News Briefs:
Food Fight Downtown
(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. 24th 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.
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Anna’s October Surprise
(Oct. 25): With less than two weeks to Election Day, she’s getting a late start. And given the 125th 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.
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Tree Down; Stones Damaged
(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 23rd 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.
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Poll: Riley leads Molinaro by 4
(Oct 23): If you believe in opinion polls, Democrat Josh Riley could unseat freshman Republican Congressman Marc Molinaro in the 19th 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.
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When Webb Goes Low
(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
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Shelter crisis may prompt Emergency Edict
(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.
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Close Votes Temper Tax Hike
(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.
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Quickly, new Administrator Confirmed
(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.
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Fire Budget passes; just 1 complaint
(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.”
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The Fruits of our 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.
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Leg. Committee: Raise T.C. Levy 3.29%
(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.
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Enfield Prelim Budget Passes
(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.
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Sunflower Power
(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 30th, 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.
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Pro-Palestinian Protest prompts Sigler pushback
(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 7th 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
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Our Dubious Dollar Distinction
(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
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Port-a-Potties Downtown
(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.
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Enfield Budget Ticks Up
(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.
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Take my money, please:
(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.
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Bye, Bye Customs House
(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.
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