rooms used in our district,” Tripp added.

Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell had no problem “if we Ithacanize it,” he said of the policy. Still, he cautioned, to placate Albany, “changes would need to be vetted by legal counsel.”

(Sept. 18): During a sometimes-tense more than three-hour meeting Wednesday, the Enfield Town Board came close to finalizing a 2025 Town Budget, one that would raise next year’s property tax levy by just over five per cent.

“It was on the heavy side when I got it, and it’s still on the heavy side,” Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond described the budget at the meeting’s start. Her first-submitted Tentative Budget, shared with Town Board members Monday, had projected as much as an 8.85 per cent hike in the property tax levy.

But Board members labored—and at times, hotly disagreed—Wednesday over how to cut the initial $2.51 Million budget’s bottom line and its tax hit. For the second straight year, the Board and Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins engaged in fiscal horse-trading. And in the process, Rollins secured for him and his workers a ten per cent raise. Redmond’s budget had first proposed just five per cent.

The budget would give only three per cent raises to the Supervisor and Town Board members. Town Clerk Mary Cornell’s salary would rise significantly, climbing to $40,000 in Cornell’s dual role as Clerk and Tax Collector.

During the back-and-forth, some changes emerged. Rollins agreed his staff will mow Town cemeteries next year. And for the first time, Planning Board members would receive a minor stipend for their services.

The Town Board returns to the budget October 9th. A Public Hearing will happen two weeks later.

Koreman: “Long overdue”

(Sept. 18): Eclipsed by an hours-long debate over whether to arm select probation officers, the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday quickly affirmed a committee’s recommendation and raised future salaries for themselves or for those who might succeed them after next year’s legislative elections.

The stair-step increases would elevate the previously-approved 2025 salary of $22,700 to $26,000 in 2026, $27,000 in 2027, and $28,000 in 2028. In that first year, lawmakers would see a 14.5% pay hike.

Ithaca’s Rich John was the only Democrat to join the Legislature’s three Republicans in opposing the pay raises. “I think it’s too much of an increase at one time,” one of those Republicans, Lee Shurtleff, objected.

But Ulysses-Enfield’s Anne Koreman countered that the higher pay is long overdue. “If they ask me about this job,” Koreman said of people she’s urged to run, “most people (say) there’s no way they can do this with the very limited salary, paying for childcare, transportation, rent or mortgage, and with the schedule the way it is.”

Debate over legislative pay consumed just four minutes. Never raised was member Greg Mezey’s proposal—rejected in committee—that would have tied legislative salaries to the higher, so-called “living wage.”

Administrator Holmes

(Sept. 17): Whomever the Tompkins County Legislature picks as its next County Administrator, expect it to be someone who’ll need to buy a house here.

Legislator Randy Brown briefed the Enfield Town Board September 11 on the progress the Legislature is having toward choosing the retiring Lisa Holmes’ administrative successor. Brown sits on a committee vetting applicants. He said the committee has narrowed down the field to “three good people.”

“Are any of them local?” this Councilperson asked Brown.

“One’s in New York State,” the legislator replied.

Quite obviously, no in-house candidate, if any had applied, made the final cut.

Before Lisa Holmes ascended to County Administrator in 2022, she’d served Tompkins County for 24 years, first as Director of the Office for the Aging, and then as Deputy County Administrator. Holmes’ successor, quite obviously will lack that institutional memory.

The full County Legislature will sort through and interview the three finalists later this month. / RL

Inflation in blue; Tax Cap that dashed red line.

(Sept. 16): Back in July, the State Comptroller’s Office issued a fancy chart that showed that despite an “inflation factor” that it then calculated at 3.30 per cent, the property tax cap imposed on local governments this year would remain at just two per cent.

And Monday, Enfield Town Bookkeeper Blixy Taetzsch confirmed the two per cent tax cap will also apply to Enfield’s 2025 Budget, set to be released this Wednesday at a Special Meeting of the Town Board.

Tompkins County, by contrast, got a break from the Comptroller this year. County Administrator Lisa Holmes reported earlier this month that the County’s tax cap will be a full 4.45 per cent. That gives budget planners downtown considerably greater latitude than the two per cent provides Enfield.

Quite frankly, the “tax cap,”—toothless in effect, but persuasive as propaganda—was enacted by Albany legislators to make themselves look good in taxpayers’ eyes, as if they had any impact on local budgets other than to thrust state mandates our way.

And for state legislators to hold any credibility in this area, they should impose the same tax cap on their own spending. Of course, they never do.

Along with hearing the Supervisor’s budget presentation Wednesday, the Enfield Town Board will likely set an October Public Hearing to override Albany’s penalty-free cap. / RL

(Sept. 14): The Enfield Harvest Festival, the community’s annual early-autumn event, went off without a hitch Saturday… well, almost. Again this year, the ping-pong ball drop got canceled; this time because an event at the airport across the lake prevented the plane from taking off. Rats!

Otherwise, it couldn’t have been better: Clear skies and very warm temperatures, which made for a good turnout at the Enfield Community Center. This year’s new event was a Bounce House for children.

The Trumansburg Blue Raiders Community Cheerleaders served up the chicken dinners. More than 175 chicken halves were sold, a near sellout. There was a cake wheel, antique auto displays, and a quilt raffle, plus vendors in the Great Room and elsewhere.

The Harvest Festival is in its 49^th year. All proceeds go to the Enfield Community Council to aid in its various activities.

Molinaro’s refuted retweet (best not read)

(Sept. 14): Even before this week’s Presidential Debate, local Congressman Marc Molinaro and his Democratic opponent, Josh Riley, found themselves squabbling over that largely discredited story alleging Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating neighbors’ pets.

The online news site, “City & State” reported September 10 that Congressman Molinaro, one day earlier, had retweeted on his “X” platform the allegation that a Springfield neighbor’s cat, which had gone missing, was seen outside a Haitian family’s home being carved up to eat. The eating of dogs, ducks and geese was also alleged. (Springfield leaders have refuted the allegation.)

“Josh Riley fought for open borders and dismantled our border security,” Molinaro appended to his September 9^th retweet.

“This is a debunked racist conspiracy theory,” Riley countered. “Molinaro should immediately apologize.”

He did not. Instead, he doubled down—not so much as to defend the Springfield allegation, as to attack Riley himself.

“Millions of illegals and billions in tax dollars later, it took a cat tweet to get the attention about a border crisis that wouldn’t be happening without Josh Riley,” Molinaro advised City & State in a statement. The congressman accused the publication of “shilling for Democrats.”

(Sept. 12): For quite some time, the “International” in “Ithaca Tompkins International Airport” has been… frankly… a joke.

The numbers told the story, as the Tompkins County Legislature’s Budget Committee Thursday voted to recommend closure of the local Airport’s cobwebbed Customs Facility. Airport Director Roxan Noble informed the committee that from January through May of this year, the Customs Facility was used six—yes, just six—times; little more than once a month.

Meanwhile, Noble said that for all of last year, the facility cost $273,000 to operate. Because of it, “our fund balance has dwindled to nothing,” she said.

So much for that. But then there was legislator Lee Shurtleff’s question: “Roxan, do we have to change the name of the airport now we’re no longer International?”

First, there were snickers about the room—and then reality sunk in. They may.

“That’s a good question, Lee,” Noble replied. “We may have to, but we believe there’s another airport that did not have to change their designation. It’s still up in the air.”

“I was half joking,” Shurtleff responded. “I didn’t realize I was onto something.”

Thursday’s committee vote was four-to-one. Chairman Mike Lane dissented. He would keep hope alive… as well as the airport’s name.

(Sept. 11): Given the glass façade, privacy could prove a problem. Yet Tompkins County—apparently out of desperation—has chosen to temporarily convert the former Key Bank building at the corner of Tioga and Buffalo Streets into a “Code Blue” wintertime homeless shelter.

Announced by surprise Wednesday, the bank building, slated for demolition to make way for a Center of Government, “will be refurbished to allow for temporary use as an emergency congregate shelter,” according to a County Government news release.

Tompkins County Legislator Randy Brown, attending an Enfield Town Board meeting Wednesday evening, said he and fellow legislators have known about the building’s temporary repurposing for about a week.

“Code Blue is a New York State-mandated program that provides funding for counties to provide shelter during the cold weather months when temperatures are 32°F or below with wind chill,” the County statement explained. “A warming center to provide temporary relief from extreme winter weather will also be available during the Code Blue program season,” it stated.

Dominick Recckio, Tompkins County Director of Communications, told The Ithaca Voice Wednesday that the Code Blue Shelter “would be able to hold 60-80 people at a time.” Full occupancy would make for a packed-in setting, considering the building is only two stories high.

Moreover, the infusion of unhoused persons into a downtown commercial area, even in winter, could raise compatibility issues. It’s too soon to tell how downtown residents and merchants will react.

Code Blue generally operates from mid-October through April. Brown told Enfield’s Board Tompkins County had to retrofit the doomed and mothballed building simply because no other adequate and acceptable locations became available.

The building on which the panels would sit

(Sept. 11): Enfield has solar panels on its Highway Department’s roof. Soon they may rest above the Town Clerk’s Office as well.

Armed with a newly awarded NYSERDA Clean Energy Communities Grant, the Enfield Town Board Wednesday voted unanimously to move ahead toward spending it to place solar panels atop the Town Hall, a roof covering both the Town Clerk’s Office and a one-time highway barn now used for equipment storage and a Sheriff’s Department satellite station.

Supervisor Stephanie Redmond reported the grant totals $60,000. One solar company quoted $64,000 for the installation, meaning Town taxpayers may need to pay the $4,000 balance.

Board members saw the grant-funded project as a bargain, and Redmond said the electricity poured back into the grid could offset power bills for other Town facilities, not just for the Clerk’s Office.

Board members mulled other possible uses for the grant, but came up dry. Redmond said she’d thought about insulating and remodeling the barn’s unused space, eyeing eventual expanded facilities. But she said NYSERDA wouldn’t allow its money to be spent that way.

The votes for Lang: Just four; motion fails.

(Sept. 10): By a 4-4 vote that killed the idea, the Ithaca Board of Education, now one member short, Tuesday rejected a proposal that would have asked Moira Lang, first runner-up in school board elections last May, to assume the board seat recently vacated by Katie Apker.

Lang’s name was never mentioned in pre-voting debate. But the resolution considered would have elevated her and no one else. Once the Lang resolution lost, no alternate plan to fill the seat was advanced.

Board members who’d sided with the more progressively-aligned Lang in this year’s contentious budget deliberations backed the proposed elevation. Those more budget-critical, including conservative newcomer Todd Fox, opposed it.

Fox said he doesn’t think the school board has the right to take away the public’s political preferences.

Adam Krantweiss agreed, noting that Lang—though, again, never mentioned by name—“did not have enough votes to make it across the finish line.”

Only Erin Croyle, Karen Yearwood, Garrick Blalock, and Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell backed asking Lang to rejoin without competition. “The person proved their worth time and time again,” Croyle said of nine-year ex-incumbent Lang.

It’s possible Lang could apply for the vacancy, should the Board accept applications. It’s possible it could leave the Apker seat open. No one expects a special election.

Shapiro: It’s “feel good”

(Sept. 10): Critics might say it comes one step short of dragging tenants to the polls.

Ithaca’s Common Council September 4^th debated for almost 45 minutes, but then tabled until January, a measure that would direct City staff to draft an ordinance mandating that whenever renters sign a lease or home buyers close a purchase, the landlord or real estate agent provide them a voter registration form.

Seattle and Washington, DC purportedly have enacted such laws. New York City proposed the law as well, but faced pushback from its Real Estate Board.

Alderperson Patrick Kuehl, a Cornell student, sponsored the measure. “We as a government have a duty and a responsibility to make voting as accessible as possible,” Kuehl told Council. He called a lease transaction “an easy place to insert” voter access.

But others pointed out problems. One is enforcement. Landlords may simply ignore the law.

“Staff don’t really have bandwidth” for enforcement, Alderperson Margaret Fabrizio countered. “It’s a time sink for something that’s really unenforceable,” she told colleagues.

Then there’s the philosophical point: “I just feel like this is one of those bills that makes Democrats feel good,” David Shapiro, a Democrat, said. “But it also makes Democrats who don’t like the government to get all up in their business leave the party. I just think this is government overreach.”

Though the current text didn’t state it, Kuehl told an earlier meeting he’d also want Cornell to give voter applications to students moving into dorms.

EMS providers lobby for a signature

(Sept. 9): A bill that would reimburse rural ambulance squads when a patient refuses to go to the hospital awaits Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature. And local Assemblymember Anna Kelles wants Hochul to sign that bill sooner rather than later.

Called the “TIP/TAD Bill,” the measure would amend New York’s Social Services Law to broaden the types of services ambulance technicians could perform and still have their service get Medicaid reimbursement.

Right now, Medicaid pays only when the patient gets transported to the hospital. As adopted unanimously by Assembly and Senate last June, ambulance services would receive reimbursement for providing treatment-in-place (TIP) or transport to approved alternate destinations (TAD).

But the way the bill was written, unless Hochul signs it before September 30^th, its terms won’t take hold for another full year.

Kelles calls the Governor’s prompt signature “imperative.” Broadening reimbursable options, she says, will “provide real solutions that address the lack of operational funding, insufficient wages, incomplete Medicaid coverage, inadequate Medicaid reimbursement rates, and antiquated restrictions that hamper all EMS systems across the state.”

That said, the legislation’s scope remains narrow. Its language speaks only to Medicaid reimbursement, not private insurance. And it would only reimburse ambulance services, not local rescue squads like Enfield’s, or Tompkins County’s Rapid Medical Response service.

John: It’s “work and not work.”

(Sept. 6): Less than two days after facing calls for fiscal austerity, a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature Thursday recommended pay raises starting at 14.5 per cent for legislators who’d win in next year’s elections.

Tompkins County’s 14 legislators now earn $22,700 annually. The committee’s recommendation would hike legislative pay to $26,000 in 2026, $27,000 in 2027, and $28,000 in 2028.

But members rejected, three votes to two, Greg Mezey’s more ambitious proposal that would have roughly tied legislative pay to the “living wage” and have elevated salaries to over $30,000 in their final year.

“You can’t survive on this alone,” Mezey said of current legislative pay. “And I think that precludes a number of people from potentially taking this on as a job, because it can be a job.”

“I look at this as work and not work,” legislator Rich John countered, “and I don’t think comparing ourselves to the other workers in the county or workers in general is entirely apt.”

Only Rich John opposed the final recommendation, a compromise from the three-year, $25,000 annual salary first proposed.

The full Legislature must ratify the recommended increases. Member Mike Lane said he wants salaries decided now, more than a year before elections, so that they don’t become a “political football.”

Holmes: Higher levy asked

(Sept 4): At a budget retreat in late-April, the Tompkins County Legislature directed County Administrator Lisa Holmes to draft a 2025 County Budget that kept next year’ tax levy increase within two per cent.

Holmes did, but Tuesday night she effectively shoved it into a drawer.

What Holmes recommended, instead, was a costlier spending package, a more than quarter-Billion dollar budget that would raise the levy by 4.34 per cent, just under the largely-symbolic, state-calculated “tax cap.”

Holmes blamed the revision upon the depressing audit report given last month that showed fund balance savings at a point that precluded their use to support programs department heads insist they must have.

“If we had started with the information that we gleaned in August, and we wanted to arrive at a two per cent,” Holmes said, “we would have needed to cut a lot further earlier on in the game.”

Over the summer, the administrator had asked departments to trim five per cent. But some said they could not do so, and their restorations were added back into the budget now recommended.

Legislative Budget Committee Chair Mike Lane made clear Tuesday that his committee’s many-meeting budget review will start with the “recommended” budget, not the trimmer, two per cent alternative.

Tuesday’s budget rollout proved far from perfect. Typically on presentation night, budget documents are posted promptly on the County’s website. Not this year, when they got confined to a weird URL, a link to it not found on the principal website’s home page even a full day later.

Brown: Fined or fired?

(Sept. 3): By a ten-to-three vote that happened to fall along party lines, the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday rejected legislator Randy Brown’s effort to refund more than $27,000 in otherwise improperly-imposed property taxes that the Enfield Community Council (ECC) had to pay simply because it failed to file an exemption form on time.

“This is 30 per cent of their entire budget,” Brown pleaded with colleagues. “They’re in dire straits now financially to pay their bills and do various things.” And Brown pressed the County Attorney for what would happen if Tompkins County bent the rules a bit on ECC’s behalf.

“You don’t get fined. You don’t get fired,” Maury Josephson replied. But there could be a “finding” that the County violated the New York Constitution’s “anti-gifting” rules, and ECC could be ordered to “disgorge” the moneys returned.

Then, again, nothing might happen.

“We all signed an oath when we took this office to uphold the constitutions of the United States and the State of New York,” legislator Deborah Dawson countered Brown’s argument. “It would be a really ugly optic if we were to start making exceptions to when we were going to uphold the Constitution.”

The property tax filings at issue date back to 2021. Brown had attempted last year, without success, to get ECC’s money back.

Only fellow Republicans Mike Sigler and Lee Shurtleff joined Randy Brown in supporting this latest initiative.

Verba, in the back row

(Aug. 31): The school’s camera never caught it. You had to have been there.

Amanda Verba, the Ithaca City School District’s Chief Operations Officer, sat at the rear of York Lecture Hall. August 27th was her final Ithaca School Board meeting. And she was choking back tears.

For more than four minutes, School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown paid her tribute. What followed was a standing ovation and more plaudits by Board members.

In September, Verba transitions to Trumansburg to become its Schools Business Executive. She’s one of two top ICSD executives to depart this summer.

Dr. Brown credited Verba for the “standard” she’d set at ICSD. “I’m always going to remember the standard by the way you carried yourself for eleven years,” Brown said. “Amanda Verba, we love you, and we wish you well.”

Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell told Verba, “I express my sincere gratitude for the dedication, for the commitment, for the professionalism, for the expertise that you possess. It’s a significant loss and somebody else’s significant gain.”

Board member Karen Yearwood echoed the praise. “I welcome your voice, your opinion, your direction, and your dedication over the years,” she advised Verba. “You are definitely appreciated. You will be missed.”

Legislator Randy Brown

(Aug. 31): Special thanks to Enfield legislator Randy Brown for trying, once again, to seek refund of more than $27,000 in taxes and penalties inadvertently assessed and collected from the Enfield Community Council three years ago.

Brown’s latest member-filed Resolution, which will come before the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday, Sept 3^rd, would as its first step, return the $6,315 charged ECC for late-payment interest and penalties while its 2021 assessment issue was in dispute.

It would also return the Tompkins County share of property taxes the agency paid that year, and further attempt reimbursement of more than $16,000 that ECC paid to the Ithaca City School District and the Town of Enfield.

As a non-profit organization, the Community Council stands exempt from property tax. But in 2021, as it purchased a former church through a private intermediary, the ECC failed to file exemption paperwork on time. Erroneously charged, it later paid the tax, but has sought reimbursement ever since.

“Tompkins County is known for giving people a second chance and that sometimes it is smarter to ask for forgiveness instead of permission,” Brown’s Resolution states.

The County Legislature, however, may not hold the final decision. Some in the past have said reimbursement requires state legislation.

Bd. Member Moira Lang

(Aug. 27): Presuming she’s interested, long-time Ithaca School Board member Moira Lang, first-runner-up in last May’s reelection race, could return to that Board to fill the seat suddenly vacated earlier this month by Katie Apker.

Though no votes were taken, and the absence of two continuing members made determination of a consensus difficult, a plurality of sentiment expressed at the board’s meeting Tuesday suggested that Apker’s vacancy will most likely be filled by Board members going down the list of losers from last May’s election and offering the position to those losers in rank order.

If the plan wins final support at a meeting next month, Lang, who’d finished fourth, 419 votes behind newcomer Todd Fox, would be invited to succeed Apker through next June. If Lang declined, next-place Barry Derfel would be offered the assignment.

All that members agreed to Tuesday was to write the procedure into a resolution and put it to a vote later. Firmly rejected was an option to fill the seat through a special election, which Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell warned could cost taxpayers 35-40 thousand dollars.

Board member Karen Yearwood voiced strongest support for a Lang appointment. Adam Krantweiss was the most hesitant.

“I would like to see the person selected by the community,” Krantweiss said. “Keep an eight-person Board” until next year, he argued.

Moira Lang, a perceived progressive, had defended the initial ICSD school budget that voters roundly rejected in May. Thus some could see her appointment now as reaffirmation of what they’d cast aside.

(Aug. 23): For its second straight meeting, the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners labored line-by-line on its budget last Tuesday. It worked on the numbers for 45 minutes and then set the budget aside.

Cutting expenses is hard. And next year’s required first-year bond payments for the $825,000 pumper engine bought in 2023 only makes the task harder.

“Our budget has not changed significantly other than the bonds coming up,” Commissioners’ Chair Greg Stevenson told the Board and the public. “Let’s go through this the next two weeks and see where we can cut a little here and cut a little there,” he advised commissioners.

Last year’s board set a 2024 budget of $483,691. Line expenses for next year show slight increases, though not by much.

But it’s the locked-in $126,576 principal and interest for that pumper that could push the new budget close to $600,000. Last year, Enfield voters set a $575,000 statutory spending limit for their fire district. But Stevenson said the bond payments remain exempt from the limit.

State law requires completion of the budget by September 17^th. Commissioners could finish at their next meeting, September third.

Deborah Dawson: “No, we’re not flush.”

(Aug. 23): Numbers can confuse. So let’s cut to the quick: Tompkins County legislators should have thought before they acted.

In a nearly hour-long, sometimes tortured, fund balance presentation this week, County Administrator Lisa Holmes reported to the legislature that the County’s “Unassigned Fund Balance”—essentially, its savings account—stood at $60.9 Million at the beginning of this year. It was $72 Million one year earlier. But it could total only $48 Million by the end of 2024.

Still, that prediction sounds worse than things actually are. Why? It’s largely because legislators locked up $5.7 Million in one financial reserve account last November; then tied up an additional $12.6 Million in more reserve accounts this January. Reserve doors swing one way: Easy to put money in; tough to get it back out.

Adding to the problem, the legislature last December amended its Fund Balance Policy to require keeping a full 25 per cent (rather than 18%) of the annual budget in fund balance. With a $195 Million budget, that $48 Million mandate is about the bare minimum required.

“I think that our fund balance issues are self-imposed,” legislator Randy Brown told colleagues. “Eighteen per cent was perfectly fine for a long time.”

But Lansing’s Deborah Dawson likes those reserves, and the policy’s comfortable cushion:

“I think that what we’re learning here is that however big the number is, it’s not necessarily that we’re flush,” Dawson said. “And it’s better to know that stuff than to continue spending as if the gravy train was never going to pull out of the station.” /RL

Chief Judge Wilson

(Aug. 22): Some will say New York is headed on the road to Oregon, the state where everybody votes only by mail.

Tuesday, the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest Court, upheld lower court rulings and declared constitutional a new state law that permits any New Yorker to request a mail-in ballot, regardless of circumstances. Up until now (aside from during the pandemic) voters had to state a valid reason, like illness or travel, to qualify for an absentee ballot.

Republicans, led by North Country Rep. Elise Stefanik, had challenged the 2023 law which liberalized absentee ballot rules. Tuesday’s 6-1 ruling reflected the current Court’s expansive reading of the State Constitution. Chief Judge Rowan Wilson wrote the majority opinion.

To those who say the decision advances democracy, remember this: New York’s voters, in a 2021 referendum, had rejected a constitutional amendment to expand mail-in voting, a decision that the State Legislature and Governor Hochul explicitly circumvented by passing the law, just upheld.

Chief Judge Wilson acknowledged it was “troubling” that lawmakers employed this override. “Upholding the Act in these circumstances may be seen by some as disregarding the will of those who voted in 2021,” he wrote. Yet Wilson said his role is to decide the law, not render political judgments.

Dissenting Judge Michael Garcia said by acting as it did, the legislature essentially told voters, “we never needed you anyway.”

(Aug. 22): A Republican walking the picket line with striking union workers has a “Man bites dog,” quality to it. So it deserves mention here.

Tuesday, August 20th, GOP State Senate candidate Mike Sigler joined the picket line with Cornell service and maintenance employees, members of the United Auto Workers, striking for better pay and benefits. Sigler got a picture taken with the strikers, and a press release the next day touted the action. The statement did not tell us how long he walked.

Sigler, to date, has drawn labor support primarily from police and corrections officers’ unions. He also holds some trade union support.

The candidate said he talked with Cornell’s strikers “about the union’s position, and how the percentage increases offered by Cornell are well below inflation and simply won’t sustain current workers.” He also said he talked about how much employees must pay the university to park.

Naturally, critics will cite that a couple weeks earlier, Sigler was one of three members of the Tompkins County Legislature to vote against initial efforts to establish a higher, stand-alone Tompkins County Minimum Wage.

Sigler’s Democratic opponent, incumbent Lea Webb, has yet to join the Cornell action.

Chair Klein (with clerks) pushed for more time

(Aug. 20): In what probably became the kiss of death for two Enfield agencies—or anyone else, for that matter—in tapping Community Recovery Funds that Cayuga Medical Center might forfeit for failing to gain state approvals for its Crisis Stabilization Center, the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday extended by one additional month the hospital corporation’s deadline for getting Albany’s elusive approval.

By an 11-1 vote, with Newfield-Enfield’s Randy Brown the lone dissenter, the legislature delayed the CMC approval deadline from August 30^th until the end of September.

If CMC cannot secure state authorization by September 30^th, County government will likely plow its $1.5 Million award into its own general fund, “Dollars for Dozers,” as legislator Greg Mezey termed it.

Had the CMC deadline not been lengthened, two Enfield applicants—its Community Council and the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company, close runners-up in an earlier funding round— might have found a path toward snagging funding support for their capital projects.

Because federal rules under which the Recovery Fund operate set strict year-end deadlines, the one-month extension is crucial. County administrators told the legislature they’d find it nearly impossible to turn-around any new funding grant in just three-months’ time.

“Finance took a harder look within themselves” and determined the later, September date would give them time to complete the Crisis Center’s paperwork, Legislature Chair Dan Klein told colleagues in pushing through the extra month.

Tuesday’s extension came as a surprise, not revealed in advance of the meeting.

While Randy Brown opposed the CMC extension, Enfield’s other County legislator, Anne Koreman, supported it.

Happier days; our mall in ’23, then Dick’s left.

(Aug. 17): Pyramid Corporation hasn’t owned the mall in Lansing for several years. No matter, locals still call it the “Pyramid Mall,” and those of us with long memories recall the controversies surrounding its construction in the 1970’s.

This week came word that the mammoth, yet ailing “Destiny USA” (formerly Carousel Center) in Syracuse, still owned by Pyramid, totters on the brink of foreclosure.

Pyramid failed to obtain a one-year extension on more than $430 million in overdue mortgage loans, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported Friday. The paper quoted a bond rating agency as stating the mall developer could not pay a required $38.9 Million installment payment on its debt.

The problem there is the same as the problem here: an exodus of big-box stores. Penney’s, Best Buy and Bon-Ton (remember them?) have left Destiny, plunging its value. Similarly, at its local counterpart, our mall is quickly becoming a hospital annex, and a bottom-of-the-barrel tenant may soon put storage units here.

The ratings agency reportedly once valued Destiny USA at $710 Million, but now it’s worth only nine per cent of that.

With Pyramid unable to pay, and with lenders poised to enforce, a foreclosure could sell the mall to a different party, were one to be found.

Making this all more painful, the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency holds subordinated debt of $259 Million, taxpayer money that could be lost.

Congressman Molinaro

(Aug. 15): Mark your calendars, assuming both men honor their commitments.

A quartet of Albany-based news outlets announced this week plans for an October 10^th debate between Incumbent Republican Congressman Marc Molinaro and Democratic challenger Josh Riley. Both candidates accepted their invitation.

The debate will happen even though the 19^th Congressional District doesn’t extend quite as far north as Albany, itself. Yet the district reaches into those newspapers’ and broadcast stations’ wider region.

And although the Albany Times-Union doesn’t circulate in Tompkins County, and the radio and TV stations involved don’t reach our area with their signals, expect the October face-off to be carried to this western end of NY-19 through affiliates yet to be determined.

We’re informed the 7PM debate October 10^th will be moderated by journalists from the participating journalistic consortium.

The six Board members who attended Aug. 13.

(Aug. 13): “Building Substitutes,” a special category of stand-in teachers in the Ithaca City School District (ICSD), stand among the first to lose their jobs in the cost-cutting Ithaca voters imposed by rejecting the first school budget put to them last May.

As many as a half-dozen of the estimated 39 building substitutes took their grievances to the Board of Education Tuesday. Board members voiced sympathy, but declined to budge on what appears to have been an administration decision.

“I’m unemployed. I have a family to support,” Mike Brindisi, a building sub at Northeast Elementary, pleaded to the Board via Zoom. “We’re part of this school, part of this community, providing a safe place and a friend,” Brindisi said.

The ICSD, we’re told, established building substitutes in 2020 during COVID, often to manage in-school students when teachers taught virtually. Over time, the positions morphed into semi-permanent floating substitute instructors.

Board member Jill Tripp called the staff cut “a really tough one,” a decision the Board, itself, has yet to publicly ratify.

“It does come down to budgets and money,” new member Emily Workman remarked.

“The building subs are amazing,” Board member Erin Croyle acknowledged. “But we are in a crisis,” Croyle added. A “$6 Million cut is a lot.”

Apker, with Dr. Luvelle Brown, April 2024

(Aug. 13): Ithaca School Board member Katie Apker missed Tuesday’s Board meeting. She’ll likely miss most of those to come.

Without advance warning, School Board colleague Jill Tripp announced Apker’s surprise resignation at meeting’s end, doing so as she authored a Resolution commending Apker for her brief tenure. She’d served only one year of her three-year term.

No reason was given for Apker’s departure. An inquisitive moderate, the mother of four and research associate at Cornell’s ILR School avoided pitched battle during the ICSD’s recent financial forays. If it’s any sign, Apker initially supported Tripp for Board President in July, then reluctantly swung her vote on a later ballot to the winner, Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell.

Now, the Ithaca School Board must decide what to do. After the meeting, Tripp outlined three choices: The Board can appoint Apker’s successor, it can leave the seat vacant for a year as it did with another opening a couple of years ago, or it can call for a special election. Tripp warned that latter option is “pricey.”

(Aug. 13): Enfield Fire Chief Jamie Stevens admitted he was “taking it on the chin” by purchasing what he did.

But during a nearly four-hour long budget planning “workshop” Monday, Stevens told Enfield’s Board of Fire Commissioners he’s buying a pair of tablet computers and associated hardware to place in two Fire District vehicles so as to receive the “CAD” emergency notifications employed by Tompkins County Emergency Response. The Chief said later he’s also requesting a computer at the fire house to dedicate as a CAD base station.

Lack of effective CAD communication hampered Enfield firefighters during the destructive July 15^th thunderstorm (see earlier story). Commissioners tentatively included the mobile tablets within next year’s budget.

But it didn’t stop there. Fire Commissioners’ Chair Greg Stevenson asserted that the $6,494 expense should be borne by Tompkins County, which sits on mammoth fund balances, but seems oblivious to local fire department needs.

“Seems the County is going opposite of ‘shared services,’” Stevenson remarked. “We’re getting less and less and less support from the County.”

“I feel like we should contact (County legislators) Randy Brown and Anne Koreman, and see if the County has figured out that shared services doesn’t count anymore,” a visibly angry Stevenson continued.

Fire Commissioners Monday filled in most lines of their tentative 2025 Fire Budget. They’ll do more work August 20 and may adopt the budget September 17.

(July 24): If New York Republicans hold hopes of recapturing the State Senate—or at least trimming its Democratic supermajority—latest data confirms their path heads through Ithaca and Binghamton and the political success of Mike Sigler.

Money never flows by accident. And recently-released campaign finance data shows the GOP pumping Big Bucks into Sigler’s 52^nd District fight against first-term incumbent Democrat Lea Webb.

The Sigler campaign crowed last week when its latest report indicated a four-to-one fundraising advantage over Webb.

During the reporting period, Republican Sigler raised more than $166,000, while Webb raised just under $41,000.

And the Lansing Republican legislator has money in the bank still unspent. Sigler’s campaign reported an account balance of more than $165,000, compared to Webb’s less than $67,000.

“Sigler benefited significantly from the new NYS Public Financing Program, which provides candidates running for Senate and Assembly with the ability to qualify for public matching funds based on small donations from residents in their district,” the Sigler campaign stated.

The 52^nd District stands among the most competitive in New York. Two years ago, Webb beat Republican Rich David by just under 2,400 votes of more than 107,000 cast. Webb won only in Tompkins County; David in the other two.

(Aug. 8): Four “Tiny Houses” on a single, combined lot may soon sprout near the corner of East Enfield Center Road and South Van Dorn Road.

Contractor and developer Patrick Head presented the Enfield Town Planning Board Wednesday with his most-preliminary “Sketch Plan.” More of a concept than a layout, Head said he plans to construct four, tiny, one-bedroom dwellings off a common driveway on the south side of Enfield Center Road west of the Van Dorn intersection. They’d be adjacent to several larger homes recently built on lots he’d subdivided.

“It’s good to have more housing,” Planning Board Alternate and Deputy Town Supervisor Greg Hutnik remarked.

“It looks like the kind of project that we’d like to see,” Board Chair Dan Walker stated. “It provides affordable housing that we need…. It increases the density, but not a lot.”

Head plans to drill one well to serve all four of the tiny homes. But Walker noted that’s no worse than for one, four-bedroom house. Head reported he’s gotten good flow levels from existing wells nearby.

Expect Head to return as soon as September with a detailed site plan.

(Aug. 7): In contrast with the election-day chaos of last December, the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners took steps Tuesday to ensure that nothing like that happens again.

Adopting a “District Election Policy,” as one of several, the Board set firm rules to govern this December’s ballot count, and those that occur annually thereafter.

The multi-point procedural list, approved unanimously, would set firm 3 PM until 9 PM voting hours; no absentee ballots would be accepted; candidates would need to file letters of interest generally by the Wednesday before Thanksgiving; and if multiple Fire Commissioner positions came up for election—for example, if someone resigned a post early—candidates would need to state clearly which position he or she sought.

The Chairperson of the Election, normally the Commissioners’ Secretary, would run the election and take charge of procedures.

This year’s December election, as opposed to last year’s, will likely decide only one Commissioner’s seat, that held by one-year incumbent Chris Willis.

In defense of a continued Two-Year Term for Town Supervisor:

“If you do a darned good job, you’ll get reelected over and over and over and over.”

Councilperson Robert Lynch; Enfield Town Board, July 31, 2024.

In reply: “Or you have somebody writing a blog about you that is all lies, and people actually believe it, you know (he, he, he), that’s a possibility too. There’s people that have media that severely manipulate the population into believing things that are wholly untrue, oftentimes. And it can be incredibly frustrating.”

Supervisor Stephanie Redmond; Enfield Town Board, same meeting.

Idea: Let’s compare the facts someday. / RL

(Aug. 1): As authorized by the Town Board in mid-July, weekly band concerts at the under-construction Enfield SkateGarden were to start August 8^th. They won’t.

The Town Board learned Wednesday that organizers have not finalized insurance coverage for those events. The Town Board had predicated its approval on the Town’s own insurance premiums not rising. They would. So Skate Garden Inc., the nonprofit having oversight, must bear the insurance expense.

During Wednesday’s meeting, SkateGarden visionary Daniel Woodring texted Supervisor Stephanie Redmond that the likely insurer will charge his group $600 a year.

Woodring conceded it’s a setback. And concerts can’t start until the Town Board signs off. The Board’s next meeting isn’t until August 14^th.

Original plans had called for weekly fundraising concerts at the SkateGarden site from early-August through Halloween. SkateGarden, itself, is set to open in early-October.

Deborah Dawson

(July 31): Tompkins County legislator Deborah Dawson, a reliable budget hawk, was out of the country for several meetings last spring and this summer. And because she was, a customarily-routine annual Resolution to permit next year’s County budget to override the New York State Tax Cap failed for lack of a supermajority.

Now Dawson’s back. And Tuesday, August 6^th she’ll ask the Legislature for “Renewal” of its June 4^th override measure. If successful, and if all her allies attend the meeting, she’d cast the ninth deciding vote to put the override over the top.

But she may have a fight. First, a bipartisan coalition that joined Dryden Democrat Greg Mezey with Lansing Republican Mike Sigler nixed the override two months ago.

“The public is 100 per cent against this,” Sigler said of the override. Mezey argued the County could tap its estimated $30 Million fund balance to keep property taxes within the cap.

And there’s a parliamentary question. We were told at the time that reconsideration could come only at the Legislature’s next meeting, not now. Dawson may be attempting an end-run around that rule.

(July 16): Maybe half of them, but not everybody, will get relief by Midnight from the power outages caused by the destructive thunderstorms that swept through Enfield and the rest of Tompkins County Monday.

In a mid-afternoon conference call with local officials, T. F. Winderl, spokesman for NYSEG’s Ithaca division, said he expects “40 to 50 per cent” of those customers in Tompkins County affected by the Monday evening storm to have their service restored by Midnight Tuesday. Winderl cautioned that another round of storms passing through or later predicted for the area could hamper restoration efforts.

The spokesperson told conferees that as many as 100 “wire-down calls” had been received, as well as 18 reports of broken poles (including, by the way, behind this writer’s house.)

The Tuesday storm left as many as 5,992 customers in the Ithaca area without power, Winderl reported.

As for remedial efforts until full power is restored, the utility spokesperson said NYSEG is arranging for shipments of dry ice and bottled water, distribution details yet to be finalized. In Tompkins County, those supplies will likely be transported to the NYSEG operations center on Route 13 near Etna. As yet, no cooling stations had been established to Winderl’s knowledge.

Amanda Verba (June 11)

(July 30): People take pay cuts for good reasons. And no doubt, Amanda Verba has hers.

In a decision that scores a major win for Trumansburg’s Central Schools, but provides a troubling commentary on where Ithaca’s education stands, the Ithaca Times reported this week that Amanda Verba, the departing Chief Operations Officer for the Ithaca City School District, has been hired by Trumansburg as School Business Executive. She’ll start work in September.

The Verba hire was made remarkably low-key, considering its stature. Her appointment was buried in a unanimously-adopted “consent agenda” during the school board’s mid-July organizational meeting. Her name was never mentioned. The matter got no discussion. Neither Verba, Trumansburg, nor Ithaca Schools officials chose to comment on the administrator’s transition.

At ICSD, we’re told Amanda Verba most recently earned $182,402 annually. The Times reports Verba’s Trumansburg salary will be only $146,286 next school year, a $36,000 cut.

Whatever the reason for Verba’s step downward, the decision bodes poorly for Ithaca, where its Superintendent has time-limited his presence there, the Deputy Superintendent has left, not likely to be replaced, and school board elections last May turned out two incumbents in favor of newcomers with plans for change. / RL

Amanda Verba (with Garrick Blalock) at the Enfield Community Center, June 7th.

(July 24): More than one top administrative office will be vacant when Ithaca City School District students return this September.

Amanda Verba, Chief Operations Officer of the District and reportedly its second highest-paid employee, has resigned her position, The Ithaca Voice reported Wednesday. She becomes the second administrator just below School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown to resign this year. Deputy Superintendent Lily Talcott departed the District in June to head the local BOCES.

Amanda Verba did not announce her planned departure. Rather, the publication learned of it through sources. It was unable to contact Verba directly.

“A spokesperson for the district confirmed Verba had ‘notified the Board of Education of her intent to transition out of the Ithaca City School District,’” The Voice reported.

The go-to point-person for this year’s controversial and once-rejected District Budget—and thus a convenient recipient of undeserved blame—Amanda Verba has worked for the ICSD since 2013. She has been “shaping the district’s financial and operational strategies with exceptional skill and dedication,” a District spokesperson stated.

Not only does the freshly-restructured Ithaca Board of Education have Verba’s and Talcott’s positions to fill. It must address Superintendent Brown’s own decision to end his service to the District when his contract expires in 2028.

“Flaco,” R.I.P.

(July 24): Remember “Flaco,” the New York City owl released by a vandal from his enclosure last February at the Central Park Zoo , only to later fly into a building and die? It prompted a state effort—never adopted—to “bird-proof” window glass. Now that initiative is coming to Ithaca.

According to The Ithaca Voice, Alderperson Patrick Kuehl has sponsored a proposed Ithaca ordinance that would require all new buildings built in the City to comply with the U.S. Green Building Council’s “LEED” rating system to reduce bird collisions, predominantly through use of “bird-friendly materials.”

Kuehl’s “bird bill… would specifically require that all new buildings applying for a permit present documentation that the building meets the outlined bird-friendly design standards,” The Voice reports.

Ithaca’s proposal would not affect Enfield or other places in Tompkins County. But it would go farther than the state bill Assemblymember Anna Kelles had sponsored. Hers would have only impacted buildings built or leased by State Government.

Kelles’ measure cleared the State Senate, but died this term in an Assembly committee.

Predictably, experts at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology back Kuehl’s initiative. The Alderperson plans a June 27^th forum at Kendal at Ithaca before bringing his measure to a vote.

“Nervous.” Shawna Black

(July 24): You could be excused for thinking members were talking in code for more than a half-hour near the end of the Tompkins County Legislature’s July 16 meeting.

They were pondering the little-discussed potential sale of their Human Services Annex to an “LDC,” letters they never thought to define.

Moreover, they adopted two seemingly-conflicting resolutions, one of which was in their “red folders,” hidden that night from the public.

Indeed, you had to retrieve a long-forgotten April posting in The Ithaca Voice to gain context.

It seems a “Local Development Corporation”—there; that’s the “LDC”—with former Downtown Ithaca Alliance Executive Director Gary Ferguson its driving force, and developer Mack Travis by his side, has its eye on the Human Services Annex, its adjacent County employee parking lot, and other privately-owned parcels on so-called “Block 14. ” (Yes, more code.)

Whatever Ferguson, Travis, and whoever else want to do remains unclear: maybe some kind of “mixed use” including senior housing, possibly a bus station. Details aren’t known right now.

By one 8-5 vote, the Legislature resolved the block “is not for sale at this time.” But then, by an identical margin, it agreed to “cooperate with the LDC in its pre-development work.”

“Whenever I hear ‘Let developers be developers,’ those words make me nervous,” legislator Shawna Black remarked.

Yes, to some, this whole thing suddenly has a stench about it; the stench of big money, political manipulation, and sweetheart transactions followed only by dashed expectations. We’ve smelled that stench before. / RL

(July 19): How often does this happen these days? A freebie.

Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins informed the Enfield Town Board Wednesday night that three roads resurfaced last year with tar and stone will be resurfaced again in the coming weeks… and at no expense to the Town.

They got “a bad batch of oil,” Rollins said the paving contractor had told him. The work was warranted, so the contractor will come back and do the job right.

The west end of Bostwick Road, as well as Rothermich and West Enfield Center Roads will each receive fresh oil and stone. Rollins said drivers may have noticed that since last year’s oil “didn’t stick,” a lot of the stone has drifted to Bostwick Road’s shoulders since then.

No doubt, somebody will pay for this mistake. Thank goodness, it won’t be Enfield.

Supervisor Redmond

(July 18): Nothing said or written at an adjourned Public Hearing Wednesday will likely dissuade a majority of the Enfield Town Board from resubmitting to voters this fall proposals to double the length of future terms for three Town offices.

Aside from comments from Town officials or their spouses, no one spoke publicly at the hearing that law required be held before the Town Board places on the ballot measures essentially identical to those voters rejected in 2021.

Only two comments came in from the general public. Both were in writing and read before the Board. One supported the change. One opposed it.

Former Town Supervisor Jean Owens wrote that she deserves “the right for my vote to be my voice and to have the opportunity to vote for this change.”

Julie Magura of Rockwell Road wrote that “Elected positions are not a right and should not be taken for granted.”

The changes would affect the Enfield offices of Town Supervisor, Town Clerk and Highway Superintendent. Both Highway chief Barry “Buddy” Rollins and Supervisor Stephanie Redmond spoke in favor of longer terms.

It’s likely the Board will vote July 31^st to schedule referendums for November.

“It sends a bad signal to small business…”

(July 17): Thinking politically, if for no other reason, the lawmaker whose committee backed study into a stand-alone Tompkins County Minimum Wage surprisingly yanked it from the County Legislature’s agenda Tuesday, thereby delaying its consideration for three weeks.

Dryden’s Greg Mezey requested postponement “so that we can have additional experts here to speak on the topic,” experts who, he said, had “scheduling conflicts” Tuesday.

Names weren’t mentioned, but they likely include leaders of the Tompkins County Workers’ Center and Cornell University’s principal labor union, the United Auto Workers. Workers’ Center and UAW activists had lobbied Mezey’s committee for a local Minimum Wage the week before.

But although there was no action, there was comment; namely from this Enfield Councilperson, Robert Lynch:

“It’s a bad thing to think about going it alone,” this Councilperson told legislators. “It’s probably not legal under state law to start with…. But you’re also sending a signal, a bad signal to the small businesses of this community that you really do not matter that much to us.”

“I want to see those businesses… survive,” I said. Former Ithaca mayoral candidate Zach Winn also voiced opposition to setting a higher local wage.

So far, only legislative Democrats have weighed in. Those on the committee each supported the study Resolution. But Republican Mike Sigler has yet to comment. Expect him to criticize it vigorously.

Lt. Governor Delgado (Beteto Matthews/AP)

(July 14): A decision by New York Lt. Governor Antonio Delgado to urge President Biden to exit the Presidential race has caused a rift between him and Governor Kathy Hochul. How deep of a rift it is depends upon whom you ask.

Politico reports Governor Hochul was “displeased with Delgado’s surprise show of political independence,” yet she denied that she was “furious” about her second-in command’s urging that Biden withdraw his re-election candidacy.

“Every day we’re talking about people who have a difference of opinion is a day we’re not talking about the existential threat of Donald Trump becoming president,” Hochul said Thursday, two days before former President Trump was wounded at a campaign rally. Hochul firmly wants Biden to stay in the race.

While saying he holds “immense respect and admiration” for President Biden’s commitment to the American people and to democratic ideals, “He can add to his legacy, showing his strength and grace, by ending his campaign and making room for a new leader,” Delgado posted July 10^th on social media.

The news site “City and State” quoted an anonymous labor source as saying “Hochul is now ‘furious’ with Delgado,” whether for the urging itself, or that Delgado chose to upstage New York’s top elected leader.

“It’s undermining the governor and makes her look weak,” a different source told Politico.

(July 10): The initial reason was an ongoing Tornado Watch. But as the Enfield Town Board abbreviated its regular July 10^th meeting, shoving most of its reports and actions—including a trio of Public Hearings—to a hastily-scheduled July 17^thsession, it learned of a legal wrinkle that would likely have forced postponement anyway.

The evening’s principal business was the renewed initiative by some Board members to extend future terms-of-office for the Supervisor, Town Clerk, and Highway Superintendent to twice as long as they are now. But an arcane New York law, retrieved by Councilperson Jude Lemke (a lawyer), requires physical or snail-mail service of the proposed local laws to each Board member as long as eight calendar days before their vote. That hadn’t been done. (Email doesn’t count.)

By the time Lemke had discovered the glitch, the weather-conscious Board had already adjourned its hearings for one week—not quite enough time. So, members concluded they’d need to convene yet again, probably on July 31^st, if they wanted to vote.

Enfield’s electorate roundly rejected the terms-of-office extensions in 2021. This Councilperson, Robert Lynch, opposes their reconsideration. Yet other Board members stand more sympathetic. / RL

(July 10): A $9,999 Centers for Disease Control grant funded it. This week, we learned what Tompkins County got for its money.

Tuesday, the Department of Whole Health unveiled the mural it commissioned for the Albany Street side of the Human Services Annex, artistry “commemorating community public health efforts and honoring those who passed away from COVID-19.”

Sadly, the message could be lost on passers-by. While the graphics may be in-your-face, as is the tradition of Ithaca street art, the message is ever-so-subtle, showing a group of candles, a masked nurse in one corner, and most prominently, the portrait of Millicent Clarke-Maynard, a retired local educator.

You’d need to be told. Millicent was among the first older adults who received the COVID-19 vaccine locally.

“The mural captures different visual elements of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Tompkins County community,” Whole Health stated in a news release. “The mural shows people coming together in an uncertain and challenging time for our community.”

Despite the earlier hype, the mural is relatively modest, gracing just one section of the building’s expansive western wall. Mind you, in a few years the Annex may come down after the offices it houses consolidate in a new Center of Government.

Anna Kelles

(July 5): Ithaca-area Assemblymember Anna Kelles has commented on the recently-reported death threats and racist messages sent two African-American leaders of the Ithaca City School District.

As disclosed at a June 11^th Ithaca Board of Education meeting—and reported here first —Ithaca School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown and School Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell were sent the vulgar messages after national conservative media picked up ICSD’s “Students of Color Summit,” an event viewed by some on the Right as racially-exclusive government advocacy.

“Whether the voice messages came from people within or outside our local community, they are indicative of a pervasive sickness in our culture, one that we need to face and heal,” Kelles said in a 550-word statement, released June 28^th. “This sickness stems from a myopic focus on the ‘me and mine,’ a tribalism that is fundamentally threatened by any kind of otherness,” the Assemblymember added.

Commentators can argue whether Kelles’ verbal intervention carries corrective benefit or fosters community healing when the spokesperson holds only a peripheral link to what occurred. But speak out, Anna Kelles did. And she also urged concerned residents to reach out to groups like “Village at Ithaca,” and “Showing Up for Racial Justice,” organizations seen by some as on the Far Left of the racial debate.

Police have yet to identify the source of the threats made against Doctors Brown and Eversley-Bradwell.

(July 2): Regulation of the Emergency Medical Service (EMS), especially from the New York State Health Department, has become increasing complex. Tuesday night, the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners responded to that complexity.

At Chairman Greg Stevenson’s initiative, the Board July 2^nd established a District EMS Committee. It will draw half its membership from the Board of Commissioners and half from members of the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company (EVFC).

The committee will “help us with compliance and advise us on all matters relating to EMS,” Stevenson said. “The District and the Fire Company will benefit,” Stevenson assured the Board.

Fire Commissioners Robyn Wishna and Alan Teeter were named to the committee. Alexis Comparetta and Ellen Woods will be invited to represent the EVFC.

Survivor: Bd. President Eversley Bradwell

(July 1): The newly-reconstituted, more moderate-bending Ithaca Board of Education found it hard to get its house in order Monday. The absence of Todd Fox, likely its most conservative new member, didn’t help.

One person short, the Board agonized through a series of 4-4 tied votes as it tried to pick both a President and Vice-President. A 9 AM meeting that should have been open-and-shut, dragged on until almost Noon.

At the end of three ballots, incumbent Sean Eversley Bradwell emerged to secure another year as Board President. He won 6:2, with Jill Tripp and Adam Krantweiss dissenting.

Tripp, the newfound favorite of fiscal conservatives, was also nominated for Board President. But she failed to secure the needed fifth vote.

Krantweiss became Vice-President. Yet much like Eversley Bradwell, he had to outlast his own tied-vote challenger, Garrick Blalock.

Yes, it’s early. But what emerged Monday was an apparent philosophical and attitudinal divide on this new Ithaca Board of Education. It puts Tripp, Krantweiss, Katie Apker, and newly-elected Emily Workman nearer the center; with Eversley Bradwell, Blalock, Karen Yearwood and Erin Croyle to their left. At least on leadership, that’s how they’ve aligned.

Smooth shoulders = safe kids

(June 27): The Enfield Highway Department came to the rescue Thursday just days before the Enfield Community Council will open its recreational facilities for summer camp.

Last year, with help from a Tompkins County grant, the Town of Enfield paved the long-abandoned basketball court behind ECC’s Community Center. Then winter came, and the dirt surrounding the court settled making the pavement edge easy to stub one’s toe.

“The Health Department will not pass us for it,” member Vera Howe-Strait reported to the ECC Board Thursday. But with the next breath, she told of the solution.

Vera had met earlier that day with Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins, crew member Gabe Newhart, Supervisor Redmond and her deputy, Greg Hutnik. They moved fast. During the highway crew’s lunch break, they brought in topsoil and made a gradual slope to the grass. It’s acceptable now.

“Thank you, Enfield Highway Department,” ECC President Cortney Bailey shouted out at the Board meeting. Expect a poster board to go up showing appreciation. Too often they only hear the complaints, Bailey remarked.

And Bailey cheered about another achievement Thursday. As many as 50 children have signed up for ECC’s summer camp.

Rockwell’s canopy brush cut

(June 26): Prompted by what some see as overly-aggressive tree pruning by crews rebuilding Rockwell and Porter Hill roads, residents took most seats at a Special Enfield Town Board meeting Wednesday night and for more than two hours voiced their concerns to Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins’ over his tree cutting practices that remove the “canopy” that shelters those roads.

“I fell in love with the area because of the trees,” one woman told the Town Board. “This is one of the most beautiful and enchanting places,” Rockwell Road’s Charlie Elrod prided Enfield. Elrod called Rollins’ pruning practices “aggressive overreach.”

Dialogue mostly remained civil. Yet Rollins stood his ground, saying the law grants him the authority. One reason he gave for cutting back the canopy: it’ll allow snow to melt faster in winter. Some challenged the Superintendent’s rationale.

As time passed—and emotions calmed—Wednesday’s attendees and Rollins agreed to future cooperation. They’d discuss which limbs need be cut, and which may stay.

The Superintendent said he won’t return to tree cutting on Rockwell until the fall. That’s when its eastern end gets pruned.

Supervisor Stephanie Redmond cautiously welcomed one resident’s suggestion that Enfield budget for an arborist’s services next year. The person would guide Rollins’ decisions… and his chain saw.

“Thanks.” Dr. Eversley Bradwell (file photo.)

(June 26): Unless you were a deep-insider, you would have missed it. Except, perhaps, for Ithaca School Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell’s passing recognition Tuesday of the talent the district is losing. And, oh yes, the long executive sessions the board took—one that lasted more than two hours—and stretched Tuesday’s Board meeting to three minutes short of Midnight.

Buried within the Board’s Consent Agenda—and ratified routinely—a Personnel Report confirmed the departure of the Principal of DeWitt Middle School, the promotion of an associate principal to replace her, and the “termination” of Associate DeWitt Principal Ramelle Liverpool.

Associate Boynton Middle School Principal Daniel McGrath will assume DeWitt Principal Carlan Gray’s leadership post July first.

The Ithaca Times quotes a letter Principal Gray sent to parents and teachers in mid-June. The principal said the decision was hers, yet left the backstory unstated.

“It is with a mixture of sadness and gratitude that I write to inform you of my decision to resign” Gray reportedly wrote. “I thank you for allowing me to serve your children for four years.”

Both DeWitt and Boynton middle schools have gotten bad grades lately, cited in a state report for poor academic performance, particularly among students of color.

Other administrative changes, contained in the Personnel Report, confirmed the retirement of Corey Mitchell as Associate Principal at Ithaca High School. Also, as previously announced, Deputy School Superintendent Lily Talcott will leave to become Superintendent of the local BOCES.

Among Latin’s advocates; Anna Tribble

(June 26): Budget cuts carry consequences. And a pair of foreign language programs at the Ithaca District’s high school and middle schools has emerged as a revised budget’s first and most prominent casualty.

A large and vocal turnout of parents, teachers, and some students packed the Ithaca Board of Education’s meeting room Tuesday night. More than a score of speakers occupied an hour’s time urging reversal of a newly-revealed plan to cut Latin and Chinese Mandarin instruction from the ICSD curriculum.

Melena, a DeWitt Middle School graduate, found her passion morphing into tears as she shared her disappointment in losing the opportunity to carry her Mandarin courses into High School. “Latin made me… a better student in all of my courses,” Anna Tribble, a former student, told the Board.

“Decisions made for short-term reasons have long-term negative effects,” parent Shawn Kennedy, a Latin course supporter, stated.

Following an initial budget defeat in May, the Ithaca Board of Education cut $5.9 Million in proposed spending to trim the total down to what residents approved in a re-vote referendum June 18^th. Specific program cuts have not surfaced until now.

“We have heard you and we will be talking more about language programs,” Board member Jill Tripp assured the evening’s critics.

“I want to avoid… pitting programs against each other,” Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell cautioned. “I don’t know where we’re going to be headed,” he added. “It’ll be a long summer. Give us some time”

Mezey: Beware of “Mushy Areas.”

(June 23): Following legislative action this past week, neither Cheech nor Chong could keep his County Government job very long. Then, again, he might.

Following a half-hour of agonizing debate, the Tompkins County Legislature June 18^th approved a “Cannabis-Free Work Environment” policy that got ever-more neutered as the minutes passed.

The easy part was banning consumption on the job. But what about working under pot’s influence? A committee had recommended an employee’s supervisor make the call and mete out discipline.

“It’s a determination not of whether someone is under the influence as… it’s based on their work performance,” a discomfited and tongue-tied County Administrator Lisa Holmes explained. “It is seemingly a mushy area here,” she admitted.

“I think mushy areas can create problems for an employer that allows for mushy areas,” legislator Greg Mezey remarked.

On Mezey’s initiative and by an 8:4 vote, the Legislature amended the policy to remove supervisory observational enforcement and to prohibit only job “impairment,” not one’s being merely “under the influence” of cannabis.

The amended policy passed 11-to-one, with only Shawna Black dissenting.

“I understand the intent of just to have a policy,” Black acknowledged. “But the reality is that this could be someone’s job that we’re talking about, and they could lose it if someone thinks they’re under the influence.”

“I don’t think this is ready for prime time,” Black said of the policy.

Case Lost; M. Byrnes

(June 22): An amendment to the New York State Constitution that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the Empire State is back on the November ballot after a lower-court judge had briefly blocked it.

In a unanimous ruling June 18^th, the five-judge Appellate Division of State Supreme Court ruled that conservative plaintiffs who’d sought to keep the so-called “Equal Rights Amendment” from voters based on a legal technicality had actually violated a technicality of their own.

The mid-level court did not reach the merits of the opponents’ arguments. Rather, it found the plaintiffs had employed an inappropriate procedure to bring the suit, and that the procedure they should have used was already time-barred by a statute of limitations.

The Equal Rights Amendment passed the Legislature twice. It was challenged last October by two private individuals and by Marjorie Byrnes, a Livingston County Assemblymember. Justice Daniel J. Doyle had sided with Byrnes and her supporters in a ruling that’s now effectively voided.

“We are gratified that the courts dismissed this frivolous case that was brought … to block equal rights right here in New York,” Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the state Senate Majority Office, informed the Albany Times-Union.

Democrats of late have lined up in favor of the amendment; Republicans against it. Some conservatives have warned that voter passage this fall could advance transgender access to school bathrooms and girls’ sports.

(June 21): Allegations of overly-aggressive planned tree-cutting along Rockwell Road will prompt a special meeting of the Enfield Town Board, most likely to be held on Wednesday evening, June 26^th.

The planned tree removals and pruning would be performed in conjunction with the planned repaving and related improvements to both Rockwell and Porter Hill Roads, work funded by Town Board action earlier this year and prioritized by Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins in his 2024 work plan.

State law grants Rollins operational authority in such matters. And the Superintendent insists his tree-cutting plans follow state guidance.

“We believe his interpretation of that guidance is overly broad,” one concerned Rockwell Road resident, Charles Elrod, wrote the Town Board in requesting the “emergency” session.

In response, Rollins allegedly informed Elrod that if the trees cannot be cut, the road project will not proceed.

From the Enfield Civility Resolution, adopted by the Town Board, Sept. 13, 2017:

RESOLVED to exhibit and encourage the kinds of personal qualities that are typical in a civil society—gratitude, humility, openness, passion for service to others, propriety, kindness, caring, sense of duty, and a commitment to doing what is right in the Enfield community. All Enfield board members, committee members and staff shall strive to:

Treat everyone courteously
Listen to others respectfully
Give open minded consideration to all viewpoints
Focus on the issues and avoid personalizing debate
Embrace respectful disagreement and dissent as democratic rights that are inherent components of an inclusive public process and tools for forging sound decisions and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Enfield board members, committees and staff shall strive to promote the use of and adherence to these guidelines in all Enfield community activities.

Since January 2020, I’m proud to have been the Enfield Town Board’s representative on the Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG). At our regular Town Board meetings, I report on TCCOG discussions of intermunicipal interest that TCCOG has addressed in its meetings.

Now added to this website, filed under the the “TCCOG” tab, are the written versions of my monthly reports, presuming TCCOG has met since our Town Board’s last session. Please browse these reports and provide me whatever input you’d like.