Riley: Mr. Mayor, Get Out
(Sept. 27): As Governor Kathy Hochul dithers on whether to use her executive power to remove indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams from office, our district’s Democratic Congressional candidate has made no secret of his preference that Mayor Adams should resign immediately.
19th District hopeful Josh Riley—running to unseat Republican Congressman Marc Molinaro—issued a statement Thursday to the news source Politico, releasing it on the same day that federal prosecutors unsealed a five-count indictment charging Adams with offenses including receiving kickbacks from foreign interests.
“Upstate New York is facing serious issues, and the last thing we need is more corrupt downstate politicians compounding the problems, exporting their chaos, and abusing the public’s trust,” Riley told Politico. “Eric Adams should resign immediately.”
Riley was only one of four New York Congressional challengers who quickly stated either that Mayor Adams should resign or who strongly implied that he should.
As of early Friday, Adams had refused to step down as he strongly professed his innocence. Governor Hochul, meanwhile, had declined to intervene.
###
Muni med rates up 14%
(Sept 27): It’s a decision that will lead to lost hair at many a Town Board meeting throughout the Finger Lakes, including in Enfield. In fact, it already has.
By a unanimous vote at their meeting Thursday in Cayuga Heights, municipal members of the Greater Tompkins County Municipal Health Insurance Consortium (“Consortium”) ratified their leadership’s recommended increase in health insurance premiums for covered municipal employees by 14 per cent. Members gave the matter no discussion and offered no resistance.
The rate increase had been telegraphed for weeks and is already baked into the Town of Enfield’s tentative 2025 budget. Governments pay the premiums, not the employees.
“All of us in the health insurance industry are feeling the effects of the high cost of claims,” Consortium Executive Director Elin Dowd wrote the Board in a statement shared at the meeting. Dowd insisted “the Consortium is still the most cost-effective way to receive high quality health care for your employees.”
In a separate action, the board approved continuation with Excellus BlueCross BlueShield as the third-party administrator for the Consortium. Here, there was some discussion. This Councilperson, representing Enfield, initiated it. Had other companies been considered, I asked.
Board Chair Rordan Hart, Mayor of Trumansburg, defended the continued affiliation, maintaining Excellus has the largest local provider network, and as a nonprofit, may best keep administrative charges in check. A unanimous vote followed. /RL
###
News Briefs:
Maybe next time, a parade?
(Sept. 26): The Enfield Community Council Board Thursday tallied its take from the September 14th Harvest Festival. It netted just over $3,200. The largest share came from the chicken dinners it sold.
“The Bounce House was an absolute freaking hit,” ECC President Cortney Bailey exclaimed, talking about the blow-up exercise gym for children, first appearing at the festival this year.
Receipts were good, but they’ve been better. So the Board discussed how to change things up for next year. What about a parade?
”Ever since the fire company stopped (having a carnival) everyone has missed the parade,” Bailey observed. “I think it would bring in a ton of people.”
But parades also take a ton of planning. One volunteer—not present at the meeting—has reportedly agreed to organize the event. She’d invest a year to plan. The ECC Board will revisit the idea come spring.
Sadly, this year’s Festival cake wheel proved disappointing. So did the quilt give-away. “It may be time to reimagine that raffle,” Bailey said of the latter. The problem, quite frankly, is too few ticket-selling volunteers. One idea floated: sell tickets online.
###
ICSD Disciplinary Disarrangement
(Sept. 24): School spanking, of course, has been banned for decades. But what takes its place, one learned Tuesday, becomes hard to define.
The Ithaca Board of Education that night adopted for its “first reading”—meaning it’ll be re-visited later—a policy prohibiting “corporal punishment,” but sanctioning “Limited use of Timeout and Physical Restraint.”
A word salad quite obviously tossed by some educational academic—with likely help from a politician or two—the 3,000-word policy leaves the casual reader clueless. A sample dictate:
“Positive, proactive, evidence- and research-based strategies through a ‘multi-tiered system of supports’ must be used to reduce the occurrence of challenging behaviors, eliminate the need for the use of ‘timeout’ and ‘physical restraint,’ and improve school climate and the safety of all students….”
Jennifer Gondek, ICSD’s Director of Special Education, explained that the policy comes by way of a state mandate—of course—with changes principally revising training and incident reporting.
Physical and Timeout Restraint practices occupy much of what’s drafted. But here’s the disconnect: “We don’t have Timeout Rooms,” Gondek said of Ithaca’s practice.
“If we‘re not removing people to calm-down rooms, maybe our policy should state it,” School Board member Jill Tripp responded. “I don’t want Timeout Rooms used in our district,” Tripp added.
Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell had no problem “if we Ithacanize it,” he said of the policy. Still, he cautioned, to placate Albany, “changes would need to be vetted by legal counsel.”
###
Enfield Budget targets 5% Levy Hike
(Sept. 18): During a sometimes-tense more than three-hour meeting Wednesday, the Enfield Town Board came close to finalizing a 2025 Town Budget, one that would raise next year’s property tax levy by just over five per cent.
“It was on the heavy side when I got it, and it’s still on the heavy side,” Town Supervisor Stephanie Redmond described the budget at the meeting’s start. Her first-submitted Tentative Budget, shared with Town Board members Monday, had projected as much as an 8.85 per cent hike in the property tax levy.
But Board members labored—and at times, hotly disagreed—Wednesday over how to cut the initial $2.51 Million budget’s bottom line and its tax hit. For the second straight year, the Board and Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins engaged in fiscal horse-trading. And in the process, Rollins secured for him and his workers a ten per cent raise. Redmond’s budget had first proposed just five per cent.
The budget would give only three per cent raises to the Supervisor and Town Board members. Town Clerk Mary Cornell’s salary would rise significantly, climbing to $40,000 in Cornell’s dual role as Clerk and Tax Collector.
During the back-and-forth, some changes emerged. Rollins agreed his staff will mow Town cemeteries next year. And for the first time, Planning Board members would receive a minor stipend for their services.
The Town Board returns to the budget October 9th. A Public Hearing will happen two weeks later.
###
TC Pols hike future pay
(Sept. 18): Eclipsed by an hours-long debate over whether to arm select probation officers, the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday quickly affirmed a committee’s recommendation and raised future salaries for themselves or for those who might succeed them after next year’s legislative elections.
The stair-step increases would elevate the previously-approved 2025 salary of $22,700 to $26,000 in 2026, $27,000 in 2027, and $28,000 in 2028. In that first year, lawmakers would see a 14.5% pay hike.
Ithaca’s Rich John was the only Democrat to join the Legislature’s three Republicans in opposing the pay raises. “I think it’s too much of an increase at one time,” one of those Republicans, Lee Shurtleff, objected.
But Ulysses-Enfield’s Anne Koreman countered that the higher pay is long overdue. “If they ask me about this job,” Koreman said of people she’s urged to run, “most people (say) there’s no way they can do this with the very limited salary, paying for childcare, transportation, rent or mortgage, and with the schedule the way it is.”
Debate over legislative pay consumed just four minutes. Never raised was member Greg Mezey’s proposal—rejected in committee—that would have tied legislative salaries to the higher, so-called “living wage.”
###
TC looks beyond its borders
(Sept. 17): Whomever the Tompkins County Legislature picks as its next County Administrator, expect it to be someone who’ll need to buy a house here.
Legislator Randy Brown briefed the Enfield Town Board September 11 on the progress the Legislature is having toward choosing the retiring Lisa Holmes’ administrative successor. Brown sits on a committee vetting applicants. He said the committee has narrowed down the field to “three good people.”
“Are any of them local?” this Councilperson asked Brown.
“One’s in New York State,” the legislator replied.
Quite obviously, no in-house candidate, if any had applied, made the final cut.
Before Lisa Holmes ascended to County Administrator in 2022, she’d served Tompkins County for 24 years, first as Director of the Office for the Aging, and then as Deputy County Administrator. Holmes’ successor, quite obviously will lack that institutional memory.
The full County Legislature will sort through and interview the three finalists later this month. / RL
###
Enfield Tax Cap shows no mercy
(Sept. 16): Back in July, the State Comptroller’s Office issued a fancy chart that showed that despite an “inflation factor” that it then calculated at 3.30 per cent, the property tax cap imposed on local governments this year would remain at just two per cent.
And Monday, Enfield Town Bookkeeper Blixy Taetzsch confirmed the two per cent tax cap will also apply to Enfield’s 2025 Budget, set to be released this Wednesday at a Special Meeting of the Town Board.
Tompkins County, by contrast, got a break from the Comptroller this year. County Administrator Lisa Holmes reported earlier this month that the County’s tax cap will be a full 4.45 per cent. That gives budget planners downtown considerably greater latitude than the two per cent provides Enfield.
Quite frankly, the “tax cap,”—toothless in effect, but persuasive as propaganda—was enacted by Albany legislators to make themselves look good in taxpayers’ eyes, as if they had any impact on local budgets other than to thrust state mandates our way.
And for state legislators to hold any credibility in this area, they should impose the same tax cap on their own spending. Of course, they never do.
Along with hearing the Supervisor’s budget presentation Wednesday, the Enfield Town Board will likely set an October Public Hearing to override Albany’s penalty-free cap. / RL
###
Bounce House, Anyone?
(Sept. 14): The Enfield Harvest Festival, the community’s annual early-autumn event, went off without a hitch Saturday… well, almost. Again this year, the ping-pong ball drop got canceled; this time because an event at the airport across the lake prevented the plane from taking off. Rats!
Otherwise, it couldn’t have been better: Clear skies and very warm temperatures, which made for a good turnout at the Enfield Community Center. This year’s new event was a Bounce House for children.
The Trumansburg Blue Raiders Community Cheerleaders served up the chicken dinners. More than 175 chicken halves were sold, a near sellout. There was a cake wheel, antique auto displays, and a quilt raffle, plus vendors in the Great Room and elsewhere.
The Harvest Festival is in its 49th year. All proceeds go to the Enfield Community Council to aid in its various activities.
###
Dogs, Cats, and our Congressman
(Sept. 14): Even before this week’s Presidential Debate, local Congressman Marc Molinaro and his Democratic opponent, Josh Riley, found themselves squabbling over that largely discredited story alleging Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating neighbors’ pets.
The online news site, “City & State” reported September 10 that Congressman Molinaro, one day earlier, had retweeted on his “X” platform the allegation that a Springfield neighbor’s cat, which had gone missing, was seen outside a Haitian family’s home being carved up to eat. The eating of dogs, ducks and geese was also alleged. (Springfield leaders have refuted the allegation.)
“Josh Riley fought for open borders and dismantled our border security,” Molinaro appended to his September 9th retweet.
“This is a debunked racist conspiracy theory,” Riley countered. “Molinaro should immediately apologize.”
He did not. Instead, he doubled down—not so much as to defend the Springfield allegation, as to attack Riley himself.
“Millions of illegals and billions in tax dollars later, it took a cat tweet to get the attention about a border crisis that wouldn’t be happening without Josh Riley,” Molinaro advised City & State in a statement. The congressman accused the publication of “shilling for Democrats.”
###
International in name only (for now)
(Sept. 12): For quite some time, the “International” in “Ithaca Tompkins International Airport” has been… frankly… a joke.
The numbers told the story, as the Tompkins County Legislature’s Budget Committee Thursday voted to recommend closure of the local Airport’s cobwebbed Customs Facility. Airport Director Roxan Noble informed the committee that from January through May of this year, the Customs Facility was used six—yes, just six—times; little more than once a month.
Meanwhile, Noble said that for all of last year, the facility cost $273,000 to operate. Because of it, “our fund balance has dwindled to nothing,” she said.
So much for that. But then there was legislator Lee Shurtleff’s question: “Roxan, do we have to change the name of the airport now we’re no longer International?”
First, there were snickers about the room—and then reality sunk in. They may.
“That’s a good question, Lee,” Noble replied. “We may have to, but we believe there’s another airport that did not have to change their designation. It’s still up in the air.”
“I was half joking,” Shurtleff responded. “I didn’t realize I was onto something.”
Thursday’s committee vote was four-to-one. Chairman Mike Lane dissented. He would keep hope alive… as well as the airport’s name.
###
Old Bank to shelter Homeless
(Sept. 11): Given the glass façade, privacy could prove a problem. Yet Tompkins County—apparently out of desperation—has chosen to temporarily convert the former Key Bank building at the corner of Tioga and Buffalo Streets into a “Code Blue” wintertime homeless shelter.
Announced by surprise Wednesday, the bank building, slated for demolition to make way for a Center of Government, “will be refurbished to allow for temporary use as an emergency congregate shelter,” according to a County Government news release.
Tompkins County Legislator Randy Brown, attending an Enfield Town Board meeting Wednesday evening, said he and fellow legislators have known about the building’s temporary repurposing for about a week.
“Code Blue is a New York State-mandated program that provides funding for counties to provide shelter during the cold weather months when temperatures are 32°F or below with wind chill,” the County statement explained. “A warming center to provide temporary relief from extreme winter weather will also be available during the Code Blue program season,” it stated.
Dominick Recckio, Tompkins County Director of Communications, told The Ithaca Voice Wednesday that the Code Blue Shelter “would be able to hold 60-80 people at a time.” Full occupancy would make for a packed-in setting, considering the building is only two stories high.
Moreover, the infusion of unhoused persons into a downtown commercial area, even in winter, could raise compatibility issues. It’s too soon to tell how downtown residents and merchants will react.
Code Blue generally operates from mid-October through April. Brown told Enfield’s Board Tompkins County had to retrofit the doomed and mothballed building simply because no other adequate and acceptable locations became available.
###
Solar Panels atop the Clerk
(Sept. 11): Enfield has solar panels on its Highway Department’s roof. Soon they may rest above the Town Clerk’s Office as well.
Armed with a newly awarded NYSERDA Clean Energy Communities Grant, the Enfield Town Board Wednesday voted unanimously to move ahead toward spending it to place solar panels atop the Town Hall, a roof covering both the Town Clerk’s Office and a one-time highway barn now used for equipment storage and a Sheriff’s Department satellite station.
Supervisor Stephanie Redmond reported the grant totals $60,000. One solar company quoted $64,000 for the installation, meaning Town taxpayers may need to pay the $4,000 balance.
Board members saw the grant-funded project as a bargain, and Redmond said the electricity poured back into the grid could offset power bills for other Town facilities, not just for the Clerk’s Office.
Board members mulled other possible uses for the grant, but came up dry. Redmond said she’d thought about insulating and remodeling the barn’s unused space, eyeing eventual expanded facilities. But she said NYSERDA wouldn’t allow its money to be spent that way.
###
ICSD Board blocks Lang move-up
(Sept. 10): By a 4-4 vote that killed the idea, the Ithaca Board of Education, now one member short, Tuesday rejected a proposal that would have asked Moira Lang, first runner-up in school board elections last May, to assume the board seat recently vacated by Katie Apker.
Lang’s name was never mentioned in pre-voting debate. But the resolution considered would have elevated her and no one else. Once the Lang resolution lost, no alternate plan to fill the seat was advanced.
Board members who’d sided with the more progressively-aligned Lang in this year’s contentious budget deliberations backed the proposed elevation. Those more budget-critical, including conservative newcomer Todd Fox, opposed it.
Fox said he doesn’t think the school board has the right to take away the public’s political preferences.
Adam Krantweiss agreed, noting that Lang—though, again, never mentioned by name—“did not have enough votes to make it across the finish line.”
Only Erin Croyle, Karen Yearwood, Garrick Blalock, and Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell backed asking Lang to rejoin without competition. “The person proved their worth time and time again,” Croyle said of nine-year ex-incumbent Lang.
It’s possible Lang could apply for the vacancy, should the Board accept applications. It’s possible it could leave the Apker seat open. No one expects a special election.
###
Here’s your keys; now vote
(Sept. 10): Critics might say it comes one step short of dragging tenants to the polls.
Ithaca’s Common Council September 4th debated for almost 45 minutes, but then tabled until January, a measure that would direct City staff to draft an ordinance mandating that whenever renters sign a lease or home buyers close a purchase, the landlord or real estate agent provide them a voter registration form.
Seattle and Washington, DC purportedly have enacted such laws. New York City proposed the law as well, but faced pushback from its Real Estate Board.
Alderperson Patrick Kuehl, a Cornell student, sponsored the measure. “We as a government have a duty and a responsibility to make voting as accessible as possible,” Kuehl told Council. He called a lease transaction “an easy place to insert” voter access.
But others pointed out problems. One is enforcement. Landlords may simply ignore the law.
“Staff don’t really have bandwidth” for enforcement, Alderperson Margaret Fabrizio countered. “It’s a time sink for something that’s really unenforceable,” she told colleagues.
Then there’s the philosophical point: “I just feel like this is one of those bills that makes Democrats feel good,” David Shapiro, a Democrat, said. “But it also makes Democrats who don’t like the government to get all up in their business leave the party. I just think this is government overreach.”
Though the current text didn’t state it, Kuehl told an earlier meeting he’d also want Cornell to give voter applications to students moving into dorms.
###
Kelles prods Hochul on EMS Bill
(Sept. 9): A bill that would reimburse rural ambulance squads when a patient refuses to go to the hospital awaits Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature. And local Assemblymember Anna Kelles wants Hochul to sign that bill sooner rather than later.
Called the “TIP/TAD Bill,” the measure would amend New York’s Social Services Law to broaden the types of services ambulance technicians could perform and still have their service get Medicaid reimbursement.
Right now, Medicaid pays only when the patient gets transported to the hospital. As adopted unanimously by Assembly and Senate last June, ambulance services would receive reimbursement for providing treatment-in-place (TIP) or transport to approved alternate destinations (TAD).
But the way the bill was written, unless Hochul signs it before September 30th, its terms won’t take hold for another full year.
Kelles calls the Governor’s prompt signature “imperative.” Broadening reimbursable options, she says, will “provide real solutions that address the lack of operational funding, insufficient wages, incomplete Medicaid coverage, inadequate Medicaid reimbursement rates, and antiquated restrictions that hamper all EMS systems across the state.”
That said, the legislation’s scope remains narrow. Its language speaks only to Medicaid reimbursement, not private insurance. And it would only reimburse ambulance services, not local rescue squads like Enfield’s, or Tompkins County’s Rapid Medical Response service.
###
Legislative pay hike eyed
(Sept. 6): Less than two days after facing calls for fiscal austerity, a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature Thursday recommended pay raises starting at 14.5 per cent for legislators who’d win in next year’s elections.
Tompkins County’s 14 legislators now earn $22,700 annually. The committee’s recommendation would hike legislative pay to $26,000 in 2026, $27,000 in 2027, and $28,000 in 2028.
But members rejected, three votes to two, Greg Mezey’s more ambitious proposal that would have roughly tied legislative pay to the “living wage” and have elevated salaries to over $30,000 in their final year.
“You can’t survive on this alone,” Mezey said of current legislative pay. “And I think that precludes a number of people from potentially taking this on as a job, because it can be a job.”
“I look at this as work and not work,” legislator Rich John countered, “and I don’t think comparing ourselves to the other workers in the county or workers in general is entirely apt.”
Only Rich John opposed the final recommendation, a compromise from the three-year, $25,000 annual salary first proposed.
The full Legislature must ratify the recommended increases. Member Mike Lane said he wants salaries decided now, more than a year before elections, so that they don’t become a “political football.”
###
T.C. Budget: Forget the 2%
(Sept 4): At a budget retreat in late-April, the Tompkins County Legislature directed County Administrator Lisa Holmes to draft a 2025 County Budget that kept next year’ tax levy increase within two per cent.
Holmes did, but Tuesday night she effectively shoved it into a drawer.
What Holmes recommended, instead, was a costlier spending package, a more than quarter-Billion dollar budget that would raise the levy by 4.34 per cent, just under the largely-symbolic, state-calculated “tax cap.”
Holmes blamed the revision upon the depressing audit report given last month that showed fund balance savings at a point that precluded their use to support programs department heads insist they must have.
“If we had started with the information that we gleaned in August, and we wanted to arrive at a two per cent,” Holmes said, “we would have needed to cut a lot further earlier on in the game.”
Over the summer, the administrator had asked departments to trim five per cent. But some said they could not do so, and their restorations were added back into the budget now recommended.
Legislative Budget Committee Chair Mike Lane made clear Tuesday that his committee’s many-meeting budget review will start with the “recommended” budget, not the trimmer, two per cent alternative.
Tuesday’s budget rollout proved far from perfect. Typically on presentation night, budget documents are posted promptly on the County’s website. Not this year, when they got confined to a weird URL, a link to it not found on the principal website’s home page even a full day later.
###
Enfield loses again… downtown
(Sept. 3): By a ten-to-three vote that happened to fall along party lines, the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday rejected legislator Randy Brown’s effort to refund more than $27,000 in otherwise improperly-imposed property taxes that the Enfield Community Council (ECC) had to pay simply because it failed to file an exemption form on time.
“This is 30 per cent of their entire budget,” Brown pleaded with colleagues. “They’re in dire straits now financially to pay their bills and do various things.” And Brown pressed the County Attorney for what would happen if Tompkins County bent the rules a bit on ECC’s behalf.
“You don’t get fined. You don’t get fired,” Maury Josephson replied. But there could be a “finding” that the County violated the New York Constitution’s “anti-gifting” rules, and ECC could be ordered to “disgorge” the moneys returned.
Then, again, nothing might happen.
“We all signed an oath when we took this office to uphold the constitutions of the United States and the State of New York,” legislator Deborah Dawson countered Brown’s argument. “It would be a really ugly optic if we were to start making exceptions to when we were going to uphold the Constitution.”
The property tax filings at issue date back to 2021. Brown had attempted last year, without success, to get ECC’s money back.
Only fellow Republicans Mike Sigler and Lee Shurtleff joined Randy Brown in supporting this latest initiative.
###