News Briefs
Agreement Reached; No TCAT Strike
(Mar. 22): Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) has averted a strike by its unionized drivers and mechanics, with both sides late Saturday announcing tentative agreement on a new labor contract.
“We appreciate the hard work and dedication of the UAW Local 2300 bargaining team and our employees who remain committed to providing safe and reliable transit for the community,” TCAT General Manager Matthew Rosenbloom-Jones said in a statement.
The UAW’s TCAT Chairperson, Brandon Chamblee was equally upbeat. “We are encouraged by the progress we’ve made at the bargaining table and remain dedicated to ensuring a fair and equitable future for TCAT workers,” Chamblee stated.
On March 12, the UAW reported that 84 percent of TCAT’s union members had approved a strike authorization, which would only be implemented, it said, if negotiations failed to produce a contract that workers deemed fair.
Details of the tentative pact were not immediately released. During negotiations, according to media reports, the union had sought cost-of-living adjustments, assurance of a living wage for all TCAT employees, and modifications to mandatory work schedules.
“Both sides remain committed to maintaining uninterrupted service for the community while the agreement undergoes the membership ratification process,” Saturday’s joint announcement stated.
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A White Elephant Colored Red
(March 20): Media reports this week informed us that developer Frost Travis will lose millions on the Library Place fiasco, the tax-abated downtown Ithaca housing project that took flight after Tompkins County sold its mothballed “Old Library” to Travis eight years ago only so he could tear it down. He did. And we all suffered.
The Travis-Hyde development firm will now offload the four-story, $30 Million monster that overpowers DeWitt Park to a Rochester-based company, Park Grove Realty. Frost Travis acknowledges he’ll lose millions. Too few people want to live at Library Place for the rents he’s charging.
The Industrial Development Agency will transfer the $5.32 Million tax break to the new owners.
In my opinion, there’s never been anything good about Library Place. And it started when in 2017 the County Legislature foolishly sold an amazingly structurally-sound 1967 building for just $925,000. Legislators now plan to invest $40 Million for new office space that the Old Library could have provided.
Here’s what I told the County Legislature the night it authorized the sale:
“The Old Library Building is too good to lose. It has many good years of useful life left. It deserves to be kept in the public’s ownership and used for a public purpose… In this community, we throw away all too much only to harbor regrets later.”
Well?
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Fire House Med Mod Moved
(Mar. 19): Forget for now the Enfield Fire District having to double its medical budget to meet the higher costs of mandated physicals for volunteer firefighters. It won’t happen right away. It could happen next year instead.
“The best thing to do is to continue with Trumansburg Family Medicine for 2025,” Chairman Greg Stevenson told Enfield’s Board of Fire Commissioners Tuesday.
Stevenson’s advice came two weeks after he’d warned Commissioners that switching from the T-Burg practice to an occupational medicine provider could raise the Fire District annual costs for physicals from $6,000 to twice that.
Commissioners had eyed the change amid fears that T-Burg Family Medicine may soon merge with the local hospital corporation, which would then redirect physicals elsewhere.
“The big companies are swallowing up the little companies,” the Chairman warned. “We should work on a policy and plan for 2026.”
Delaying a change until next fiscal year eliminates the immediate need to find the extra cash.
“Not anybody is going to fall through the cracks,” Stevenson said. Fire volunteers can still get physicals through their family doctors.
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Tabor out at T.C. Libe
(Mar. 19): The leader blamed for “weeding” countless under-used books from the Tompkins County Public Library and directing them to the dumpster is now out of the library herself.
“The Board of Trustees of the Tompkins County Public Library has accepted the resignation of Leslie Tabor as Library Director, effective March 17, 2025,” the Library Board of Trustees announced in a brief statement issued the Tuesday morning after Tabor turned in her notice.
“The Board appreciates Ms. Tabor’s dedication to the Library and wishes her well in her next endeavor,” Trustees said in their perfunctory farewell.
Obvious to everyone, in view of the public and media criticism of Tabor’s leadership in recent weeks, the resignation was pressured. It beats an outright firing.
Since joining the library as its director in November 2022, Tabor had allegedly removed nearly half of the local library’s physical books and ordered the improper disposal of more than $350,000 in materials, many of which were owned by other libraries, not hers.
Personnel problems also plagued Tabor’s tenure. Earlier this month, the Tompkins County Legislature, which only indirectly oversees the library, yet provides $4 Million in annual support, ordered a “forensic audit” to get to the bottom of the library’s woes.
The library board said it will detail plans for filling the director’s vacancy in coming weeks. / RL
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The Cortland Standard: 1867-2025
(Mar. 14): For quite a while, The Cortland Standard has been the closest daily newspaper to Ithaca that actually still published local news. Now it will publish no longer.
In an announcement that caught many by surprise, the Crown City-based, family-owned daily announced March 13 that that day’s paper would be its last. Its owners will file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy—liquidation. The paper has folded. Its 17 employees are out of work.
Like many papers that struggle, The Cortland Standard blamed “declining readership and increasing costs” for its demise.
“I hoped this day would never come,” Publisher and Editor Evan C. Geibel wrote in a departing essay that headlined the paper’s final edition. “I’m so very grateful to my colleagues and the community for what they’ve done for me, my family and each other,” Geibel wrote.
The Cortland Standard began its 157-year run in 1867, just after the Civil War. “William H. Clark acquired the Cortland Standard in 1876 and his family has owned it ever since,” Geibel’s essay stated. The publisher claimed the Standard is (now, was) the second-oldest family-owned newspaper in New York and one of the five-oldest of its kind in America.
Times change. Few of us read newspapers anymore. Blame Bill Gates and his fellow travelers. That’s how it goes. We must look forward, not back. But we can also cry. / RL
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Emergency Enfield Dig
(Mar. 13): Old things last only so long. And after an estimated 77 years of life, the dry hole that disperses septic tank effluent from the Enfield Courthouse, the Town Board’s meeting hall, has failed.
“Nobody knows how deep it is,” Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins informed the Town Board March 12. Most likely the 6 x 8-foot cinder block hole was dug when the Courthouse, formerly the Enfield Fire Station, was built in 1948.
The dry hole’s located beneath the Courthouse’s gravel driveway. And what failed was its lid. Operators of the co-located Enfield Food Pantry reportedly discovered the imminent rupture only days earlier. As a precaution, the driveway is closed until the work gets completed.
Spending money it would rather not have spent, the Town Board Wednesday allocated up to $12,000 from its Contingency Account to fund replacement costs.
Rollins predicted construction would be a “one-day job.” Due to the project’s complexity, contractor Paul Carpenter will perform the work, either Friday, the 14th, or during the middle of the following week.
Pantry officials assure that the driveway’s closure will not impact weekend food distributions.
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Hot Housing Cools Down
(Mar. 7): What a difference a year makes. And this year’s planned pause in local property revaluations reflects it.
“We’re seeing some appreciation, but not as much as we have,” Tompkins County Director of Assessment Jay Franklin told a County Legislature committee March 6. “I think interest rates are finally catching up to people… Consumers are less inclined to buy large-ticket items; their homes, your cars, things like that.”
Franklin also cited public uncertainty about the presidential election.
The Director reported local real estate values have risen on average only five percent during the past year. Compare that with the 19.8 percent annual hike that caused so much pain one year ago.
The cooling of house inflation supports the Assessment Director’s call for a multi-year pause in what had been annual reassessments. As a practical matter, there’ll be no wholesale adjustment this year, except for the 955 parcels with additions, demolitions, or boundary line changes.
“The market went up five percent. So what’s really the difference between a $200,000 and a $210,000 house?” Franklin asked.
County Assessment would need the local Legislature’s consent to postpone reassessments for as long as the four years Franklin would like. And to that question, the Government Operations Committee Thursday gave no firm guidance.
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A Look into the Libe
(Mar. 6): Amid media reports alleging employee dissatisfaction and Library Director Leslie Tabor’s questionable disposal of surplus books, the Tompkins County Public Library will get a deep-dive “forensic audit” by orders of the Tompkins County Legislature.
“We’re not alleging anything bad has happened,” County legislator Mike Lane remarked as the Legislature prepared to authorize the outside audit March 4. “But we have a whole lot of questions about the budget itself, and we want to understand it better,” Lane said.
Legislature Chair Dan Klein moved the audit authorization at Tuesday’s meeting without disclosing it beforehand.
Klein acknowledged the Library Board had been notified of his proposal. And in contrast to much longer discussions during the Legislature’s four-hour meeting, lawmakers took only five minutes to consider Klein’s resolution. The authorization passed unanimously. Up to $9,999 can be spent to fund the audit.
“[A] forensic audit will provide an independent examination of TCPL’s financial condition, records, processes, controls, and past and current financial and operational practices to address the questions that have been raised,” the adopted resolution states.
Will the audit include Tabor’s controversial “weeding” of books? Neither the resolution nor the Legislature directly addressed that specific question.
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Tompkins County Faults Involuntary Treatment Bill
(Mar. 5): Make it clear: When it comes to changing state law, the Tompkins County Legislature holds only the power to persuade and a propensity to pontificate.
Legislators took ten minutes short of an hour March 4th doing the latter; debating two competing resolutions passing judgment on Governor Hochul’s call for broader state powers to involuntarily treat the mentally ill and drug addicts.
In the end, legislators rejected, five votes to nine, the resolution that would have supported Hochul’s initiative. They then endorsed, eight to six, a competing measure that opposed expanded involuntary institutionalization.
“We have an obligation to try to help these people,” legislator Rich John pleaded in defense of the Hochul-supported bill.
“And the idea that we must do a one-size-fits-all approach that must be voluntary treatment, that we must respect autonomy above all else, to the extent that we let people live outside, unable to care for themselves, and they die or they get preyed upon,” John said, makes involuntary treatment, “not seem radical to me at all.”
But Greg Mezey’s competing viewpoint prevailed. “I don’t necessarily want a sledgehammer when that may not be the right tool,” Mezey said. And to him, forced institutionalization is a “crummy tool.”
Both Enfield’s legislators, Anne Koreman and Randy Brown, supported Mezey’s majority stance.
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New Docs; More Bucks
(Mar. 5): Providing firefighters their mandated annual physical exams may soon cost the Enfield Fire District twice as much. And those who oversee the district must find a way to pay the bill.
The district’s Board of Fire Commissioners digested the bad news Tuesday, March 4th, but then delayed further action for two weeks.
The current go-to medical provider, Trumansburg Family Medicine, seeks to withdraw from the service. And the low-bid alternative, Occustar, an occupational medicine firm, quotes a rate that would cost the fire district $12,000 annually. The district has only $6,000 budgeted.
Commissioners’ Chair Greg Stevenson noted that up until now firefighters could get their personal doctor to sign off on the physical. The volunteer’s own insurance would effectively pay the expense. But under the new, more formalized protocol, third-party certifications would likely end.
“The Fire Company has been giving the Town and now the Fire District a big break,” said Stevenson reasoning that past practice had unfairly cost-shifted to insurers.
Liability concerns, in part, drive the transition to on-site physical exams. Slipshod enforcement of the physicals mandate, Commissioners were told, has brought other fire companies big fines and lawsuits, especially should a firefighter die.
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