News Briefs:
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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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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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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