Monthly Report
Tompkins County Council of Governments
for June 11, 2025
by Councilperson Robert Lynch
Enfield TCCOG Representative
The Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG) met on May 22nd. TCCOG took up several issues. Once again, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) drew prominent attention.
EMS: TCCOG’s Emergency Planning and Preparedness committee—it’s often, inaccurately, termed a subcommittee—reported on limited progress to date in advancing its initiative to better-coordinate emergency services about Tompkins County. Yet what Dryden Councilperson Dan Lamb and Caroline Supervisor Mark Witmer, each a committee member, chose to share publicly at the May 22 meeting overlooked a broader initiative the committee had considered during earlier, private deliberations.
“Administration is looking at planning for more robust countywide emergency services, including ambulance,” Witmer reported, the supervisor affirming a brief report given earlier in the meeting by County Administrator Korsah Akumfi. The Administrator had spent little more than a minute discussing the subject. Akumfi had previewed a forthcoming May 27 meeting of the Tompkins County Legislature’s Public Safety Committee at which EMS would later be discussed. And Akumfi alluded only in passing to a Department of Emergency Response (DOER) “presentation” of its proposal to address the problem.
Discussion would have ended at that point had I not reminded TCCOG of an April 2nd committee meeting at which Paul Bishop, Principal and Project Director for the Rochester-based Center for Governmental Research (CGR), had outlined his proposal to study local EMS challenges and prepare recommendations. Subsequently, on June third, the County Legislature commissioned CGR’s $48,000 study.
I had attended the April 2nd committee meeting, after which Supervisor Witmer had restricted topic disclosures to the briefest of summaries. What neither I nor any other TCCOG member outside of the committee knew on May 22 was that the committee had held yet a second, private session, one at which DOER staffers had detailed their own proposal and had secured general committee acceptance.
The DOER proposal, not yet endorsed by the County Legislature, but set to receive consideration in the CGR study, would vastly expand Tompkins County’s Rapid Medical Response (RMR) program into a secondary, stand-by ambulance service. DOER’s pending proposal would enlarge RMR’s current nine-person, non-managerial staff (3 full time; 3 part-time; 3 per Diem EMT’s) to 30 or more employees (plus per Diems). RMR would purchase three ambulances for basic life-support and for transport. RMR’s proposed annual budget would grow from its current $546,828 to over $3 Million.
At the Legislature’s Public Safety Committee on May 27, DOER administrators expressed in aspirational terms their ability to staff-up the expanded RMR service. Neither DOER staff nor legislators identified funding sources for the increased expense, nor did they raise the prospect for municipal cost-sharing.
Dryden’s Dan Lamb confirmed to TCCOG that Governor Kathy Hochul’s earlier proposal, one that would have declared Emergency Medical Services an “essential service,” and also would have mandated a degree of county-level coordination of EMS, had died in this year’s legislative budget negotiations. Lamb blamed the New York State Association of Towns (AOT) in part for the initiative’s demise.
“I’m not waiting for the state to save us on this,” Lamb told TCCOG, referring to the broader issue of EMS funding. Yet, he added, “I’m really glad that we’re moving ahead with basically a plan that reflects what the State Legislature would ask, which is call on counties to show that there is a cooperative agreement among the municipalities to provide EMS services throughout the county jurisdiction.”
But where, exactly, is that “cooperative agreement among the municipalities?” The full TCCOG membership knew next to nothing that day about DOER’s plan to expand RMR. And any intermunicipal cost-sharing plan for local EMS isn’t even at the conceptual stage, let alone ready to implement.
Dryden, and to a lesser extent, Ulysses, hold disproportionate burdens in the EMS discussions. Both Dryden Ambulance and Ulysses’ Trumansburg Ambulance serve significant numbers of patients outside of their respective service areas. Dryden’s out-of-area calls run to 40 percent. Every mutual aid call costs the community’s taxpayers money. Therefore, each municipal service seeks county-wide relief.
There’s a “lack of recognition of the problem,” Dan Lamb complained of the New York State attitude. “They just don’t see the problem.” And when New York’s more than 900 towns speak—most vocally through the AOT—they say “We don’t want the state telling us what to do,” Lamb asserted.
Ulysses Supervisor Katelin Olson said she’d talked with those at AOT. Olson suggested there might be “bandwidth” for municipalities to “get onboard” and consider emergency services as essential. Yet Olson added, “The problem is there’s a lot of fear that it’s going to be another unfunded mandate.”
EMS remains “a tremendously important community service,” Mark Witmer ended the discussion. “And our community services are supported by our taxes, so I don’t think we should shy away from that.”
Footnote: The May 22 discussions over EMS raise a systemic issue within TCCOG: What weight and importance should be assigned the organization’s committee structure, and should a committee report first to the TCCOG membership before it shares its findings with third-parties? When DOER’s plan to expand RMR later reached the County Legislature, some inferred that the concept had won TCCOG’s full endorsement. It had not. Full membership was unaware of the plan the day TCCOG met. Plainly put, we’d been kept in the dark. With that in mind, the TCCOG committee structure may deserve a revisit.
Einhorn Center: Nicole MacPherson, Cornell’s Coordinator of Work Study Programs, and Renee Farkas, Director of Student Programs, discussed with TCCOG the university’s David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement and the student work-study programs coordinated by that center.
MacPherson reported that approximately 300 students participate annually through the Einhorn Center’s Community Work Study Program and engage some 50 eligible employers, both on- and off the Cornell campus. Eligible employers include non-profit organizations and local governments. Under the program, federal funds pay at least three-quarters of a position’s salary. The benefiting employer pays the rest. The organization must supervise the student participant, and the position cannot displace any employee. “The positions do need to be specifically for students,” MacPherson said.
Participants in the Community Work study program often serve in the fall or spring semesters. A limited number serve during the summer. The Einhorn Center also coordinates two other programs the presentation referenced: the Empire State Service Corps, fully-funded by New York for students at the state-supported units; and the Pre-Orientation Service Trips (“POST”) program, that places students, 10-11 to a group, into single-day, community service projects during pre-orientation in mid-August.
What kind of work can students do, one TCCOG member asked? “Data analysis, social media outreach, website updating, operational support,” MacPherson offered as suggestions.
“If you have a project that you’ve been thinking about doing for a long time and you just don’t have the staff to pull it together, you could consider hiring a student,” MacPherson suggested. There are some limitations, MacPherson qualified: No high-risk duties, like operating heavy machinery, or climbing ladders more than five-feet tall. The amount of driving is limited as well.
As for the POST program, Farkas cited work projects like pulling invasive weeds, cemetery clean-ups, or placing stickers on library books. “We look for things that don’t need a ton of training, but can keep a group of kids busy for a half-day or six hours,” Farkas said.
Flood Information: A representative of the Tompkins County Department of Planning and Sustainability outlined for TCCOG new online tools, available on the Tompkins County website, that address the new flood mapping and associated regulations that take effect county-wide June 18.
The Tompkins County information is accessed through the “Government Resources” tab at the top of the County Website’s Home Page, and then by clicking the “Flood Information” sub-menu. Categories include information about flood insurance, including its cost; a Flood Insurance Rate Map; and short videos on various flood-related topics, including the securing of documents and “What are Five Quick Things You Can Do in Your Home Right Now that Could Help if a Flood Happens?”
After the Planning Department’s presentation, I surveyed TCCOG members as to whether any other municipalities had received the resident objections to their revised Flood Damage Prevention Laws like we in Enfield had received in May. Only Caroline’s Mark Witmer reported any resident comments, but he said that the Town Attorney’s advice had allayed most fears. Some towns had not yet held hearings.
Countywide 911 Addressing: Revisiting a topic discussed on-and-off- for more than a year, TCCOG discussed a proposal by Tompkins County’s Department of Emergency Response to have County Government take over assignment of street and road addresses to ease their location by emergency responders. No TCCOG member expressed objection to the take-over, although several towns—including Enfield—have yet, themselves, to take a formal vote. We need to do so.
TCCOG was told that Director of Emergency Response Michael Stitley had set two conditions: 1) That municipalities unanimously buy into county-wide house numbering; and 2) that Tompkins County Government assume the power to correct prior numbering errors and inconsistencies.
I posed the question: Might a resident object that someone has changed a long-held house number?
Caroline’s Mark Witmer answered (Caroline had renumbered recently): “From a few residents we did get resistance or concern,” Witmer acknowledged. “But actually the most vocal residents said, ‘I recognize this problem on our road, and I knew this was coming. I just hate that you did it now.’”
Respectfully submitted,
Robert Lynch, Councilperson
Enfield TCCOG Representative