News Briefs:
“Enfield’s Law” Halfway There
(May 30): A bill that would resolve the confusion, frustration—and downright anger—that confronted voters in last December’s first-ever Enfield Fire District election is a step closer to final enactment.
The New York State Senate Thursday passed clarifying legislation that would provide that when fire districts, like Enfield’s, hold their initial election to select five members to a Board of Fire Commissioners, voters would get to vote for as many as five candidates, not for just one.
An attorney’s interpretation of a clearly ambiguous New York statute had limited Enfield’s voters to just a single vote in the December election, and it precluded a voter from choosing all five persons to populate that newly-established Board. Although the statutory quirk may never again impact Enfield, it would affect other towns that choose to establish fire districts.
The Senate vote was 57-0, with several members absent or excused. A companion bill remains before the State Assembly’s Local Governments Committee.
The Enfield Town Board initiated the bill in March. The Association of Fire Districts of the State of New York assisted in its scripting. State Senator Lea Webb introduced it in the upper chamber.
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Newfield BOE trims tax hike to 2.5%
(May 30): By eliminating just one position at the secondary level and making a few minor administrative economies, the Newfield Board of Education Thursday reduced by some 28 per cent the tax levy increase projected to face its District’s residents this fall. The newly-revised budget would replace the one Newfield’s voters rejected by a mere 18 votes last month.
Following nearly two hours of discussion, the Board unanimously adopted the revised $25,411,093 spending plan, one that would increase outlays by 3.7 per cent over the year, yet hike the projected property tax levy by only 2.5 per cent.
The rejected budget would have raised the levy by 3.5 per cent.
The new budget’s primary reduction came through elimination of a long-vacant position in technology instruction, commonly known as “shop.” Officials say proposed instructional work-arounds would satisfy state mandates, and a person providing some technology teaching at present could be transferred to Special Education.
Newfield voters will re-vote on their budget June 18th. Should it fail, a more austere “Contingency Budget” would kick-in by state law.
“You need to look at what a contingency budget looks like,” Superintendent Eric Hartz cautioned the Board and public Thursday. “Dollar for dollar it doesn’t look like much. But we lose a lot (in program.)”
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Amanda’s “White Men” Dust-up
(May 28): On its face, it was nothing more than a weedy rewrite of grant-writing policy, something intending routine passage. Instead, it plunged the Tompkins County Legislature into a 23-minute, PC-tinged debate May 21st, one that pitted the Ithaca Town’s Amanda Champion against Lansing’s Mike Sigler in a snarky, gender-war skirmish.
It started when Groton’s Lee Shurtleff questioned language in the revised policy calling for eyeing grant awards “through an equity lens ensuring fair and inclusive practices.” What does that mean, Shurtleff asked. And might it tie Tompkins County’s hands?
After Sigler asked much the same question, Amanda Champion, whose committee handed up the draft, answered its critics.
“It’s fascinating to me that the white men are questioning the one little spot in there where it talks about working with minority- and women-owned businesses,” Champion said. “I don’t read anything in here that’s saying we’re not going to work with white men anymore, so I think you can let go of your fears a little bit.”
Sigler called her on it: “While I appreciate my colleague thinking that white men should just shut up, clearly from what you just said … I represent an awful lot of white men; I represent an awful lot of white women. And I think that, yes, if I have a question on a policy for something that we’re already doing, yea, I think I should be able to ask that question without you trying to read any kind of intent in there.”
Other legislators—all Democrats, most of them women— defended the language, yet steered clear of the personal slights. The policy passed with only Sigler and Shurtleff dissenting.
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TC’s EMS “Hail Mary Pass”
(May 28): With only days left before the New York State Legislature adjourns, the Tompkins County Legislature May 21st endorsed seven pending bills, each intended to benefit volunteer firefighting and Emergency Medical Response (EMS) services and swell their ranks with recruits.
Called “The Package,” the seven measures would, among other things, allow creation of special taxing districts for EMS services and also recognize EMS as “an essential service,” thereby pressuring counties and towns to fund them.
Another bill would eliminate the “either/or” dilemma that faces Enfield’s volunteer firefighters; whether to take the income tax or property assessment benefit governments reward for their volunteer service. The bill would permit them to access both benefits. Another measure would raise the personal income tax credit from $200 to $800.
“Nobody knew what to do… everyone was just watching the whole system decline,” Legislature Chair Dan Klein said he’d observed as local rescue services struggled. “ And so it’s really exciting for me personally to see all this stuff on the docket”
Last-minute advocacy intensified after Governor Kathy Hochul failed to tuck any of the bills into the recently-passed state budget.
The State Legislature’s scheduled to adjourn June 6th.
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Enfield’s New (and Newer) SkateGarden
(May 25): Excavation could begin as soon as this Memorial Day weekend on Enfield’s SkateGarden and Pollinator Garden project, approved by the Town Board May 8th for land next to the Park-and-Ride lot and across from the Town Hall.
After the designer learned last-minute that the site was longer and narrower than first thought, project creator Dan Woodring revised his drawings, which a majority of the Town Board approved via email Friday, changes the Board will formalize in June.
Not all of the SkateGarden will be built at once. Funded by a $5,000 Tompkins County Parks Grant, work will involve construction of the recessed, heart-shaped skateboard “bowl” this year. Site excavation will also take place now, as will the Pollinator Garden plantings at the periphery. Town Clerk Mary Cornell will oversee the garden project.
A proposed amphitheater and other improvements would come only in later stages. / RL
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Honor Earned and Deserved
From the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company; Friday, May 24:
Today, the EVFC had the honor of attending the Tompkins County EMS Awards. Our Fire Chief, Jamie Stevens, accepted an award for EMS Agency of the Year.
We are so proud of our EMS responders and lucky to say we have 18 highly-skilled medical responders ranging from CFRs, EMTs, AEMTs, to Paramedics! Enfield is also lucky enough to have one of the only Spanish-speaking EMS providers in Tompkins County.
Congratulations on a job well done to our dedicated volunteers!
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Newfield to Re-vote Budget
(May 23): In a marathon meeting lasting nearly three-and-a-half hours Thursday, the Newfield Board of Education voted to resubmit to voters a 2024-25 District Budget, to be retooled from the $25.48 Million spending plan rejected at the polls Tuesday by a mere 18 votes.
But by refusing to take another vote among themselves Thursday, the School Board dropped any plans to resubmit a companion measure to spend up to $233,000 in taxpayer funds to buy a new school bus, either diesel or electric. The bus purchase had lost in the referendum by a much-wider margin.
Despite their lengthy deliberations, Board members couldn’t decide how deeply they’d cut the earlier-rejected budget in hopes of regaining voter support. Instead, they gave administrators rough guidelines, seeking changes that would raise the proposed tax levy between 2.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent, the latter increase being what the rejected budget would have imposed.
Prime targets for prospective cutting, discussed Thursday, included one or more of the eight teaching positions expected to fall vacant this summer. Alternatively, interscholastic sports could be curtailed.
If the cuts hit the music department, School Superintendent Eric Hartz warned, “there would be some things lost.” Hartz cited band as a possible casualty.
Newfield’s only alternative to budget resubmission would be to adopt a “Contingency Budget.” It would require no vote, but carry deeper cuts and a tax levy kept at this year’s level.
Newfield voters will revote their school budget June 18th. The School Board will finalize the plan’s details May 30th.
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Newfield School Budget Fails
(May 21): Like a couple of years ago, voters in the Newfield Central School District have rejected their proposed budget, forcing school board members to sharpen pencils and likely further cut spending.
Results posted by the District Tuesday night showed the proposed $25.48 Million Newfield School Budget losing by a relatively close margin, 248 votes (48.2%) approving to 266 votes (51.8%) opposed.
A bus purchase proposition also failed, 218 votes (42.2%) yes; 299 votes (57.8%) no.
Newfield voters did approve two other propositions: establishment of a Capital Reserve Fund and increasing the tax levy to support the Newfield Public Library.
In a three-way contest, Kevin Berggren (390 votes) and Timothy Payne (304 votes) were elected to the Newfield Board of Education. Shana Claar (188 votes) finished third.
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T-Burg Budget Approved
(May 21): While both Ithaca and Newfield School Districts have voter budget rejections to cope with, not so Trumansburg.
After making a series of painful staffing cuts and trimming up to $1.6 Million in expenditures, the Trumansburg School Board reaped the results. Voters Tuesday handily approved the Trumansburg spending plan, 235 votes (76%) to 74 (24%).
A bus purchase proposition also passed by a similarly wide margin, 231 votes to 77 votes. School funding for the village’s library secured voter approval by an ever wider margin.
Unopposed school board candidates Megan Williams (the Board President) and Dana Robson won reelection.
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Stealth Indie May Enter NY-19 Race
(May 20): It’s an Alphabet-Soup of a name bound to challenge any bumper-sticker designer. And maybe nothing will come of it. But a woman from the Bronx—it’s legal for her to do it—may challenge incumbent Republican Marc Molinaro and Democrat Josh Riley in this year’s NY-19 District race for Congress.
A Binghamton TV Station (WIVT) reports Joy DaCosta Fasciglione has a team of people collecting petition signatures to place her on the November ballot as an Independent candidate.
Fasciglione would reportedly run on the “Patriot Party” line, suggesting she’d challenge Molinaro from the right, a move that could boost Riley’s prospects.
The station says people know little about the potential new entry: No news releases; no campaign website; and a Norwich man listed on her vacancy committee says he neither knows nor supports her.
But Congressman Molinaro is not pleased. He accuses Fasciglione of being a spoiler for the Democrats.
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Maybe they Will… or Won’t
(May 18): It was the question never posed—and never answered—at an Ithaca Board of Education candidates’ debate last Monday: Will you or will you not vote for the proposed Ithaca City School District Budget with its 8.4 per cent tax levy increase?
After first reporting May 16th that candidates Emily Workman and Steve Cullen would support the budget, The Ithaca Voice later that day revised Cullen’s and Workman’s statements to say that he or she was “not sure” of whether to back the nearly $169 Million spending plan.
(Note that a contentious May 14th ICSD Budget hearing may have fallen between Cullen’s and Workman’s original and revised statements.)
Candidate Todd Fox was already firmly on the record as saying he would oppose the budget.
Fox would also not extend School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown’s lucrative contract. Most other contenders in the seven-way race said they were “unsure” about the Superintendent’s contract extension.
The Voice reported that each of the incumbents seeking re-election, Moira Lang, Eldred Harris, and Adam Krantweiss, would support the District Budget in next Tuesday’s annual election. Challenger Barry Derfel would also support the budget .
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No June Primary Here
(May 17): For weeks, the prospect of a June Primary for just one nomination—that for U.S. Senate—clung by a thread. Now that thread is broken. There’ll be no June Primary here this year.
Cairo-born, pro-Israel activist Khaled Salem, who’s run for Senate before, had challenged incumbent Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand for re-nomination. But the New York State Board of Elections had rejected Salem’s designating petitions for irregularities. They’d kept him off the ballot only to have Salem challenge their ruling in court.
Friday, a Tompkins County Board of Elections spokesperson said the judge has ruled, and Salem will stay off the ballot. Since no local races are being contested, a Democratic Primary becomes unnecessary.
Republicans once had multiple Senate candidates too. But party-endorsed Michael Sapraicone appears to have cleared the field there.
Neighboring districts, though not in Tompkins County, have contested Congressional Primaries to run. In Cayuga County, two Democrats are running to oppose Republican Congressman Brandon Williams.
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Mezey and the Mall
(May 14): Nearly five years after Tompkins County, albeit secretly, began negotiating to purchase the “Key Bank Corner” for a new Center of Government, at least one legislator has gotten frustrated with rising costs and bureaucratic snags in making the project happen.
“I feel like this will be a grenade that doesn’t go well,” Greg Mezey cautioned as he tossed it at the Center of Government’s oversight committee meeting Tuesday, “but I just want to do a sanity check; am I the only one that’s starting to think that we could probably spend half the time and half the money at a different location, maybe up by the mall or somewhere like an adaptive re-use?”
Lansing’s Shops at Ithaca Mall, now largely abandoned by retailers, has been mentioned as an alternate site before; though not seriously, and not lately. Most on the Downtown Facilities Committee are still unprepared to abandon their current siting preference. But Mezey’s remark could give the idea renewed traction.
“We could be taking the ‘Center’ out of the Center of Government,” committee colleague Rich John worried. Yet he added, “If the train wreck that is quite possible starts to happen, I think we do need to be flexible and just give it up,” namely cast aside the Courthouse campus location.
State regulators hesitate to sign off on razing the downtown site’s current structures until they can study the new building’s design. But the County hasn’t even chosen the Center’s architect yet.
Legislator Deborah Dawson resists a change in direction. “I’m not going to run away with my tail between my legs,” Dawson told the committee. She described the downtown site as “centrally and conveniently located for all of our residents and all of our employees.”
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Budget Gets a Beatin’
(May 14): Twenty people (including this Councilperson) strode to the microphone at the Ithaca City School District’s Tuesday night Budget Public Hearing. No one supported the nearly $169 Million proposed spending plan, nor the $125 Million capital bonding proposal that voters will decide along with it. In fact, most commenters voiced strong criticism.
Near the close of the two-hour hearing, School Board members appeared to get the message. In fact, many seemed resolved that the budget would fail at the polls one week later.
“I agree with much of what you’re saying tonight,” Jill Tripp, the Board member who’d earlier called for deeper spending cuts and a smaller capital request, told Tuesday’s room of aggrieved taxpayers. “If you vote it down, this budget will be revised,” Tripp promised.
Board member Erin Croyle, who’d previously backed the more costly budget the Superintendent had first proposed, acknowledged she felt taxpayers’ pain, but was nearly drawn to tears by the criticism she’d heard.
“It’s not a cookie-cutter sort of district,” Croyle said about Ithaca, “and that’s something to be proud of.”
Commenters—nearly all of whom the gallery applauded after they spoke—frequently faulted the Ithaca District for its top-heavy, highly-paid administration. They also took aim at a just-released State Education Department review citing both Boynton and Dewitt middle schools for poor academic performance. / RL
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All Juiced Up… but Waiting
(May 12): The 15 Megawatt Norbut Solar Farm on Enfield’s South Applegate Road is effectively finished.
But NYSEG has yet to put up the poles or string the wires to connect the power emitted by the array to the utility’s grid.
The electrical connection should be made “within the next 60 days,” Erin Enright, Norbut’s Property Acquisition Manager,” informed this Town Councilperson May 8th, a tentative timetable shared with the Enfield Town Board that same night.
Enright said she’s not sufficiently versed in the technical aspects to discuss the reasons behind NYSEG’s slow-go hook-up. Members of the Enfield Planning Board one week earlier had speculated the delay may result from the need to upgrade a substation across from Cayuga Medical Center. That’s where the utility makes a larger grid connection.
Meanwhile, Heather McDaniel, Administrative Director for the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency, said nothing should postpone the commencement of Norbut’s 30-year Payment-in-Lieu-of-Tax (PILOT) Agreement with taxing authorities. The company has not asked to toll its compensation, as sometimes happens. Norbut will start this fall paying $45,000 per year on the PILOT, split three ways, including with the Town. / RL
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Raw Debate forces Re-Do
(May 10): It gets pretty bad when you can’t even invite your kids to watch a school board candidates’ debate.
But an Ithaca Board of Education online debate Thursday night among the seven contenders for Ithaca School Board took a wrong-turn when somebody either Zoom-bombed the forum, or more likely, disrupted the event with political malice.
Media reports say Board challengers Steve Cullen, Todd Fox and Barry Derfel got their speeches before the public. But when incumbent Eldred Harris began to tout his qualifications, an online heckler began booing and a pornographic video began to loop.
Harris is the race’s only African-American, and he’s a staunch supporter of educational programs and the proposed, albeit controversial, District Budget. Because of the unexpected interruptions, we’re told Board member Moira Lang and candidate Emily Workman never got to speak.
Giving up on the online option, the debate’s sponsor, the Ithaca Teachers Association, will start the debate from scratch, this time live Monday night (5/13) at York Lecture Hall.
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SkateGarden: New Design, Tight Timing
(May 9): Armed with a recently-awarded $5,000 Tompkins County Parks Grant, skateboard promoter Daniel Woodring and Town officials detailed a much-revamped SkateGarden design to the Enfield Town Board Wednesday night.
Not at all the simple, curved plywood ramp that was earlier discussed, Woodring’s redesigned SkateGarden would now take the form of a recessed, heart-shaped bowl made of reinforced concrete sunk eight feet into the ground. It would be located on the Town-owned grassy area north of the Park-and-Ride lot across from the Town Hall. The designer modeled it after a now-demolished skateboarding park in Philadelphia.
“It makes a community space that everyone wants to hang out at,” Woodring told the Town Board.
But building what’s become sort-of a skateboarding amphitheater faces a time crunch. The Deputy Supervisor said the Parks Grant calls for completion this year. Winter’s onset would require finishing by Halloween, Woodring said. And a separately-funded “pollinator garden” companion project has a September deadline.
The Town Board voted to proceed with the pollinator garden and approved SkateGarden’s “conceptual design.” But the Board will likely revisit the project in June to manage details. Many remain. / RL
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Whose Sales Tax is this, Anyway?
(May 9): Following a brief, yet feisty exchange, the Enfield Town Board declined Wednesday for this, the third straight year, to reclaim its Town share of Tompkins County Sales Tax revenue, funds used now for more than a decade to reduce the County’s share of taxes on Enfield residents’ property tax bills.
When this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, introduced his updated version of a Resolution to rescind the 2010 Board’s decision, no other Board member seconded it, leaving the resolution to die.
“What has changed this year?” Supervisor Stephanie Redmond asked.
Last year’s budget changed, this Councilperson responded, noting that without the Sales Tax cushion, Enfield’s Town tax levy rose for 2024 by seven per cent, and that the Supervisor’s tentative budget last September had called for more than an eleven per cent increase.
“You don’t knock on doors and get a tongue-lashing from residents angry about their taxes,” this Councilperson, rapping the table, admonished a colleague equally resistant to making the change. (No one else on the Town Board is known to campaign.)
To this Board member, the issue is tax equity: It’s our money and we have a right to claim it. But Redmond countered I’d be increasing residents’ taxes, since Enfield’s reclaiming the Sales Tax would reduce its collections from solar farms. A 2023 calculation had put the change’s average resident increase at $4.48. / R. Lynch
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Expect Enfield Comp. Plan Rewrite
(May 9): Despite reluctance from the Town Planning Board and its chairman one week earlier, the Enfield Town Board signaled Wednesday its desire for a significant revision to its Comprehensive Plan, last adopted in 2020 following nearly a decade of work.
“The nature of the Town is changing,” Supervisor Stephanie Redmond stated in pressing for a rewrite and in outreach efforts which could include a constituent survey.
On May first, Planning Board Chair Dan Walker had suggested only minor plan revisions were called for and warned that a fresh survey could cost the Town $5,000.
“It seems like we should put more effort into revising the Comprehensive Plan,” Councilperson Jude Lemke, an attendee at the Planning Board’s session, told the Town Board Wednesday.
This Councilperson, Robert Lynch, argued that a rewrite might only have “limited utility.” Moreover, he cautioned, a revised plan could serve as a “front door to zoning,” regulations Enfield doesn’t now have; and he argued, most don’t want.
The Town Board instructed the Clerk to post an online invitation for residents to volunteer for a committee to help revise the Comprehensive Plan. Left unanswered at the meeting was whether the committee would convene privately or in public.
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OSHA Changes Worry Fire Board
(May 8): “It’s kind of difficult for me to really figure out what is changing,” Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners Chair Greg Stevenson told Commissioners Tuesday night. But he intends to find out.
And by the Board’s subsequent meetings either later this month or in early-June, Commissioners intend to comment on proposed revised federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules that would impact the volunteer fire service.
They’re “documentation changes, ”Enfield Volunteer Fire Company (EVFC) President Dennis Hubbell advised the Board, “so that the Fire Chief will have enormous hours put on him,” he said. Hubbell estimated the documentation could add 40-60 hours weekly to Chief Jamie Stevens’ work.
The some 680 pages of OSHA revisions have produced outcries on social media and from the Firefighters Association of the State of New York (FASNY). In the opinion of FASNY, the new rules’ cost could drive some volunteer companies out of business.
In response to FASNY’s concern and that of a downstate Congressman, OSHA extended the rules’ comment deadline until June 21st. “We should prepare some comment,” Stevenson told the Board Tuesday.
As a second item of business, Enfield Fire Commissioners switched insurance carriers. They dropped the Emergency Services Insurance Program and signed on with Eastern Shore Insurance. “We’re getting a better product,” Stevenson said, and at less cost.
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“Enfield’s Law” before NY Legislature
(May 6): A bill to resolve the confusion and anger Enfield voters experienced last December in electing their first-ever Board of Fire Commissioners is now before the State Legislature.
On April 30th, State Senator Lea Webb introduced legislation that would clarify New York Town Law to provide that as five new members are added to a Board of Fire Commissioners when first established, each eligible voter gets to vote for five positions for that office, not just one.
Current law remains ambiguous. And the Enfield Fire District’s former legal counsel had interpreted the provision narrowly, the then-appointed Commissioners endorsing his one-vote-per-voter rule that frustrated both residents and candidates.
Webb’s measure, with wording similar to what the Enfield Town Board recommended for adoption in March, was drafted with assistance from the Association of Fire Districts of the State of New York. The bill is before the Senate’s Local Government Committee. A similar bill is before an Assembly committee.
“Thank you for sharing your experience in hopes that another community will be spared these issues in the future,” Mandy Fallon, Senator Webb’s Legislative and Committee Director wrote Enfield’s Town Clerk last week.
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Cortland Endorses Klee-Hood in NY-22
(May 6): While Tompkins County Democrats (or Republicans) have no party Primary choices this year for Congress, a hotly-contested Democratic contest is brewing to our north.
Monday, the Cortland County Democratic Committee announced its endorsement of DeWitt Town Board member Sarah Klee Hood for their party’s nomination to oppose Republican Congressman Brandon Williams in New York’s 22nd District. Two months ago, the Cayuga County Democratic Committee endorsed Hood’s Primary opponent, State Senator John Mannion.
“Sarah Klee Hood’s supporters pointed to her commitment on key issues and her dogged efforts at making grassroots connections in the Cortland area as reasons why she was so easily able to earn the committee’s endorsement,” Cortland Democrats posted in a statement on social media.
Klee Hood ran for Congress in 2022, but lost the Primary. Republican Williams went on to secure a narrow victory in a district that includes Syracuse, and has since been redrawn to favor Democrats. Northern Cortland County, including the City of Cortland, was added to the 22nd District.
In Tompkins County, Republican Congressional Incumbent Marc Molinaro and Democratic challenger Josh Riley face no Primary competition. In Seneca County, Incumbent Claudia Tenney faces a Republican Primary challenger, Geneva’s Mario Fratto.
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County Grant Moves SkateGarden Forward
(May 6): After some initial jitters, it appears plans for a modest wooden “SkateGarden” ramp across from the Enfield Community Center will move forward.
Word came late Friday (5/03) that Enfield will be awarded a $5,000 Tompkins County 2024 Municipal Parks and Trails Grant to underwrite a large portion of the skateboard ramp’s cost. Since promoters of the ramp plan to construct it with volunteer labor, the County grant should cover most expenses.
The second good news came as this Councilperson confirmed an insurance agent’s earlier quote to the Town Supervisor that liability coverage for the ramp—a big obstacle to non-governmental parties—will cost Enfield only $330 a year. The policy would provide the Town $1 Million of coverage for any one incident; a total of $2 Million for the year.
The Enfield Community Council, itself, had wanted to locate the SkateGarden on its own land, but its insurer declined to cover liability.
Former Enfield resident Daniel Woodring will likely oversee construction. The Town has designated vacant property adjacent to the Park-and-Ride lot as the site.
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Rolfe at Twilight… Clean
(May 6): Leave nothing to chance, I say.
This coming Saturday, May 11th, beginning at 10 AM, we’ll hold the annual Enfield Cemetery Cleanup. But with the weather as it’s been lately, this volunteer on the Cemetery Committee chose quietly to get a head start.
Last Thursday and Friday, May 2nd and 3rd, I scoured Rolfe Cemetery on North Applegate Road and picked up the branches and limbs from amidst the stones and hauled them away. A couple weeks earlier, I performed a similar pickup at tiny Budd Cemetery on Gray Road, down the road from my house.
Both are clean to mow now (though there’s always more to trim around the edges.) Christian and Presbyterian Cemeteries along NY Route 327, await this weekend’s volunteer effort. / RL
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Seven Vie for Three Seats on ICSD Board
(May 3): There will be competition, not a coronation, this year as seven candidates have filed for three positions up for election on the Ithaca Board of Education.
Todd Fox, Barry Derfel, Emily Workman, and Steve Cullen have joined incumbents Eldred Harris, Moira Lang, and Adam Krantweiss in seeking full, three-year terms on the Ithaca School Board. The election will coincide with the May 21st district referendum to decide the School District’s budget and a $125 Million capital program.
Brief biographical statements on the ICSD website fail to indicate where each of the four newly-competing candidates stands on the controversial $168.9 Million dollar proposed budget or the capital request, the largest in the District’s history. Candidates will, no doubt, make preferences known prior to the election.
Of the challengers, Derfel enters the race as a retired teacher, Workman as the current President of the Northeast Elementary PTA, Fox as a construction manager for Visum Development, and Cullen as the CMS Managing Director at Cornell.
Among the incumbents, Moira Lang currently serves as School Board Vice-President, and Eldred Harris strongly defended small class sizes and vibrant extracurricular activities on the night the Board finalized the budget.
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Comp Plan: East Does It
(May 2): Unless the Enfield Town Board instructs otherwise, expect the Town’s Planning Board to avoid a complete rewrite of Enfield’s Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2020.
“Not a lot of change (has occurred) in the Town in the last five years,” Chair Dan Walker remarked at Wednesday’s Planning Board meeting. “And I don’t think the philosophy of the Town has changed that much.”
In February, Supervisor Stephanie Redmond raised the prospect of the Comprehensive Plan’s rewrite, and the Town Board directed the Planning Board to look at the document first. Wednesday’s brief discussion indicated that if changes are made, they’d be minor and considered cautiously.
Planners noted that in the last decennial census, Enfield’s population had actually shrunk by 150 people. And whereas the current Plan’s drafting involved a 2015 community survey, Walker cautioned a new survey could cost $5,000. He questioned its need.
Comprehensive Plans often guide future land use controls. Enfield lacks zoning. The 2019 Plan did not recommend zoning, and Walker saw no groundswell of resident support for zoning having arisen since.
“I think we will find the goals we reached (before) are pretty much the same,” Walker told colleagues. “I don’t see us completely rewriting the Plan.”
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Virtual (Meeting) Reality Check
(May 2): At least for one Tompkins County lawmaker, the post-pandemic allure of the virtual meeting has ended.
“I’m going to be the bad guy,” Dryden’s Mike Lane remarked Thursday as a legislative committee prepared to recommend a two-year extension of the local law that allows legislators to attend meetings remotely, rather than in person. Committee action followed state passage of legislation that sanctions the attendance practice through 2026.
“I think we should terminate this idea of having people not in person,” Lane said. He maintained that living room legislating has outlived its pandemic purpose.
Lane, and only Lane, dissented from the committee’s recommendation, which will now go to the full Legislature for a vote.
“I think we do far better work in person, and we should not work remotely as a convenience for ourselves,” committee member Rich John conceded. Yet he added, “I don’t think we’ve abused this.”
State law supposedly excuses in-person attendance only under “extraordinary circumstances.” But presiding officers—both at the County Legislature and in Enfield—never explain those circumstances to the public, leaving some to question whether lawmakers flout the rules.
Enfield, like the County, must extend its own virtual attendance law beyond this July.
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