That was then. This is now.

Posted April 16, 2025

Speaking from the heart—no script—this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, addressing the Enfield Town Board Wednesday, April ninth, after leading those willing in the Pledge of Allegiance:

“One of the meager attributes I bring to this Board is a long institutional memory, probably longer than anybody in this room, I dare to say.

“I covered my first Election Night in Tompkins County in 1969, as a cub radio reporter. We were down at The Ithaca Journal’s newsroom. And we brought all the data together, and then we disseminated it to the public, including the town elections.

“And one thing—and I covered a good many election nights thereafter 1969—And one of the things that sticks in my mind from those days back in the ‘70’s and ‘60’s was that no matter how uphill a climb it was, there was always, usually a full slate of Republicans and a full slate of Democrats who ran for Town office.

“Now I went back today and I looked at the 1969 Enfield elections, back on early-November of ’69. And here’s how they were:

Supervisor: Robert Linton, a legend in Enfield, won over Roger Hubbell; Linton, 348, Hubbell, 213.

For Town Clerk: Mabel Purdy, a Republican, won over Dorothy Leonard, 439 to 113.

Highway Superintendent: Now there the Democrats cross-endorsed Republican Wesley Rolfe; he’s another legend in Enfield.

Town Justice: Robert Bock beat Robert Scofield.

For Town Councilman: Earl Smith beat Richard Holley; Smith the Republican, Holley the Democrat.

For Tax Collector: Edna Palmer, the Republican, beat Marian Lovelace, the Democrat.

“And I bring that up because that was then, and this is now.

“We have Town elections in Enfield this year. They’ll be this November fourth. But instead of deciding those elections on the date seven months from now, they were decided last week. And they were decided last week because the only people to petition for reelection to Town offices, including this Town Board, were the incumbents. Nobody else stepped up. Nobody else said, ‘I think I can do it better.’ And that’s disappointing to me.

“And I want to stop here and say I’m not disparaging anybody who’s sitting at the table or at the side table, who may be running, because that’s not the issue. You may indeed be the best qualified candidates for the office. And indeed maybe you deserve to win. But how will we know? We won’t know because there’s no competition. The November ballot is more or less set, with one exception, which I’ll bring up in a second.

“But it disappoints me because we won’t know; we won’t really have a good gauge of where Enfield is heading.

“Now the party petitioning is over with. But Independents can still petition beginning the 15^th of April through the 27^th of May. They can circulate petitions, file them with the Board of Elections, and be on the ballot in November. I don’t know if anybody will. I’m not too optimistic that that will happen. But it’s disappointing because an uncontested election really doesn’t tell you a whole lot because it doesn’t say these are the best people who are running.

“And again, I congratulate everybody’s who’s serving now and has agreed to serve for another term. You’re to be commended, and that’s good. But we need more people in the mix.

“Now back then, Republicans were the dominant party in Enfield. And I’m sure that Roger Hubbell, who ran for Supervisor, or Dorothy Leonard, who ran for Town Clerk were a little disappointed the morning after Election Day because they hadn’t won.

“But you know what? I bet’cha they were satisfied in the fact that they gave it the Old College Try. And I look forward to some new faces, people I probably don’t even know, to this year give it that Old College Try.

“Thank you.”

****

Postscript: A close confidante advises me that those from generations far more recent may not know what “Old College Try” means. Perhaps they don’t. So look it up online. It’s defined there. Then after you do that, visit the Board of Elections website and learn how you, too, can run for local office.

Robert Lynch, Enfield Councilperson

Taking A Stand, a tab on the top menu, provides my take on various issues of community concern in Enfield; commentary on our Town’s Current Events. I hope my words will prompt robust debate.

Highlights :

May 2024: Priority One: Our Boeing Problem; (Addressing poor academic performance in Enfield Elementary School and elsewhere in light of the district’s current budget controversy.)

November 2023: Flycars, Fund Balances, and “Flat-Broke” Towns; (Addressing a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature on the merits of cost-sharing for a Rapid Medical Response Service.)

September 2023: Think Before You Act (They Didn’t); (Addressing the Tompkins County Legislature to urge delay in proceeding with a Center of Government.)

August 2023: Democracy, Clinging by a Thread; (Addressing the Enfield Town Board on the controversy surrounding its appointment of Enfield’s initial Board of Fire Commissioners.)

July 2023: I am Impatient. They are Hungry. (Addressing the Tompkins County Council of Governments regarding the Tompkins County Food System Plan’s “Roadmap” and how it needs improvement.)

Prior postings and statements, (2019-2022) are now included in the Commentary Archives.

Rising star Stefanik at CPAC (credit Getty Images)

(Apr. 17): Some say Elise Stefanik really wanted that luxury apartment that comes as a perk with being UN Ambassador. As we all know, she didn’t get the apartment… nor the promotion.

Now, ABC News reports New York’s North Country Congresswoman is eyeing the Republican nomination to oppose Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul in the 2026, election, “a source familiar with her thinking told ABC News.”

President Trump had first nominated Stefanik, a rabid MAGA loyalist, to become the United States ambassador to the United Nations during his Transition period. But he then pulled the nomination March 27, just a week before her Senate confirmation vote.

Word had it that Trump and House leaders saw their slim GOP majority as too vulnerable, and that if Stefanik stepped aside to become ambassador, a Democrat might win the election to replace her.

But now, House leaders could lose Stefanik anyway, only just not before the ’26 Midterms.

ABC reports that Stefanik’s office had declined immediate comment on whether the congresswoman was really interested in taking on Hochul. But if Stefanik does run, it will be a high-profile race to watch.

Cortney Bailey

(Apr. 17): Cortney Bailey, appointed Treasurer of the Enfield Fire District since its establishment in mid-2023, has tendered her resignation, effective June 30^th.

Bailey chose to leave voluntarily, according to Board of Fire Commissioners’ Chair Greg Stevenson, who Thursday launched a search for the treasurer’s replacement.

The Fire District posted on social media a 30-point list of requirements for treasurer. The position’s current annual salary is $5,000, though Thursday’s announcement stated that future years’ compensation “will be based on workload, ability to perform duties, and BOC decision.”

Bailey, a Gray Road resident, remains involved as president of the Enfield Community Council. She waged a write-in campaign for Enfield Supervisor in 2021.

At the advice of Fire District legal counsel, Stevenson said applicants for Fire District Treasurer must reside in Fire District, whose boundaries are the same as the Town of Enfield.

The Board of Fire Commissioners will accept expressions of interest from treasurer applicants through May ninth.

Administrator Akumfi: SHPO “Conditional approval.”

(Apr. 15): A pesky roadblock may have been cast aside as Tompkins County seeks to raze a trio of buildings bordering DeWitt Park to build its $40 Million Center of Government.

In an easy-to-miss-moment during an otherwise mundane three-hour meeting, County Administrator Korsah Akumfi advised the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday that representatives of the New York State Historic Preservation Office—better known as “SHPO”—have budged in their opposition to leveling the buildings .

“We’ve got the SHPO process underway. It’s looking great,” Akumfi informed lawmakers. “We have a conditional approval to proceed at demolishing the buildings on site with some guidelines,” he said. “So we are very happy about the outcome and we’re moving forward with the process.”

Akumfi’s update—which notably understated its newsworthiness—took less than a minute. Legislators asked no questions. And Akumfi never said what the “guidelines” were. He implied one could involve a traffic study, beginning after students return from spring break.

SHPO obstinacy has delayed “deconstruction” of the former Key Bank and the adjacent Wiggins Law Office for more than a year. “Building C,” currently the Board of Elections headquarters, would also come down to make way for the mammoth new structure.

Much later, when Downtown Facilities Committee Chair Randy Brown took his turn to speak, Brown only said that Akumfi had “filled us in.” One senses most legislators stood aware of what the rest of us had yet to learn. SHPO reps had planned to tour the site this month.

(Apr. 10): Are NYSEG “Smart Meters” too smart by half? The Enfield Town Board wants to find out.

Joining earlier action by the Tompkins County Legislature April 1, the Enfield Town Board voted unanimously Wednesday to request the state Public Service Commission and the New York Attorney General’s Office to “conduct an independent audit of NYSEG’s billing practices to determine the extent of errors, inconsistencies, and potential overcharges.”

Several in the Town Board’s gallery, attending for other reasons, voiced their support of the board’s action.

Board members and attendees placed primary blame on the “Smart Meters” that NYSEG recently installed at most local homes to record power consumption.

Relying on what some might brand conspiracy theories, those present blamed the meters for overstating consumption, perhaps deliberately, always faulting in the utility’s favor.

“Numerous complaints have been raised by residents and businesses regarding inaccurate billing, sudden rate spikes, delayed or estimated meter readings, and lack of transparency in NYSEG’s billing practices,” the adopted Enfield resolution stated.

“A comprehensive, independent audit of NYSEG’s billing practices would provide much-needed clarity regarding the accuracy of billing procedures, the effectiveness of customer service responses, and compliance with state regulations,” the resolution added.

NYSEG last week accused several Tompkins County legislators of being “seditious” after an Elmira TV station broadcast their similar concerns about NYSEG.

Ouch! ICSD spending in red; revenues in blue.

(Apr. 9): The Ithaca City School District (ICSD) Board of Education didn’t move very far toward adopting its next year’s budget Tuesday night. Instead, it spent more than three-quarters of an hour swallowing some bitter medicine from its money administrators.

Yet nothing board members said as they absorbed their grim financial lecture April 8th indicated they’d stray from adopting the administration’s proposed $169 Million budget following spring break.

The problem ICSD faces is akin to tapping your 401(k) retirement account to buy groceries.

Charts presented the board predicted that if the district continues to draw on fund balances—its savings—to close budget gaps, both the “assigned” and “unassigned” fund balances would be depleted by 2029.

“The sky’s not falling, but the lines are crossing, y’all,” School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown warned board members.

Administrators project negotiated salaries to rise by four to five per cent annually, but state aid growing by just three percent. (Teachers want 7.5 percent raises.)

The budget set for board adoption April 22 would confine tax levy increases to the state-set 3.76 per cent tax cap.

“Why are we not considering going over the tax cap?” Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell asked, albeit cautiously.

“We are not proposing a budget that’s going over the cap,” Brown insisted. He recalled last year’s first-round landslide budget defeat. “The community didn’t think it was a good idea,” Brown said.

Finance Director Scarrott

(Apr.8): Tompkins County Government has another big job to fill. But few among us know that it does.

It’s never been mentioned at the County Legislature. There’s been no press release or news story. But Lorrie Scarrott is departing as Tompkins County’s Director of Finance after only two years in her top-tier post. Her exit date has not been disclosed.

We only know of the impending vacancy because the Finance Director’s opening is now posted on the HR Department’s job openings website, and because County Administrator Korsah Akumfi mentioned it in passing at the Tompkins County Council of Governments meeting March 27.

The County personnel office posted the opening March 13. It’ll accept applications until mid-April.

“I have always wanted to come here and work, so this is kind of like a dream come true for me,” Scarrott said as she accepted the director’s appointment in April 2023. “I’m very excited,” the former Deputy Director of Finance for Ontario County remarked at the time. Now, according to a source, Scarrott will retire.

Last time around, it took five months to fill the Finance Director’s position. Its pay starts at $133,328.

Scarrott’s is among three top-level positions Tompkins County needs to fill. Commissioner of Social Services and Commissioner of Whole Health also await appointees.

(Apr. 2): Striking compromise could become elusive. But the Tompkins County Legislature may seek to craft a “statement” setting guidelines for responsible public protest.

At the Legislature’s April 1^st session and also at a committee meeting the week before, one-time Ithaca mayoral candidate Zach Winn, a Republican, complained of over-the-top anti-Trump demonstrations, including street blockades and damage to Tesla automobiles as well as to their public charging stations.

The response: “In my view, there’s a lot of reasons to be very upset with the CEO of that company (Tesla’s Elon Musk),” Public Safety Committee Chair Rich John, a Democrat, told the Legislature Tuesday. “At the same time, people who own Tesla vehicles should not pay a price for doing that. It’s their car, and you can’t easily just stop using your car,” he said.

Colleague Anne Koreman pressed the point. What’s “appropriate” protest, she asked? John said guidelines might tell demonstrators to stop short of “creating public hazards” or “damaging property.”

Legislator Shawna Black owns a Tesla. The Democrat said she bought it “to give back” to the environment. She informed John’s committee that first those on the Right were “flicking me off.” Yet now she finds liberals doing so.

I’d ask for “a little bit of grace at this point,” Black told the committee. “Not all of us are the enemy.”

(Apr. 2): Of the eight-section Town of Enfield Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2020, it’s the chapter most controversial: It’s called, “Land Use.” And for an hour Wednesday night, the Town Planning Board waded through its pages.

Requested by Supervisor Stephanie Redmond and the Town Board to revisit the document, planners have embarked on a month-by-month, section-by-section inspection of the Comprehensive Plan for possible revision. They’re about half-way through.

Recommended “Land Use Actions” cited in the 2020 plan include limiting “high-density development,” scrutinizing “industrial land uses before approval,” and developing, defining and preserving the “Town Center.”

Planners recommended no specific additions to or deletions from the “Actions” list during the April 2^nd session. Yet they raised questions.

In the broadest sense, they asked, How can you attain the stated, lofty goals in a place like Enfield without zoning?

“If we’re limiting high-density housing, we’re talking about zoning,” Board Chair Dan Walker conceded.

“Put a ‘Z’ by that one,” Board Alternate Greg Hutnik would remark from time to time, meaning the goal could be reached only through a land use law that many view as the third rail of Enfield politics.

And if a “Town Center” deserves preservation, one needs first to delineate its boundaries. In some places, a water district accomplishes that. Enfield, of course, has no public water.

“Seditious?” Mike Sigler

(Apr. 1): Lansing’s Mike Sigler claims New York State Electric and Gas labeled as “seditious” a media report in which he and four other lawmakers—two of whom sit with him on the Tompkins County Legislature—urged a state investigation into NYSEG’s billing practices.

Now the full Tompkins Legislature has joined that “seditious conspiracy,” if one would call it that.

By unanimous vote among those who attended, the County Legislature Tuesday endorsed a bipartisan demand for an independent audit of the utility’s billing. Democrat Shawna Black, without advance notice, brought the resolution to the floor. Republican Sigler seconded it.

“I think it is frustrating for families that are just trying to survive,” Black said of the surprise bill increases many are seeing. “It really is like a runaway train,” she said.

“I don’t really think NYSEG has kind of grasped where people are and the anger that’s out there on this particular issue,” Sigler told the Legislature.

Republicans Randy Brown of Newfield, Lee Shurtleff of Groton, plus lawmakers from Chemung and Broome Counties had joined Sigler’s initial call, which drew the utility’s ire after an Elmira TV station picked up on it.

For those confronting inflation, “This is just a double whammy,” Brown remarked. “All of a sudden you get this $500 electrical bill that was $250 just a year ago.”

New York State regulators would presumably conduct the “forensic audit” legislators requested.

Dumpy module be gone!

(Mar. 29): The Enfield Community Council’s long hoped-for mental health wing, which fell short of funding under Tompkins County’s Community Recovery Fund, may have found a new money source, buried within Governor Hochul’s January State of the State Address.

It’s called “NY BRICKS,” Hochul’s clever acronym for “Building Recreational Infrastructure for Communities, Kids and Seniors.”

“We only learned of it ten days before the deadline,” President Cortney Bailey informed the ECC Board of Directors March 27. Unfortunately the grant-filing deadline was one day earlier, the 26^th.

On its face, NY BRICKS would seem a perfect funding fit. The Governor’s press release says the grants would “support municipalities and nonprofit organizations in building or renovating community centers that promote physical health, mental well-being, and community connections for youth and older adults.”

Given that ECC would replace a dilapidated modular unit with an addition to provide mental counseling and related services, board member Vera Howe-Strait saw the program as made for the need.

“The grants will fund design, construction, renovation, and land acquisition for these centers,” the Hochul release states.

Regardless of whether NY BRICKS still requires legislation, ECC intends to file for the program next year.

(Mar. 27): Susan Currie, a career librarian, served as Director of the Tompkins County Public Library from 2009 until her retirement in 2017. Four years later she returned to the Tompkins County Library as its interim director. Then, two years thereafter, she joined the Tompkins County Legislature.

Now, she’ll be returning to the library again. Currie Thursday resigned her legislative seat to temporarily fill the vacancy left by the sudden departure of County Library Director Leslie Tabor, whose tenure had brought dissention within and open criticism of library operations.

“Susan has been a positive force on the Tompkins County Legislature,” Dan Klein, Chair of the Legislature, said in praise of Currie. “The library is lucky to have gotten her.”

Ithacan Susan Currie won a special election in January 2023 to fill the unexpired term of the late legislator Henry Granison. Now with Currie’s resignation, effective March 31, yet another special election will be called. Currie had already planned not to seek a new term this fall.

“I am profoundly grateful for having had the honor and privilege of serving with all of you on the County Legislature,” Currie said to her fellow legislators. “Your tireless work for all in our county will be an inspiration for me.”

(Mar 26): Five years ago this spring, Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered mandatory mask-wearing in public so as, he’d hoped, to stem the spread of COVID-19. Now, Cuomo’s successor, Kathy Hochul, wants us to pull those masks off.

In recent days, Hochul has lent her support to a bill authored by State Senator James Skoufis that would reinstate the “anti-masked harassment law,” one that criminalized masking when the intent is to conceal oneself while committing a crime. The law was repealed during the pandemic.

“Think about a bank robber; walks in, their face is covered; someone assaults someone on the subway. They can get away with it despite the fact we have cameras, because they are masked,” Hochul said unabashedly.

Of course, a few of us would respond, “About time!” Especially around Ithaca, a conspicuous slice of our population never stopped masking, whether in the store or on the street. Some say it’s a liberal thing.

The Skoufis bill—still in committee—provides lots of carve-outs; for costumes, religious observances, and yes, staying well.

The bill cites as an explicit exception “wearing a medical mask… with the intention of ensuring one’s physical health and safety or the health and safety of others, including but not limited to limiting the spread of airborne illnesses.”

Principal Caren Arnold

(Mar. 25): Caren Arnold began teaching in the Ithaca City School District in 1993. Now Arnold, currently principal at Caroline Elementary School, will become the new Principal at Ithaca High School.

As part of a personnel report granted routine, unanimous approval by the Ithaca Board of Education Tuesday night, Arnold was promoted to administer Ithaca High. She succeeds the retiring Jason Trumble, who’d served as IHS Principal for the past decade.

Trumble has been on leave lately, and Vice Principal Martha Hardesty has assumed his duties in the interim.

“We have the opportunity to really bring our community together,” Arnold said as she accepted her promotion at the school board’s meeting.

“Ithaca High School is one of the best high schools in the nation,” School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown remarked, giving credit to the departing Trumble for his leadership.

Caren Arnold will earn $172,000 annually as High School Principal, according the personnel report. She’ll take over her new job June 15.

The Board of Education also Tuesday accepted the retirement of Deborah Ptak as principal of the Lehman Alternative Community School.

(Mar. 25): In a sudden change of position, the Ithaca Board of Education Tuesday imposed upon itself a moratorium on the purchase of all-electric school buses.

The problem is power—or better put, the lack of it. “The power grid would not support at this point in time,” additional electric bus acquisitions, School Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell said at Tuesday’s meeting.

Last June, Ithaca City School District voters approved a trimmed-down transportation package that authorized purchase of two new electric buses, plus an additional two that run on propane.

As part of a $2.27 Million proposition the Board agreed Tuesday to be placed alongside its yet-to-be-finalized Budget in the annual May referendum, the ICSD will request tapping reserve funds to buy eleven new buses, big and small. But all 11 will be “ultra-low emission propane buses.” From a green-energy standpoint, propane’s the next best thing to electric.

Should New York State adhere to a legislative mandate, it would dictate that school districts convert their entire fleet to electric by 2035. But many doubt the deadline can be met, either because of the buses’ high cost or the lack of charging capacity.

Ithaca school officials acknowledge environmental activists may criticize Tuesday’s decision.

(Mar. 25): Tompkins County acquainted us in recent days with a Scotty terrier wearing a monocle, its design logo for “Tompkins Transportation Scout.” Explaining what “Scout” actually does is a bit harder than showing us a cute cartoon canine.

Maybe it takes a Millennial (or younger) to plow through the press release’s techno-centric buzz-speak. But it appears “Scout” is a multi-faceted App you put on your smartphone that’ll help you get from Point A to Point B. (It assumes you didn’t already know.)

The PR writer describes Tompkins Transportation Scout as “a groundbreaking mobility initiative designed to simplify, enhance, and sustain transportation options for all residents.”

“Whether you prefer biking, public transit, carshare, or walking, Scout brings it all together in one convenient and user-friendly platform,” the release states, tugging at every handy cliché.

Scout’s formal rollout is set for April 17 at the History Center on the Commons. An “interactive app demonstration” will be given then. Many of us will certainly need it.

TCAT, Gadabout, and a number of other groups have partnered to implement the federally-funded service. (We assume Musk doesn’t yank the money.) Supposedly, participation could earn you—“easy peasy!”—merchant discounts. (Tellingly, one of the merchants, JoAnn, doesn’t exist here anymore.) Oh, well.

(Mar. 25): Continuing to tread cautiously, an Ithaca Board of Education committee this month declined to nail down a final figure it may ask voters to approve later this year for new capital spending.

But as it weighed three possible options—the costliest totaling nearly $50 Million—one idea tossed around by the Facilities Committee March 18 was to give voters the choice of which capital improvements to approve, and which ones to reject.

“The Board… discussed different strategies for presenting the capital project to voters, such as offering a base package with optional additional expenditures or presenting a single predefined package,” an after-meeting written summary stated. (A video replay of the meeting defies retrieval.)

An a la carte capital spending option would prove novel for the Ithaca City School District (ICSD). Typically, capital budgets come as one package. Take it or leave it.

Last May, ICSD voters said, “Leave it.” They rejected a $125 Million capital proposal by a 57 to 43 percent margin.

No board member talks of that much capital investment this time around. According to the summary, current capital options total $31.3 Million, $44.5 Million, and $49.1 Million. Each costlier option would add projects to the bundle beneath it.

A tentative referendum date, states the report, is early this December.

(Mar. 22): Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) has averted a strike by its unionized drivers and mechanics, with both sides late Saturday announcing tentative agreement on a new labor contract.

“We appreciate the hard work and dedication of the UAW Local 2300 bargaining team and our employees who remain committed to providing safe and reliable transit for the community,” TCAT General Manager Matthew Rosenbloom-Jones said in a statement.

The UAW’s TCAT Chairperson, Brandon Chamblee was equally upbeat. “We are encouraged by the progress we’ve made at the bargaining table and remain dedicated to ensuring a fair and equitable future for TCAT workers,” Chamblee stated.

On March 12, the UAW reported that 84 percent of TCAT’s union members had approved a strike authorization, which would only be implemented, it said, if negotiations failed to produce a contract that workers deemed fair.

Details of the tentative pact were not immediately released. During negotiations, according to media reports, the union had sought cost-of-living adjustments, assurance of a living wage for all TCAT employees, and modifications to mandatory work schedules.

“Both sides remain committed to maintaining uninterrupted service for the community while the agreement undergoes the membership ratification process,” Saturday’s joint announcement stated.

When the Old Library fell; 2018

(March 20): Media reports this week informed us that developer Frost Travis will lose millions on the Library Place fiasco, the tax-abated downtown Ithaca housing project that took flight after Tompkins County sold its mothballed “Old Library” to Travis eight years ago only so he could tear it down. He did. And we all suffered.

The Travis-Hyde development firm will now offload the four-story, $30 Million monster that overpowers DeWitt Park to a Rochester-based company, Park Grove Realty. Frost Travis acknowledges he’ll lose millions. Too few people want to live at Library Place for the rents he’s charging.

The Industrial Development Agency will transfer the $5.32 Million tax break to the new owners.

In my opinion, there’s never been anything good about Library Place. And it started when in 2017 the County Legislature foolishly sold an amazingly structurally-sound 1967 building for just $925,000. Legislators now plan to invest $40 Million for new office space that the Old Library could have provided.

Here’s what I told the County Legislature the night it authorized the sale:

“The Old Library Building is too good to lose. It has many good years of useful life left. It deserves to be kept in the public’s ownership and used for a public purpose… In this community, we throw away all too much only to harbor regrets later.”

Well?

Saying “I told you so,” only strokes one’s ego. It never helps a community reverse a reckless mistake. / RL

(Mar. 19): Forget for now the Enfield Fire District having to double its medical budget to meet the higher costs of mandated physicals for volunteer firefighters. It won’t happen right away. It could happen next year instead.

“The best thing to do is to continue with Trumansburg Family Medicine for 2025,” Chairman Greg Stevenson told Enfield’s Board of Fire Commissioners Tuesday.

Stevenson’s advice came two weeks after he’d warned Commissioners that switching from the T-Burg practice to an occupational medicine provider could raise the Fire District annual costs for physicals from $6,000 to twice that.

Commissioners had eyed the change amid fears that T-Burg Family Medicine may soon merge with the local hospital corporation, which would then redirect physicals elsewhere.

“The big companies are swallowing up the little companies,” the Chairman warned. “We should work on a policy and plan for 2026.”

Delaying a change until next fiscal year eliminates the immediate need to find the extra cash.

“Not anybody is going to fall through the cracks,” Stevenson said. Fire volunteers can still get physicals through their family doctors.

Resigned: Leslie Tabor

(Mar. 19): The leader blamed for “weeding” countless under-used books from the Tompkins County Public Library and directing them to the dumpster is now out of the library herself.

“The Board of Trustees of the Tompkins County Public Library has accepted the resignation of Leslie Tabor as Library Director, effective March 17, 2025,” the Library Board of Trustees announced in a brief statement issued the Tuesday morning after Tabor turned in her notice.

“The Board appreciates Ms. Tabor’s dedication to the Library and wishes her well in her next endeavor,” Trustees said in their perfunctory farewell.

Obvious to everyone, in view of the public and media criticism of Tabor’s leadership in recent weeks, the resignation was pressured. It beats an outright firing.

Since joining the library as its director in November 2022, Tabor had allegedly removed nearly half of the local library’s physical books and ordered the improper disposal of more than $350,000 in materials, many of which were owned by other libraries, not hers.

Personnel problems also plagued Tabor’s tenure. Earlier this month, the Tompkins County Legislature, which only indirectly oversees the library, yet provides $4 Million in annual support, ordered a “forensic audit” to get to the bottom of the library’s woes.

The library board said it will detail plans for filling the director’s vacancy in coming weeks. / RL

(Photo courtesy, The Cortland Standard)

(Mar. 14): For quite a while, The Cortland Standard has been the closest daily newspaper to Ithaca that actually still published local news. Now it will publish no longer.

In an announcement that caught many by surprise, the Crown City-based, family-owned daily announced March 13 that that day’s paper would be its last. Its owners will file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy—liquidation. The paper has folded. Its 17 employees are out of work.

Like many papers that struggle, The Cortland Standard blamed “declining readership and increasing costs” for its demise.

“I hoped this day would never come,” Publisher and Editor Evan C. Geibel wrote in a departing essay that headlined the paper’s final edition. “I’m so very grateful to my colleagues and the community for what they’ve done for me, my family and each other,” Geibel wrote.

The Cortland Standard began its 157-year run in 1867, just after the Civil War. “William H. Clark acquired the Cortland Standard in 1876 and his family has owned it ever since,” Geibel’s essay stated. The publisher claimed the Standard is (now, was) the second-oldest family-owned newspaper in New York and one of the five-oldest of its kind in America.

Times change. Few of us read newspapers anymore. Blame Bill Gates and his fellow travelers. That’s how it goes. We must look forward, not back. But we can also cry. / RL

(Mar. 13): Old things last only so long. And after an estimated 77 years of life, the dry hole that disperses septic tank effluent from the Enfield Courthouse, the Town Board’s meeting hall, has failed.

“Nobody knows how deep it is,” Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins informed the Town Board March 12. Most likely the 6 x 8-foot cinder block hole was dug when the Courthouse, formerly the Enfield Fire Station, was built in 1948.

The dry hole’s located beneath the Courthouse’s gravel driveway. And what failed was its lid. Operators of the co-located Enfield Food Pantry reportedly discovered the imminent rupture only days earlier. As a precaution, the driveway is closed until the work gets completed.

Spending money it would rather not have spent, the Town Board Wednesday allocated up to $12,000 from its Contingency Account to fund replacement costs.

Rollins predicted construction would be a “one-day job.” Due to the project’s complexity, contractor Paul Carpenter will perform the work, either Friday, the 14^th, or during the middle of the following week.

Pantry officials assure that the driveway’s closure will not impact weekend food distributions.

Director of Assessment Jay Franklin

(Mar. 7): What a difference a year makes. And this year’s planned pause in local property revaluations reflects it.

“We’re seeing some appreciation, but not as much as we have,” Tompkins County Director of Assessment Jay Franklin told a County Legislature committee March 6. “I think interest rates are finally catching up to people… Consumers are less inclined to buy large-ticket items; their homes, your cars, things like that.”

Franklin also cited public uncertainty about the presidential election.

The Director reported local real estate values have risen on average only five percent during the past year. Compare that with the 19.8 percent annual hike that caused so much pain one year ago.

The cooling of house inflation supports the Assessment Director’s call for a multi-year pause in what had been annual reassessments. As a practical matter, there’ll be no wholesale adjustment this year, except for the 955 parcels with additions, demolitions, or boundary line changes.

“The market went up five percent. So what’s really the difference between a $200,000 and a $210,000 house?” Franklin asked.

County Assessment would need the local Legislature’s consent to postpone reassessments for as long as the four years Franklin would like. And to that question, the Government Operations Committee Thursday gave no firm guidance.

A unanimous vote for the “forensic audit”

(Mar. 6): Amid media reports alleging employee dissatisfaction and Library Director Leslie Tabor’s questionable disposal of surplus books, the Tompkins County Public Library will get a deep-dive “forensic audit” by orders of the Tompkins County Legislature.

“We’re not alleging anything bad has happened,” County legislator Mike Lane remarked as the Legislature prepared to authorize the outside audit March 4. “But we have a whole lot of questions about the budget itself, and we want to understand it better,” Lane said.

Legislature Chair Dan Klein moved the audit authorization at Tuesday’s meeting without disclosing it beforehand.

Klein acknowledged the Library Board had been notified of his proposal. And in contrast to much longer discussions during the Legislature’s four-hour meeting, lawmakers took only five minutes to consider Klein’s resolution. The authorization passed unanimously. Up to $9,999 can be spent to fund the audit.

“[A] forensic audit will provide an independent examination of TCPL’s financial condition, records, processes, controls, and past and current financial and operational practices to address the questions that have been raised,” the adopted resolution states.

Will the audit include Tabor’s controversial “weeding” of books? Neither the resolution nor the Legislature directly addressed that specific question.

Mezey: Please, no “sledgehammer.”

(Mar. 5): Make it clear: When it comes to changing state law, the Tompkins County Legislature holds only the power to persuade and a propensity to pontificate.

Legislators took ten minutes short of an hour March 4th doing the latter; debating two competing resolutions passing judgment on Governor Hochul’s call for broader state powers to involuntarily treat the mentally ill and drug addicts.

In the end, legislators rejected, five votes to nine, the resolution that would have supported Hochul’s initiative. They then endorsed, eight to six, a competing measure that opposed expanded involuntary institutionalization.

“We have an obligation to try to help these people,” legislator Rich John pleaded in defense of the Hochul-supported bill.

“And the idea that we must do a one-size-fits-all approach that must be voluntary treatment, that we must respect autonomy above all else, to the extent that we let people live outside, unable to care for themselves, and they die or they get preyed upon,” John said, makes involuntary treatment, “not seem radical to me at all.”

But Greg Mezey’s competing viewpoint prevailed. “I don’t necessarily want a sledgehammer when that may not be the right tool,” Mezey said. And to him, forced institutionalization is a “crummy tool.”

Both Enfield’s legislators, Anne Koreman and Randy Brown, supported Mezey’s majority stance.

(Mar. 5): Providing firefighters their mandated annual physical exams may soon cost the Enfield Fire District twice as much. And those who oversee the district must find a way to pay the bill.

The district’s Board of Fire Commissioners digested the bad news Tuesday, March 4^th, but then delayed further action for two weeks.

The current go-to medical provider, Trumansburg Family Medicine, seeks to withdraw from the service. And the low-bid alternative, Occustar, an occupational medicine firm, quotes a rate that would cost the fire district $12,000 annually. The district has only $6,000 budgeted.

Commissioners’ Chair Greg Stevenson noted that up until now firefighters could get their personal doctor to sign off on the physical. The volunteer’s own insurance would effectively pay the expense. But under the new, more formalized protocol, third-party certifications would likely end.

“The Fire Company has been giving the Town and now the Fire District a big break,” said Stevenson reasoning that past practice had unfairly cost-shifted to insurers.

Liability concerns, in part, drive the transition to on-site physical exams. Slipshod enforcement of the physicals mandate, Commissioners were told, has brought other fire companies big fines and lawsuits, especially should a firefighter die.

Worker Advocate Myers

(Feb. 28): Could you afford to pay an entry-level employee $1,000 per week? If you’re that employee, could you live on it?

The Tompkins County Workers’ Center released its latest Living Wage calculations February 26. The finding computes the 2025 Tompkins County Living Wage at $24.82 an hour, up 34.5 per cent from the last calculation made two years ago. That translates to $198.56 for an eight-hour day, $992.80 for a 40-hour week, or $51,626 for the year.

“Tompkins County, New York, is the most expensive place to live in Upstate New York, and by some measures one of the most expensive places to live in the United States,” the Workers’ Center states on its website.

In a broadcast interview Thursday, the Workers’ Center Director, Pete Myers blamed a 17 per cent rise in rents over the two years as a major contributor to the increase.

“There are some employers that are going to have a really difficult time with this,” Myers told his WHCU interviewer.

Tompkins County Government is one such Living Wage employer. And Tompkins’ lawmakers have already worried about how the increase they’d predicted would drive up the budget.

Moreover, some activists have urged that the Living Wage be made the legal Minimum Wage locally. [See more detailed story, now posted.]

Newly-hung lights in the ECC’s “Great Room”

(Feb. 27): “The Rhubarb Festival is not working,” Enfield Community Council (ECC) President Cortney Bailey bluntly put it at the ECC’s Annual Meeting Thursday. And with nobody else disagreeing, the Council’s Board called off holding any springtime community celebration for this, the second straight year.

ECC thought it had found a catchy niche theme when it retooled its long-held “Country Faire” to become a Rhubarb Festival in 2022 and 2023. But it canceled last year. Problems arose then and now, not the least of which is timing.

Rhubarb isn’t ready to harvest until late-May. But vendors who sell things and provide the ECC rental income do best with an earlier date, before Mother’s Day.

“People bought gifts for their moms left, right, and sideways,” Bailey recalled when the event was held sooner.

“It was simple and quiet,” ECC’s Vera Howe Strait remembered of the more youth-focused Country Faire.

Odds are the Council will revert to the “Faire” in 2026. But it lacks the person-power for an event this spring.

“This will make the Harvest Festival be a much more important event,” Bailey predicted. ECC plans its 50^th Annual Harvest Festival September 20.

(Feb. 27): Five companies, one of them local, have tendered bids to construct solar panels atop the Enfield Town Hall, the Town’s former Highway Dept. Garage. Expect the Town Board to award the winning bidder March 12.

Each of the five offers fell close to one another in terms of price and equipment. Judged on cost alone, the company, “Solar Environment” of Saratoga Springs registered lowest at $66,000, less an estimated rebate of about $6,000 from a state agency.

Competing bids ranged up to $71,040. Enfield-based Fingerlakes Renewables tendered a quote in the middle range.

The Enfield Town Board agreed last September to proceed with the project having received a pair of grants for $60,000 to cover most of the expense. Town taxpayers might contribute up to $5,000 toward the work. Members thought it was a good bargain.

State law permits towns to evaluate competing bids based on “best value.” So the lowest dollar quote does not necessarily assure its award. The close range of these bids could put any applicant in play.

Bid documents anticipate fast-track completion this spring or early-summer.

Senator Skoufis

(Feb. 26): It might safely be said that everyone’s got too much time on their hands.

Credit the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) for unearthing—and of course, exploiting—a nasty intra-party fight between Democratic Congressman Josh Riley and Hudson Valley State Senator James Skoufis.

In essence, Skoufis—the senator who pushed our local elections to even years—faults Riley for not hating President Trump as much as he does.

“All due respect, you haven’t tweeted about Trump since July 2024,” Skoufis answered Riley on X, according to the NRCC. “I’m in a Trump +12 (percent) district and do so regularly… Yet, you have no problem lobbing a cheap shot at (Hudson Valley) Democrats like… me who are fighting to make our prisons safer.”

“Do better,” Skoufis scolded Riley.

The senator’s anger peaked over Riley’s stand on grievances raised by New York’s striking prison guards.

“Corrections officers have a tough job in harsh conditions with minimal resources,” Congressman Riley had earlier tweeted. “Instead of helping, Albany politicians are making things worse with half-baked policies and mandates.”

Of course, the NRCC should have just stood back and let two Dems fight. It couldn’t help itself.

Riley’s “wasting his time criticizing,” an NRCC spokesperson accused the Congressman. “No wonder even Democrats are sick of him already,” Maureen O’Toole decried. /RL

(Feb. 25): Providing financial first-light at the dawn of this year’s Ithaca City School District budget process, Dr. Dom Lisi, ICSD’s Assistant Superintendent for Business, briefed the Board of Education Tuesday on projected revenues. And he brought good news.

Whereas last year’s state-set “tax cap” was only 2.9 per cent, the projected 2025-26 tax cap may be almost a full percentage point higher, 3.76 per cent.

What that means is that the school board, should it choose, could hike the 2025-26 budget’s tax levy by $4.17 Million without having to obtain 60 per cent super-majority support from voters in the May referendum. A simple majority would suffice.

Last year, after a more expensive budget lost disastrously at the polls, the ICSD Board pared spending to keep within the tax cap, and the trimmed-down budget passed.

Dr. Lisi’s assistant admitted Tuesday that tax-abated “PILOT” revenues are still “a little foggy” at the moment. They could alter the tax cap’s calculation.

The school board gave little reaction to the revenue figures. Nothing was said about spending.

Lisi’s other calculations estimated a 3.3 per cent increase in state aid to Ithaca’s schools, up more than a million dollars. The administrator repeated the Tompkins County Assessment Director’s prediction of a flat tax base on the assumption that most homes won’t be reassessed for the next four years.

Dr. Jill Tripp

(Feb. 24): For a second consecutive month, a key committee of the Ithaca Board of Education has declined to recommend how big a capital package to place before voters later this year.

“We keep not coming to a resolution on this, and I don’t expect us to come to a resolution tonight,” Facilities Committee Chair Jill Tripp said back at a February 11 meeting. That’s when the committee spent just five minutes at session’s close discussing decision timetables, but not dollar amounts.

What’s more, the date of a capital referendum keeps changing. In mid-December, Tripp revealed that an internal consensus had set October 21 as the voting date. But at the February meeting, she referenced a presumed December referendum instead.

Board of Education President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell, according to Tripp, had urged all board members to attend the committee’s February meeting in hopes of resolving details. But even Eversley Bradwell didn’t show that day, so no recommendation emerged.

Choices offered the board back in December cited $30 Million, $40 Million, or $50 Million capital options.

Lacking any committee guidance, the full Board will likely face the matter head-on March 11… or maybe the 25^th. This is a can that often gets kicked. / RL

Legislator Rich John

(Feb. 18): It escaped widespread attention beyond the airwaves. But three-term Tompkins County legislator Rich John has quietly disclosed his intention not to seek reelection this year. He’s the sixth incumbent on the 14-member legislative body to plan departure.

“I really think it’s time for me to go on to another opportunity, and frankly for somebody else to come in with new ideas and energy and give it a shot,” John said in a WHCU interview January 31.

What nobody’s reported so far is that had John chosen to run, redistricting would have forced him into a primary battle with another incumbent, fellow Democrat Veronica Pillar. It might have become the only contest for any of the Legislature’s incumbents, who, recent experience holds, often win re-election unopposed.

But the seats that will be vacated could see challenges. Tompkins County Elections Commissioner Stephen DeWitt confirms he expects multiple candidates to petition in some districts, both inside and outside the City of Ithaca. DeWitt did not name names.

“I think that the people need to be represented from somebody else for a while,” Rich John told his interviewer. But least for some of those in John’s new district, that “somebody else” could be incumbent Pillar.

Leslie Tabor (rt.) with TCPL’s Business Mgr.

(Feb. 17): It may explain why the many shelves at the oversized, yet underutilized Tompkins County Public Library look so naked.

A deep-dive 3,500-word expose posted Monday in The Ithaca Voice, product of a year-long investigation, profiles troubled times at the heavily County-funded library, most of the problems traced to Leslie Tabor, library director since 2022.

There’s dissention amongst staff, The Voice’s story reports. Unionized employees have lodged unfair labor practices complaints. Some people have quit. A high-profile law firm was brought in to investigate.

Most troubling, however, is the destruction of books. It’s called “weeding,” and Tabor allegedly ordered it with a vengeance. The director disposed of nearly 109,000 books and other materials during her first year of service, more than 40 percent of the library’s total collection, The Voice reports.

For the 33-library Finger Lakes Library System, as many as 60 percent of stored volumes were tossed out, many of them books the local library did not own.

“Weeding” drew little attention during Tabor’s 30-minute budget presentation to the Tompkins County Legislature last September. Yet not all were happy.

“I’ve seen empty shelves; we’ve heard a lot of griping from members of the community,” legislator Deborah Dawson told Tabor that day.

And yes, to those of us in rural places like Enfield, we could have used those books. It’s a crying shame. / RL

Lucy Brown with her likeness, August 2024 (photo courtesy Cornell Chronicle)

(Feb. 17): Any Baby Boomer who came of age in Ithaca and held a passion for civil rights knew the name, Lucy Brown. And if fortunate, they knew her personally.

Brown was an activist icon of an older generation one looked up to. It would pay disrespect to compare her to anyone else but herself.

It took nearly a week for Brown’s passing to circulate widely in this community. Now it has.

Lucy J. Brown—known endearingly as “Mama. Lucy” or “Ms. Lucy” by those who knew her—died February 9^th at age 91.

Brown served on many local boards and committees. She mentored students as an administrative assistant at Cornell. She helped co-found Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services (INHS), whose leadership last week paid tribute:

“Beyond any title or position, Lucy J. Brown was a lifelong agent of change, a constant advocate for those marginalized, and a respected presence in decision-making processes,” INHS stated.

Lucy Brown was on hand last August when a commemorative statue was unveiled in her honor. It stands outside the Henry St. John Building on Ithaca’s Clinton Street.

A celebration of Lucy Brown’s life is planned for March 1 in Georgia, where she’d resided with family since 2020.

Claudia Tenney

(Feb. 16): Memorialized holidays usually honor dead people. Congresswoman Claudia Tenney wants one to revere someone still very much alive—her beloved President Donald Trump.

On Valentine’s Day, Tenney, who represents our neighbors in the Town of Hector, Seneca County, and points north, introduced the “Trump’s Birthday and Flag Day Holiday Establishment Act.”

If adopted, our banks, government offices and schools would, no doubt, close every June 14—Donald Trump’s B’day—inconveniently just a few days before our other new holiday, Juneteenth. Flag Day falls on the same calendar day as when Trump was born.

“No modern president has been more pivotal for our country than Donald J. Trump,” Tenney’s sycophantic press release states. “As both our 45th and 47th President, he is the most consequential President in modern American history, leading our country at a time of great international and domestic turmoil,” Tenney proclaims.

Given how President Trump has polarized America, one can only envision how divisive a “holiday” like this would be. You’d find more protest than praise in places like Ithaca.

But anyone who drove Routes 5&20 near the Geneva Walmart before the election and saw that grinning Trump-Tenney billboard will surely find Claudia’s payback gratitude unremarkable. / RL

(Feb. 13): All may not like it, but the Newfield Town Board has taken a key procedural step toward approving yet another solar farm off Millard Hill Road.

By majority vote, the Town Board Thursday assumed what’s called “lead agency” status in the environmental review of TJA-New York’s planned 5 Megawatt facilities to be located not far from other solar farms near the Enfield town line.

In its Resolution, the Newfield Board also designated Barton and Loguidice as the consultant that will guide its environmental study. By taking the lead, Newfield’s elected officials assume the authority often assigned to the town’s appointed Planning Board. Planners had started the review.

Notable in Thursday’s discussion, TJA’s Michael Frateschi stated preference for negotiating any Payment-in-Lieu-of-Tax (PILOT) agreement with the Town directly, and not through the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency.

“We’re very willing to work with the Town,” Frateschi told the meeting. By state law, a Town-based PILOT can only run 15 years. After that, a “standardized assessment model” would apply, members were told.

Newfield Supervisor Michael Allinger finds himself defending his Town against criticism the project would harm taxpayers.

“The Town Board has one job and that is to work for the best of the Newfield Community,” Allinger wrote on the Town’s website February 3rd in reply to a social media critic.

The project’s next step will likely be a Public Hearing, tentatively set for March 13.

In the floodplain

(Feb. 13): Enfield residents, for the first time, will be able to purchase federally-backed flood insurance, under a wordy resolution adopted Wednesday night by the Enfield Town Board.

But the actual availability of those policies must await Town Board approval of floodplain development regulations, still under review.

New York rules mandate Enfield now join the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) after newly-approved federal maps identified lowlands along portions of Enfield Creek—but nowhere else—as lying within a floodplain. In those flood-prone areas, the state also dictates Enfield restrict what’s built there.

Enfield’s Town Board and Planning Board have scurried in recent weeks to meet a March 20 deadline for submission of draft regulations to state officials. Before Wednesday’s meeting, Supervisor Stephanie Redmond had attempted to jump-start the process by getting draft approval almost on-the-spot.

It didn’t work. Questions arising during Town Board discussions—including whether the Town could ban new home construction altogether in floodplains—bogged down the process. A mid-March submission now seems more likely.

Expect it to be June before Enfield residents can actually buy NFIP policies.

(Feb. 4): Recently-elected Commissioner Don Gunning cast his first dissent Tuesday as the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners authorized its Chair to sign a one-year, $75,000 lease of the Enfield Fire Station from its owner, the volunteer fire company commissioners oversee.

“While this may not be perfect,” Board Chair Greg Stevenson said of the lease, “we need someplace where to operate out of and where to park our trucks.”

The rental charge is up four per cent from that of last year. “It is what it is,” Commissioner Barry “Buddy Rollins said of the agreement he nonetheless supported. But Rollins complained the rental payment stands $23,000 over what the owning fire company pays on its mortgage.

Gunning took a different position, faulting the fire company for not renting out its large meeting room for community events.

“We’re here to fight fires and train and not in the rental business,” Fire Company President Dennis Hubbell countered. Hubbell said renting out requires oversight and maintenance. It also puts the fire company in direct competition with the Enfield Community Council and the Enfield Valley Grange.

The contract approved Tuesday has been tossed back and forth between attorneys for months, leaving its approval delayed. The Fire Company’s Board of Directors is expected to give its own consent this Thursday.

(Feb. 12): Enfield Town Board members, you might say, were set back on their haunches Wednesday night as three public critics vigorously faulted a proposed new Dog Control Law for the town, one that’s been discussed off-and-on for nearly a year, but that night finally made it to a Public Hearing.

“Are we fixing something that is not broken?” one Enfield Main Road resident asked the Board.

“Why are we going after every dog owner?” resident Tammy Alling inquired. “So many other things in this town are more important.”

What rankled the critics, owners of multiple canines, was a provision that would designate any home with five or more dogs as a “kennel” and impose restrictions on food storage and waste removal. It would expand Enfield’s current, concise two-page dog law to as many as 16 sheets, with new dictates the Town’s attorney had recommended.

“It’s to protect the dogs,” Town Clerk Mary Cornell pleaded as she defended the revisions. But faced with more than an hour of withering criticism—with at one point Supervisor Stephanie Redmond yielding the floor is disgust—the Town Board gave up. It postponed action, and adjourned the hearing until April.

Dr. Brown: “Louder than any statement”

(Feb. 12): It was a meeting of the Ithaca Board of Education Tuesday night made newsworthy for what wasn’t said. An elephant standing prominently within the ICSD’s York Lecture Hall, where members convened, got purposely ignored during the more than 90-minute session.

In its first meeting since word surfaced that the Trump Department of Education had launched an investigation into alleged anti-white bias at the Ithaca City School District’s “Students of Color Summit,” neither school board members nor Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown chose to face Trump or his administration’s policies head-on.

To the contrary, Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell shut down any critique.

“This is the first time the board has had a meeting in two weeks,” Eversley Bradwell reminded observers. “So it would not be wise for any board member to respond without us having some time to share space together to determine what our path forward is.” All members complied. The Board President promised a statement, eventually.

Superintendent Brown acknowledged that he, too, has been begged to comment, even by shoppers at Wegmans. Brown, like all others, guarded his words Tuesday night, saying only that current programs are “lawful… compliant and consistent with the state standards and frameworks” to which the ICSD adheres.

“I hope our actions speak louder than any statement,” Brown told the Board.

Equally surprising, no one from the public addressed the school board on the subject. Restraint prevailed. But the emotional undercurrent remained palpable.

(Feb.11): Tompkins County Assessment Director Jay Franklin reportedly told an Ithaca Board of Education committee Tuesday he’ll recommend a four-year pause in most property reassessments so as to convert his department to new, more reliable software.

The Department “will not attempt to measure market changes between now and 2029,” Finance Committee Chair Garrick Blalock relayed to the full Board of Education Tuesday evening.

Franklin’s revelation, stated at a committee meeting just hours earlier, marked its first known public disclosure. Franklin had never mentioned it when he updated the County Legislature’s Government Operations Committee five days earlier.

“He will reassess physical changes,” Blalock advised the board of Franklin’s plan. But if you’re assessed for $300,000, and your house “doesn’t fall down and you don’t improve it, it’ll stay at $300,000, even if you sell it for $400,000.”

Any multi-year reassessment pause would require the County Legislature’s consent. One or more legislators are expected to oppose a lengthy delay.

Last year, inflation-powered, double-digit assessment increases stunned many homeowners. Franklin told the County committee February 6^th he’d sent out more than 20,000 assessment changes last year, but only 630 so far in 2025, the director already planning a one-year hiatus. But a four-year pause is new.

The big downside would be sticker shock later on. “If I’m on this board in July 2029, don’t come here and say I didn’t see this assessment coming,” Blalock warned taxpayers.

Champion: “Any hope?”

(Feb. 11): On the same day President Trump ordered the federal government to go back to using plastic straws—not paper ones—a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature moved Monday in the opposite direction, supporting a likely-to-fail effort to force the producers of plastic packaging to pay for recycling it.

“I love this. I’ve loved this for a long time,” legislator Amanda Champion crowed as the Planning, Energy, and Environmental Quality Committee backed a proposed state law, introduced for this, the fifth consecutive year, to impose “producer responsibility.”

“Is there any hope it’s gonna’ pass?” Champion queried.

Probably not. Any “bubble-pack bill” faces stiff headwinds from industry lobbyists. Moreover, what’s on Albany’s table may not be ready for prime time.

“I totally agree with the goal,” Rich John, a law professor, stated. But “I looked at the legislation, and I was appalled. It’s a total mess.”

There’s a section on financial impact. “There’s nothing there,” John reported. Drafters had failed to predict what the law might cost producers—and ultimately, consumers.

What’s more, the text is “massive,” John observed. “It involves an incredibly complex bureaucratic system that by all indications New York State is not capable of. They just cannot do this.”

Rich John voted no. Champion, Veronica Pillar and committee Chair Anne Koreman supported the endorsement, which heads now to the full County Legislature.

ITA’s Kathryn Cernera

(Feb. 5): Ithaca Board of Education member Jill Tripp spoke. So did the President of the Ithaca Teachers Association, as did this writer, Enfield Councilperson Robert Lynch.

And their time was rewarded Wednesday as a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature recommended adoption of state legislation that would expand membership of the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency (IDA) from seven to nine members.

The initiative, first pressed by the Ithaca School District, aims at granting school districts and rural towns a louder voice in the IDA’s tax abatement decisions.

“I’m always going to err on the side of having more people at the table; more diversity at the table,” Housing and Economic Development Committee member Travis Brooks said, one of six on the panel who gave expansion unanimous support.

But concerns came from others. Legislator Rich John—not a committee member, but holding a seat on the IDA—feared a school representative would tend to reject valuable abatements that actually bring schools benefits.

“The IDA has helped the schools fundamentally in gigantic ways,” John said. “You absolutely need growth if you’re going to have a sustainable community.”

The committee’s resolution next goes to the full County Legislature and then to lawmakers in Albany.

Enfield Creek; flood plain

(Feb. 5): Acting on short notice, and never bothering to cast a formal vote, the Enfield Town Planning Board Wednesday recommended Town Board adoption of a Flood Damage Protection Law needed for the first time now that federal authorities have classified slivers of land along Enfield Creek as lying in a flood plain.

“I’m comfortable with it,” Planning Board Chair Dan Walker said following less than a one-hour Board review of the law, drafted by state officials and given the Town to adopt as nothing short of a mandate.

The 20-page document—plus add-ons and appendices—may see preliminary adoption by the Town Board February 12^th. Its requirements would either prevent new development altogether in flood plains, or require buildings there to be elevated, perhaps on stilts.

After advising Enfield a full year ago not to enact a local law until flood maps were set, state officials in mid-January directed the town to hastily adopt a draft “floodplain management ordinance” and submit it for their review by March 20.

At least one Enfield Councilperson (this writer) had cautioned Wednesday that he would not vote on anything until the Planning Board had given its blessing. Now, with that evening’s endorsement, it has.

Seeking sunlight; Sigler

(Feb. 5): The most newsworthy part of the Tompkins County Legislature’s February 4^th meeting may have been the part we never saw.

Just five days after federal agents seized for presumed deportation an undocumented immigrant in downtown Ithaca, and after some conservatives have called for Sheriff Derek Osborne’s arrest for earlier releasing the man from custody, Chair Dan Klein called the Legislature into Executive Session at the close of Tuesday’s public meeting “for discussions regarding proposed, pending or current litigation.”

Klein wasn’t more specific. No public action was taken afterward. And in a departure from usual, some opposed the decision to convene in private.

“I think we should have this discussion in open session,” Republican legislator Mike Sigler said before the majority voted to close doors, shutter cameras, and kick the public out. “I don’t think we should have an executive session for this discussion,” Sigler said.

Fellow Republican Lee Shurtleff and Democrats Susan Currey and Travis Brooks joined Sigler in opposing the closure.

The “Meeting in executive session” tile stayed on the screen for just over an hour before the feed was finally cut. We’re left to speculate what “litigation” lawmakers discussed.

White attendees; 2023 (courtesy Ithaca Times)

(Feb. 4): An arm of the Trump Administration has launched an investigation into the Ithaca City School District’s annual “Students of Color Summit” and whether it excludes white students, according to one local media report, published Tuesday.

According to The Ithaca Times, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on January 27 activated a probe into the complaint filed last August against the school district’s event, but left unanswered by the prior Biden Administration.

A conservative group founded by Cornell University Law Professor William A. Jacobson alleged in the complaint that the district’s one-day events, held for each of the past four years, violated both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause “by intentionally excluding white students,” according to the article.

Nevertheless, a photo accompanying the Times report, one taken at the 2023 Summit, appears to show white attendees.

“It is hard to imagine more open, prolonged, and intentional racial discrimination, despite ICSD’s denials,” Jacobson reportedly wrote in his complaint.

Ithaca School Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell told the Times he “welcomes the investigation,” but denied the allegation.

“Ithaca City School District programs do not exclude,” Eversley Bradwell said. “The 2024 event was created by students to support and affirm Students of Color, and all students, staff and educators were invited to attend.”

Anna Kelles

(Feb. 2): In a statement issued following the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids locally last Thursday, Ithaca Assemblymember Anna Kelles has spoken out, both condemning the Trump Administration’s escalating deportation initiatives and defending local law enforcement officials who allegedly failed to cooperate.

“The intentional misinformation spread by the current federal administration highlights their targeted actions against the entire immigrant community in our country,” wrote Kelles on official letterhead. “This community represents millions of people who collectively contribute to the economic and social wellbeing of our nation,” she stated.

While not referencing Tompkins County Sheriff Derek Osborne by name—some Republican critics have called for Osborne’s arrest—Kelles defended the local Sheriff’s only limited cooperation regarding a former jail inmate later apprehended by ICE agents in downtown Ithaca.

Citing the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, Kelles, the original author of what equates to Tompkins County’s “sanctuary city” law, stated: “The notion that the federal government can mandate compliance with immigration initiatives is a misinterpretation of the Supremacy Clause, and courts have consistently upheld that states cannot be forced into such roles.”

Sheriff Osborne had not commented on the matter as of the weekend. But Tompkins County Government has defended his conduct.

Meanwhile, a top Justice Department official, Acting Deputy attorney General Emil Bove, according to the Associated Press, has signaled that the U.S Attorney’s office will investigate local actions “for potential prosecution.”

Back then; May 2022

(Feb.1): Our district’s new Congressman, Josh Riley, during his first campaign in 2022, was photographed on a park bench, accepting the endorsement of progressive Assemblymember Anna Kelles, who when in the Tompkins County Legislature authored the closest thing our county has to a “sanctuary city” law.

But now in Congress, facing Donald Trump’s headwinds, Riley appears backing off on his progressive bona fides. Though he was hospitalized on the day the vote was taken, Riley has stated his support for the “Laken Riley Act,” the newly-adopted, Trump-signed statute that may receive the credit—or blame—for at least one local immigrant’s detention by federal officers this week.

“By ending ‘catch-and-release’ policies for undocumented immigrants who commit certain crimes, this bill takes an important step toward keeping our communities safe-and that will always be my top priority,” Josh Riley released in a statement, quoted by The Ithaca Times.

Forty-six Democrats supported the Laken Riley Act when the House passed it January 22. But 156 in Riley’s party opposed it. Progressive icon Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the law’s critics, saying the measure constitutes a “fundamental suspension of a core American value,” namely due process. An immigrant need only be accused of a crime, not convicted, to risk deportation.

Josh Riley barely won election last November. No doubt, he knows what kind of attack ads Republicans could run next time should he vote the wrong way. Welcome to reality. / RL

From the Enfield Civility Resolution, adopted by the Town Board, Sept. 13, 2017:

RESOLVED to exhibit and encourage the kinds of personal qualities that are typical in a civil society—gratitude, humility, openness, passion for service to others, propriety, kindness, caring, sense of duty, and a commitment to doing what is right in the Enfield community. All Enfield board members, committee members and staff shall strive to:

Treat everyone courteously
Listen to others respectfully
Give open minded consideration to all viewpoints
Focus on the issues and avoid personalizing debate
Embrace respectful disagreement and dissent as democratic rights that are inherent components of an inclusive public process and tools for forging sound decisions and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Enfield board members, committees and staff shall strive to promote the use of and adherence to these guidelines in all Enfield community activities.

Since January 2020, I’m proud to have been the Enfield Town Board’s representative on the Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG). At our regular Town Board meetings, I report on TCCOG discussions of intermunicipal interest that TCCOG has addressed in its meetings.

Now added to this website, filed under the the “TCCOG” tab, are the written versions of my monthly reports, presuming TCCOG has met since our Town Board’s last session. Please browse these reports and provide me whatever input you’d like.