Enfield barn-apartments burn; occupants safe – Bob Lynch, Enfield Councilperson (2024)

(July 1): The newly-reconstituted, more moderate-bending Ithaca Board of Education found it hard to get its house in order Monday. The absence of Todd Fox, likely its most conservative new member, didn’t help.

One person short, the Board agonized through a series of 4-4 tied votes as it tried to pick both a President and Vice-President. A 9 AM meeting that should have been open-and-shut, dragged on until almost Noon.

At the end of three ballots, incumbent Sean Eversley Bradwell emerged to secure another year as Board President. He won 6:2, with Jill Tripp and Adam Krantweiss dissenting.

Tripp, the newfound favorite of fiscal conservatives, was also nominated for Board President. But she failed to secure the needed fifth vote.

Krantweiss became Vice-President. Yet much like Eversley Bradwell, he had to outlast his own tied-vote challenger, Garrick Blalock.

Yes, it’s early. But what emerged Monday was an apparent philosophical and attitudinal divide on this new Ithaca Board of Education. It puts Tripp, Krantweiss, Katie Apker, and newly-elected Emily Workman nearer the center; with Eversley Bradwell, Blalock, Karen Yearwood and Erin Croyle to their left. At least on leadership, that’s how they’ve aligned.

(June 27): The Enfield Highway Department came to the rescue Thursday just days before the Enfield Community Council will open its recreational facilities for summer camp.

Last year, with help from a Tompkins County grant, the Town of Enfield paved the long-abandoned basketball court behind ECC’s Community Center. Then winter came, and the dirt surrounding the court settled making the pavement edge easy to stub one’s toe.

“The Health Department will not pass us for it,” member Vera Howe-Strait reported to the ECC Board Thursday. But with the next breath, she told of the solution.

Vera had met earlier that day with Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins, crew member Gabe Newhart, Supervisor Redmond and her deputy, Greg Hutnik. They moved fast. During the highway crew’s lunch break, they brought in topsoil and made a gradual slope to the grass. It’s acceptable now.

“Thank you, Enfield Highway Department,” ECC President Cortney Bailey shouted out at the Board meeting. Expect a poster board to go up showing appreciation. Too often they only hear the complaints, Bailey remarked.

And Bailey cheered about another achievement Thursday. As many as 50 children have signed up for ECC’s summer camp.

(June 26): Prompted by what some see as overly-aggressive tree pruning by crews rebuilding Rockwell and Porter Hill roads, residents took most seats at a Special Enfield Town Board meeting Wednesday night and for more than two hours voiced their concerns to Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins’ over his tree cutting practices that remove the “canopy” that shelters those roads.

“I fell in love with the area because of the trees,” one woman told the Town Board. “This is one of the most beautiful and enchanting places,” Rockwell Road’s Charlie Elrod prided Enfield. Elrod called Rollins’ pruning practices “aggressive overreach.”

Dialogue mostly remained civil. Yet Rollins stood his ground, saying the law grants him the authority. One reason he gave for cutting back the canopy: it’ll allow snow to melt faster in winter. Some challenged the Superintendent’s rationale.

As time passed—and emotions calmed—Wednesday’s attendees and Rollins agreed to future cooperation. They’d discuss which limbs need be cut, and which may stay.

The Superintendent said he won’t return to tree cutting on Rockwell until the fall. That’s when its eastern end gets pruned.

Supervisor Stephanie Redmond cautiously welcomed one resident’s suggestion that Enfield budget for an arborist’s services next year. The person would guide Rollins’ decisions… and his chain saw.

(June 26): Unless you were a deep-insider, you would have missed it. Except, perhaps, for Ithaca School Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell’s passing recognition Tuesday of the talent the district is losing. And, oh yes, the long executive sessions the board took—one that lasted more than two hours—and stretched Tuesday’s Board meeting to three minutes short of Midnight.

Buried within the Board’s Consent Agenda—and ratified routinely—a Personnel Report confirmed the departure of the Principal of DeWitt Middle School, the promotion of an associate principal to replace her, and the “termination” of Associate DeWitt Principal Ramelle Liverpool.

Associate Boynton Middle School Principal Daniel McGrath will assume DeWitt Principal Carlan Gray’s leadership post July first.

The Ithaca Times quotes a letter Principal Gray sent to parents and teachers in mid-June. The principal said the decision was hers, yet left the backstory unstated.

“It is with a mixture of sadness and gratitude that I write to inform you of my decision to resign” Gray reportedly wrote. “I thank you for allowing me to serve your children for four years.”

Both DeWitt and Boynton middle schools have gotten bad grades lately, cited in a state report for poor academic performance, particularly among students of color.

Other administrative changes, contained in the Personnel Report, confirmed the retirement of Corey Mitchell as Associate Principal at Ithaca High School. Also, as previously announced, Deputy School Superintendent Lily Talcott will leave to become Superintendent of the local BOCES.

(June 26): Budget cuts carry consequences. And a pair of foreign language programs at the Ithaca District’s high school and middle schools has emerged as a revised budget’s first and most prominent casualty.

A large and vocal turnout of parents, teachers, and some students packed the Ithaca Board of Education’s meeting room Tuesday night. More than a score of speakers occupied an hour’s time urging reversal of a newly-revealed plan to cut Latin and Chinese Mandarin instruction from the ICSD curriculum.

Melena, a DeWitt Middle School graduate, found her passion morphing into tears as she shared her disappointment in losing the opportunity to carry her Mandarin courses into High School. “Latin made me… a better student in all of my courses,” Anna Tribble, a former student, told the Board.

“Decisions made for short-term reasons have long-term negative effects,” parent Shawn Kennedy, a Latin course supporter, stated.

Following an initial budget defeat in May, the Ithaca Board of Education cut $5.9 Million in proposed spending to trim the total down to what residents approved in a re-vote referendum June 18^th. Specific program cuts have not surfaced until now.

“We have heard you and we will be talking more about language programs,” Board member Jill Tripp assured the evening’s critics.

“I want to avoid… pitting programs against each other,” Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell cautioned. “I don’t know where we’re going to be headed,” he added. “It’ll be a long summer. Give us some time”

(June 23): Following legislative action this past week, neither Cheech nor Chong could keep his County Government job very long. Then, again, he might.

Following a half-hour of agonizing debate, the Tompkins County Legislature June 18^th approved a “Cannabis-Free Work Environment” policy that got ever-more neutered as the minutes passed.

The easy part was banning consumption on the job. But what about working under pot’s influence? A committee had recommended an employee’s supervisor make the call and mete out discipline.

“It’s a determination not of whether someone is under the influence as… it’s based on their work performance,” a discomfited and tongue-tied County Administrator Lisa Holmes explained. “It is seemingly a mushy area here,” she admitted.

“I think mushy areas can create problems for an employer that allows for mushy areas,” legislator Greg Mezey remarked.

On Mezey’s initiative and by an 8:4 vote, the Legislature amended the policy to remove supervisory observational enforcement and to prohibit only job “impairment,” not one’s being merely “under the influence” of cannabis.

The amended policy passed 11-to-one, with only Shawna Black dissenting.

“I understand the intent of just to have a policy,” Black acknowledged. “But the reality is that this could be someone’s job that we’re talking about, and they could lose it if someone thinks they’re under the influence.”

“I don’t think this is ready for prime time,” Black said of the policy.

(June 22): An amendment to the New York State Constitution that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the Empire State is back on the November ballot after a lower-court judge had briefly blocked it.

In a unanimous ruling June 18^th, the five-judge Appellate Division of State Supreme Court ruled that conservative plaintiffs who’d sought to keep the so-called “Equal Rights Amendment” from voters based on a legal technicality had actually violated a technicality of their own.

The mid-level court did not reach the merits of the opponents’ arguments. Rather, it found the plaintiffs had employed an inappropriate procedure to bring the suit, and that the procedure they should have used was already time-barred by a statute of limitations.

The Equal Rights Amendment passed the Legislature twice. It was challenged last October by two private individuals and by Marjorie Byrnes, a Livingston County Assemblymember. Justice Daniel J. Doyle had sided with Byrnes and her supporters in a ruling that’s now effectively voided.

“We are gratified that the courts dismissed this frivolous case that was brought … to block equal rights right here in New York,” Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the state Senate Majority Office, informed the Albany Times-Union.

Democrats of late have lined up in favor of the amendment; Republicans against it. Some conservatives have warned that voter passage this fall could advance transgender access to school bathrooms and girls’ sports.

(June 21): Allegations of overly-aggressive planned tree-cutting along Rockwell Road will prompt a special meeting of the Enfield Town Board, most likely to be held on Wednesday evening, June 26^th.

The planned tree removals and pruning would be performed in conjunction with the planned repaving and related improvements to both Rockwell and Porter Hill Roads, work funded by Town Board action earlier this year and prioritized by Highway Superintendent Barry “Buddy” Rollins in his 2024 work plan.

State law grants Rollins operational authority in such matters. And the Superintendent insists his tree-cutting plans follow state guidance.

“We believe his interpretation of that guidance is overly broad,” one concerned Rockwell Road resident, Charles Elrod, wrote the Town Board in requesting the “emergency” session.

In response, Rollins allegedly informed Elrod that if the trees cannot be cut, the road project will not proceed.

(June 21): A last-minute allegation, lodged little more than a week before the Democratic Primary, has placed State Senator and U.S. Congressional candidate John Mannion on the defensive.

Mannion, who seeks his party’s Congressional nomination in the Syracuse-centered district adjacent to Tompkins County, has been accused anonymously by a group of former Senate office staffers of creating a “hostile work environment.”

Senator Mannion denies the allegations. A Syracuse newspaper has verified three of the accusers’ identities, yet withheld the names at their request.

“To start, we have been subjected to out of control yelling by Senator Mannion, often with cursing, and always with the intention of intimidating us,” the accusers stated in a more than 650-word statement shared June 17th on the online platform, “Medium.” The accusers also alleged “direct retaliation” by the Senator, and they alleged “transphobic” remarks by Mannion’s wife.

“This is clearly a coordinated effort to use smear tactics just a few days before the election to hurt me and my family,” Senator Mannion told a Utica television station (WKTV), defending himself against the charges.

John Mannion faces DeWitt Town Councilperson Sarah Klee Hood in the June 25^th Democratic Primary. Its winner will face incumbent Republican Brandon Williams this fall.

(June 20): Had the budget failed, the session, no doubt, would have been much longer. But it took only about two minutes Thursday for the Ithaca Board of Education to certify the results of Tuesday’s re-vote election, one in which a pared-down, next year’s $163 Million Ithaca Schools’ budget sailed to approval.

A similar re-vote budget certification meeting was held a little later that evening in Newfield.

“Thank you for the re-vote,” was about the only comment Board President Dr. Sean Eversley Bradwell made before he called for ratification. Nobody else spoke to the decision. And with Jill Tripp excused, all others on the Board approved the Tuesday results.

No surprise. Many Ithaca School Board members regretted voters’ rejection of a nearly $169 Million budget back in May. But with the budget’s tax levy increase cut substantially, Tuesday’s re-vote saw the revised budget pass, 4,979 votes to 1,736. A bus purchase proposition also passed.

Had voters not approved the revised budget, a state-mandated “Contingency Budget” would have fallen upon the Ithaca District, and with it $3 Million in additional spending cuts, reductions now avoided.

(June 18): With a larger voter turnout this time than last and with a smaller bite on the taxpayer’s wallet, voters in the Newfield School District Tuesday overwhelming ratified their revised $25.4 Million school budget.

District results, released about an hour after the polls closed, showed the budget passing 387 votes (59.7%) to 261 (40.3%), a margin of 126 votes.

The first time Newfield presented a proposed school budget, May 21^st, the spending plan lost by a mere 18 votes. 514 district residents participated that time; 648 persons did in the revote Tuesday.

Newfield’s Board of Education declined to submit for a revote a bus purchase option, one that had included the potential purchase of an electric school bus. The budget stood as the only item on the Re-vote ballot.

In the weeks since the initial budget’s defeat, Newfield’s educators trimmed a little more than $71,000 in spending, mainly by eliminating a currently vacant instructional position and proposing minor administrative economies. Those reductions cut the proposed tax levy increase from 3.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent.

Tuesday’s approval precludes the possibility of Newfield imposing a Contingency Budget next year, an austerity plan that would likely have required additional personnel reductions.

(June 13): Buried within a five-hour, budget-centered Ithaca City School District (ICSD) Board of Education meeting June 11th, Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell alleged that he and School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown had received “death threats” following the school district’s May 31^st “Students of Color Summit,” an event that gained national attention in conservative media after critics accused its organizers of racial exclusion.

“Some of those stories were picked up by various organizations, which resulted in significant amounts of threats to the Superintendent, as well as myself,” Eversley Bradwell disclosed. Both Eversley Bradwell and Dr. Brown are African-American.

The Board President described what was hurled at them: “Death threats, vulgar language, voicemails; things that would make one wonder why you would volunteer for a position if you were going to have your family or your lives threatened.”

Eversley Bradwell said little more about what he and Dr. Brown had sustained, yet implied the messages had contained “significant forms of racist vitriol and a promise to terminate folks.”

Tuesday’s was the first known revelation of the harassment following the “Students of Color Summit.” According to Ithaca.com, right-wing groups associated with Cornell Law School Professor William Jacobson had criticized the event for allegedly “segregating” students based on race.

Eversley Bradwell’s remark came during discussion of a revised District Safety Plan, one that the School Board subsequently adopted.

(June 13): Dan Woodring, the visionary behind Enfield’s “SkateGarden” project, made clear Wednesday night that his is a dream still under construction.

In a late-May email, Woodring had shared with Enfield Town Board members his retooled skateboard park design. It would recess a heart-shaped concrete bowl on Town-owned land next to the Park-and-Ride lot.

But in a Wednesday night presentation to the Town Board, a new design emerged, one with a curved contraption defying definition. (Imagine a half-opened toilet lid.)

And Woodring qualified that the design could change further still. ”If a heart-shaped bowl doesn’t fit everybody’s needs, then we’ll redesign it,” Woodring advised the Town Board. He indicated his is a collaborative process with other skateboarders.

Town officials must sign-off on a final design before concrete gets poured.

Meanwhile, Town Government will dance on the head of a pin to enable private donations for SkateGarden.

After first admonishing Town Board members to keep hands-off the process, Supervisor Stephanie Redmond Wednesday updated her legal guidance to state that Enfield can, indeed, accept cash donations toward the park’s construction. But Town employees, including elected officials, cannot solicit contributions, even on their personal social media.

(June 11): In sharp contrast to an earlier session last month involving a fatter budget, supporters of a leaner, tax cap-compliant, revised Ithaca City School District budget voiced the majority of comments at an hour-long Public Hearing Tuesday night.

Nine of the 15 persons who brought their comments to the Board of Education urged voters adopt the $163 Million retooled spending plan when it goes to the polls June 18^th. Only four speakers urged rejection.

The so-called “Re-vote Budget” replaces a more costly package soundly rejected in a late-May referendum. The revision would cut the proposed tax levy’s increase from 8.4 to 2.9 per cent.

“Voters have made a statement,” Heather Beasley said of the earlier budget. “And now it’s our turn to make a statement in favor of our programs, and our teachers, and our community.”

Speakers like Beasley warned of the more severe “Contingency Budget” that law would impose should this second budget also fail.

But opponents remain. “This is not just a community of children,” Leigh Rogers said, prompting muted heckling. “Others will suffer. Single parents will suffer; grandparents will suffer.”

Long after most commenters had filed out, Eldred Harris, voted off the school board after 15 years’ service, launched into a 10-minute monologue chiding those who would sell minority students short. “Equity costs money,” Harris, who’s African-American, said. “My voice is no longer needed,” he acknowledged, “but I will still be watching.”

(June 10): Newfield School District administrators fielded questions, but faced no sharp criticism during a Public Hearing Monday called to review a tax-trimmed $25.4 Million District Budget set for a re-vote June 18th.

About 20 residents, including Tompkins County legislator Randy Brown, seated themselves about the Newfield High School Library and for more than an hour accorded School Superintendent Eric Hartz and Business Manager Perry Gorgen polite deference as each explained how the School Board had cut expenses since an earlier budget defeat in late-May, and how the Board would need to cut even more if a second defeat forced a “Contingency Budget.”

“We’ve heard people say a contingency budget is meant to scare you into voting for the submitted budget,” Gorgen told attendees. He discounted the strategy. “This is just what we must do,” the manager said of a contingency alternative.

The Newfield Board of Education has already eliminated an unfilled “technology” instructor’s position at the high school to make the revised figures work. Attendees were told a contingency budget would force another $150,000 in instructional cuts. Most likely, additional teaching vacancies would go unfilled, Gorgen confirmed after the meeting.

“Our objective is to get as many people out as we can,” the manager proclaimed regarding the revote.

Newfield’s school budget lost May 21^st by only 18 votes. Most School Board members were absent from Monday’s hearing.

(June 8): Gathered in a circle at the Enfield Community Center Friday afternoon, about 20 residents joined leaders of the Ithaca City School District to talk school finances at a “Community Conversation” in preparation for a June 18^th re-vote on a trimmed-down $163 Million 2024-25 school district budget.

Tax burdens became the prime focus as Board of Education members Jill Tripp and Garrick Blalock, School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown, and fellow administrators Amanda Verba and Lily Talcott fielded questions.

What challenged district officials most was explaining how the tax levy imposed by any budget would impact individual homeowners’ bills amid skyrocketing residential assessments.

“Your tax burden is based on your assessment,” Blalock told attendees. “Homeowners are paying more and office building owners are paying less,” the school board member explained. Thus, the burdens shift, he said.

Administrators cautioned that should the revised budget fail at the polls and a more austere “Contingency Budget” then be imposed, household taxes could still rise because of this imbalance, even though the schools’ tax levy would remain the same next year as now.

The Ithaca District’s first budget proposal lost in May in a seven-to-three landslide defeat. Since then, the School Board has cut $5.9 Million in proposed spending.

(June 7): In the flurry of action during the closing days of the New York Legislative session, the State Assembly gave final passage Wednesday to what we, locally, refer to as “Enfield’s Law,” an amendment of New York Town Law that would avoid the confusion that confronted voters in last December’s first-ever Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners’ election.

The State Senate provided the measure earlier passage May 30^th. The bill will next be sent to Governor Hochul for her signature.

Last December, when Enfield voters were asked to elect five new members to their first-ever Board of Fire Commissioners, an attorney’s (perhaps strained) interpretation of an ambiguous state law allowed each voter to choose only one candidate for office, not five. Since as many as ten people had run for the positions, many in Enfield believed they’d been denied their franchise.

Earlier this year, the Enfield Town Board urged state legislators to clarify the controlling law, even though Enfield, itself, might never again face its December dilemma. State Senator Lea Webb served as point-person to shepherd the legislation to passage.

(June 5): During a more than hour-long quick review of Enfield’s 73-page Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2020, the Town Planning Board touched briefly Wednesday on how far existing subdivision regulations could go in limiting property dimensions and lot sizes. It’s an issue that’s arisen recently before the Town Board as size affects water rights and density.

“You should not regulate lot size through subdivision regulations,” Board alternate and Deputy Town Supervisor Greg Hutnik, a planner familiar with state law, counseled.

“I think you can put frontage (requirements) into subdivision regulations,” Planning Board Chair Dan Walker replied.

“I don’t think so,” Hutnik countered.

But while a zoning law could provide the remedy, Enfield doesn’t have zoning. And no one’s seriously considering zoning the Town.

“But you could have a separate ‘Lot Size Limit Law’,” Hutnik suggested.

Though some on the Town Board may favor a major rewrite of the existing Comprehensive Plan, most on the Planning Board continue to prefer a lighter touch.

“There’s no need to fully rewrite it,” Walker said of the current Plan. “Just update it and take credit for what we have done.”

Walker will prepare what he called a “talking point memo” for the Town Board’s June 12^th meeting.

[Note: The Planning Board postponed its scheduled review of Enfield’s Site Plan Review Law until August. It canceled its July meeting.]

(June 7): Like his Democratic opponent, incumbent Lea Webb, Republican State Senate Candidate Mike Sigler will face voters on two ballot lines this fall.

Friday, Sigler and his campaign announced the formation of what they call the “Local 607”Party—named, no doubt, after the district’s area code—and that it’s filed sufficient petition signatures to qualify for a November ballot line.

The campaign says nearly 5,000 qualifying signatures were filed with the New York State Board of Elections last week, and that the time for filing objections has passed.

“The Local 607 Party isn’t about me or any other candidate,” Sigler said in his campaign’s announcement. “It’s about the people of our communities, who’ve been suffering from skyrocketing prices, job losses, population outflow, and dangerous laws like Bail Reform that make our streets less safe.”

The Tompkins County legislator from Lansing turned Senate candidate, wore off shoe leather securing the ballot line. He claims to have personally collected more than 1,300 of the names himself from people who had not previously signed for any other candidate.

Candidates often secure Independent lines to broaden their support, and in Sigler’s case, to encourage non-Republicans to vote for him.

Democrat Webb will appear on the Working Families line in addition to that of her own party.

(June 4): You could call it “The Crosswalk to Nowhere.” On one side there’s Enfield Elementary School. On the other, there’s… well, a hayfield.

Legend has it that the rarely-used crosswalk was painted so that the state would then lower the speed limit in front of the school. But last fall, our alert resident, Gretchen Kirchgessner, noticed that the Department of Transportation had retained a dashed-line passing zone south of the crosswalk. From a safety standpoint, she said, it made no sense. It didn’t.

Last October, honoring Kirchgessner’s appeal, the Enfield Town Board requested NYSDOT revisit the issue and make the entire stretch of NY 327 in front of the school a “No-Passing Zone.” By its letter of May 22, Scott Bates, the agency’s regional traffic engineer, agreed with us:

“NYSDOT safety staff determined that given the crosswalk and the school zone, the closing of the passing zone by the school zone is justified at this time,” Bates wrote the Town. “The centerline will be restriped as a double-yellow, no-passing zone by our regional pavement marking (contractor) this coming construction season.”

Thank you, DOT. Thank you, Gretchen. / RL

(June 4): In case anyone hasn’t noticed, in this year of skyrocketing home assessments, tax increases are not popular.

That fact was proven again Tuesday when a normally-routine action to override the state’s so-called “2% Tax Cap” failed to secure the supermajority support in the Tompkins County Legislature needed to pass.

“I vote against this every year, and I would like to note that the public is 100 per cent against this,” Republican legislator Mike Sigler, a candidate for State Senate, told colleagues. Chuckles of acknowledgement from within the room followed. The measure’s passage, Sigler maintained, “does send a signal that we are open to… raising taxes.”

Democrat Greg Mezey agreed. Mezey argued the treasury of County Government is strong enough to weather “whatever storm may come our way.” And he said good evidence supports the belief that Tompkins County sits on a fund balance “in excess of $30 Million.”

A family issue called Sigler away before the final vote. But with another member also excused, the tax override fell one short of the nine votes needed for adoption.

That second absent member, Deborah Dawson—a likely override supporter—could seek reconsideration later. But she’d have to do so at the next meeting.

Among those representing Enfield, Anne Koreman favored the override; Randy Brown opposed it.

(June 4): [Update: In its meeting that followed the committee session, the Tompkins County Legislature, by a vote of 12-0, approved the committee’s salary recommendation for the next County Administrator.]

Earlier: In a quickly-concluded decision and by a unanimous vote, a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday recommended that the next-hired County Administrator receive a starting salary of $180,000, a level that would climb to $189,000 after just nine months.

The recommended starting pay would be $20,000 a year higher than that of the current Administrator, Lisa Holmes, assigned when Holmes was elevated to her position two years ago.

The Budget, Capital and Personnel Committee’s recommendation is likely to be acted upon by the full Legislature tonight.

“It would give us a competitive edge, and it would also allow us to put our best foot forward,” Ruby Pulliam, the County’s Commissioner of Human Resources, advised the committee. With Holmes retiring at year’s end, Tompkins County plans a nationwide search for Holmes’ successor.

The $180,000 high-end starting pay recommended by Pulliam nudged the salary $5,000 above what the committee’s initial resolution had stated. The committee also doubled to $10,000 its earlier-proposed relocation package the new hire would be provided.

“I think this is a little too rich for our blood,” committee Chair Mike Lane remarked of the higher salary set. Nonetheless, Lane joined in the resolution’s support.

(June 3): By the unanimous vote of its then-attending members, the Ithaca Board of Education Monday evening endorsed and sent to the voters for a June 18^th referendum a $163 Million proposed 2024-25 school budget, one that would raise the Ithaca District’s tax levy no higher than the New York State tax cap.

The Board’s so-called “Re-vote Budget” was the option strongly favored at a marathon Board budget session the prior Tuesday. Its tax levy increase (2.92%) falls far below the 8.4 per cent increase earlier proposed, but rejected decisively by Ithaca voters in May; lower still than the 12.1 per cent tax increase first advanced by administrators.

“It’s not a perfect budget. It doesn’t have everything I want, but I will support this budget,” Jill Tripp, the School Board’s leading advocate of financial frugality,” said prior to her vote.

The only considered alternative—and the one the state will mandate should voters again reject the spending plan—namely a hold-the-line “Contingency Budget,” found no support among Board members.

“We need to make it very clear,” member Erin Croyle said, that under a Contingency Budget, “the school would be a shell of itself.”

The “Re-vote Budget,” now endorsed by the Board, would cut $5.9 Million in spending from the budget voters rejected last month at the polls. Yet a Contingency Budget, administrators warned, would force $9 Million in cuts from the May proposal.

(May 30): A bill that would resolve the confusion, frustration—and downright anger—that confronted voters in last December’s first-ever Enfield Fire District election is a step closer to final enactment.

The New York State Senate Thursday passed clarifying legislation that would provide that when fire districts, like Enfield’s, hold their initial election to select five members to a Board of Fire Commissioners, voters would get to vote for as many as five candidates, not for just one.

An attorney’s interpretation of a clearly ambiguous New York statute had limited Enfield’s voters to just a single vote in the December election, and it precluded a voter from choosing all five persons to populate that newly-established Board. Although the statutory quirk may never again impact Enfield, it would affect other towns that choose to establish fire districts.

The Senate vote was 57-0, with several members absent or excused. A companion bill remains before the State Assembly’s Local Governments Committee.

The Enfield Town Board initiated the bill in March. The Association of Fire Districts of the State of New York assisted in its scripting. State Senator Lea Webb introduced it in the upper chamber.

(May 30): By eliminating just one position at the secondary level and making a few minor administrative economies, the Newfield Board of Education Thursday reduced by some 28 per cent the tax levy increase projected to face its District’s residents this fall. The newly-revised budget would replace the one Newfield’s voters rejected by a mere 18 votes last month.

Following nearly two hours of discussion, the Board unanimously adopted the revised $25,411,093 spending plan, one that would increase outlays by 3.7 per cent over the year, yet hike the projected property tax levy by only 2.5 per cent.

The rejected budget would have raised the levy by 3.5 per cent.

The new budget’s primary reduction came through elimination of a long-vacant position in technology instruction, commonly known as “shop.” Officials say proposed instructional work-arounds would satisfy state mandates, and a person providing some technology teaching at present could be transferred to Special Education.

Newfield voters will re-vote on their budget June 18^th. Should it fail, a more austere “Contingency Budget” would kick-in by state law.

“You need to look at what a contingency budget looks like,” Superintendent Eric Hartz cautioned the Board and public Thursday. “Dollar for dollar it doesn’t look like much. But we lose a lot (in program.)”

A more detailed story is now posted.

(May 28): On its face, it was nothing more than a weedy rewrite of grant-writing policy, something intending routine passage. Instead, it plunged the Tompkins County Legislature into a 23-minute, PC-tinged debate May 21^st, one that pitted the Ithaca Town’s Amanda Champion against Lansing’s Mike Sigler in a snarky, gender-war skirmish.

It started when Groton’s Lee Shurtleff questioned language in the revised policy calling for eyeing grant awards “through an equity lens ensuring fair and inclusive practices.” What does that mean, Shurtleff asked. And might it tie Tompkins County’s hands?

After Sigler asked much the same question, Amanda Champion, whose committee handed up the draft, answered its critics.

“It’s fascinating to me that the white men are questioning the one little spot in there where it talks about working with minority- and women-owned businesses,” Champion said. “I don’t read anything in here that’s saying we’re not going to work with white men anymore, so I think you can let go of your fears a little bit.”

Sigler called her on it: “While I appreciate my colleague thinking that white men should just shut up, clearly from what you just said … I represent an awful lot of white men; I represent an awful lot of white women. And I think that, yes, if I have a question on a policy for something that we’re already doing, yea, I think I should be able to ask that question without you trying to read any kind of intent in there.”

Other legislators—all Democrats, most of them women— defended the language, yet steered clear of the personal slights. The policy passed with only Sigler and Shurtleff dissenting.

(May 28): With only days left before the New York State Legislature adjourns, the Tompkins County Legislature May 21^st endorsed seven pending bills, each intended to benefit volunteer firefighting and Emergency Medical Response (EMS) services and swell their ranks with recruits.

Called “The Package,” the seven measures would, among other things, allow creation of special taxing districts for EMS services and also recognize EMS as “an essential service,” thereby pressuring counties and towns to fund them.

Another bill would eliminate the “either/or” dilemma that faces Enfield’s volunteer firefighters; whether to take the income tax or property assessment benefit governments reward for their volunteer service. The bill would permit them to access both benefits. Another measure would raise the personal income tax credit from $200 to $800.

“Nobody knew what to do… everyone was just watching the whole system decline,” Legislature Chair Dan Klein said he’d observed as local rescue services struggled. “ And so it’s really exciting for me personally to see all this stuff on the docket”

Last-minute advocacy intensified after Governor Kathy Hochul failed to tuck any of the bills into the recently-passed state budget.

The State Legislature’s scheduled to adjourn June 6^th.

(May 25): Excavation could begin as soon as this Memorial Day weekend on Enfield’s SkateGarden and Pollinator Garden project, approved by the Town Board May 8^th for land next to the Park-and-Ride lot and across from the Town Hall.

After the designer learned last-minute that the site was longer and narrower than first thought, project creator Dan Woodring revised his drawings, which a majority of the Town Board approved via email Friday, changes the Board will formalize in June.

Not all of the SkateGarden will be built at once. Funded by a $5,000 Tompkins County Parks Grant, work will involve construction of the recessed, heart-shaped skateboard “bowl” this year. Site excavation will also take place now, as will the Pollinator Garden plantings at the periphery. Town Clerk Mary Cornell will oversee the garden project.

A proposed amphitheater and other improvements would come only in later stages. / RL

From the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company; Friday, May 24:

Today, the EVFC had the honor of attending the Tompkins County EMS Awards. Our Fire Chief, Jamie Stevens, accepted an award for EMS Agency of the Year.

We are so proud of our EMS responders and lucky to say we have 18 highly-skilled medical responders ranging from CFRs, EMTs, AEMTs, to Paramedics! Enfield is also lucky enough to have one of the only Spanish-speaking EMS providers in Tompkins County.

Congratulations on a job well done to our dedicated volunteers!

(May 23): In a marathon meeting lasting nearly three-and-a-half hours Thursday, the Newfield Board of Education voted to resubmit to voters a 2024-25 District Budget, to be retooled from the $25.48 Million spending plan rejected at the polls Tuesday by a mere 18 votes.

But by refusing to take another vote among themselves Thursday, the School Board dropped any plans to resubmit a companion measure to spend up to $233,000 in taxpayer funds to buy a new school bus, either diesel or electric. The bus purchase had lost in the referendum by a much-wider margin.

Despite their lengthy deliberations, Board members couldn’t decide how deeply they’d cut the earlier-rejected budget in hopes of regaining voter support. Instead, they gave administrators rough guidelines, seeking changes that would raise the proposed tax levy between 2.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent, the latter increase being what the rejected budget would have imposed.

Prime targets for prospective cutting, discussed Thursday, included one or more of the eight teaching positions expected to fall vacant this summer. Alternatively, interscholastic sports could be curtailed.

If the cuts hit the music department, School Superintendent Eric Hartz warned, “there would be some things lost.” Hartz cited band as a possible casualty.

Newfield’s only alternative to budget resubmission would be to adopt a “Contingency Budget.” It would require no vote, but carry deeper cuts and a tax levy kept at this year’s level.

Newfield voters will revote their school budget June 18^th. The School Board will finalize the plan’s details May 30^th.

(May 21): Like a couple of years ago, voters in the Newfield Central School District have rejected their proposed budget, forcing school board members to sharpen pencils and likely further cut spending.

Results posted by the District Tuesday night showed the proposed $25.48 Million Newfield School Budget losing by a relatively close margin, 248 votes (48.2%) approving to 266 votes (51.8%) opposed.

A bus purchase proposition also failed, 218 votes (42.2%) yes; 299 votes (57.8%) no.

Newfield voters did approve two other propositions: establishment of a Capital Reserve Fund and increasing the tax levy to support the Newfield Public Library.

In a three-way contest, Kevin Berggren (390 votes) and Timothy Payne (304 votes) were elected to the Newfield Board of Education. Shana Claar (188 votes) finished third.

(May 21): While both Ithaca and Newfield School Districts have voter budget rejections to cope with, not so Trumansburg.

After making a series of painful staffing cuts and trimming up to $1.6 Million in expenditures, the Trumansburg School Board reaped the results. Voters Tuesday handily approved the Trumansburg spending plan, 235 votes (76%) to 74 (24%).

A bus purchase proposition also passed by a similarly wide margin, 231 votes to 77 votes. School funding for the village’s library secured voter approval by an ever wider margin.

Unopposed school board candidates Megan Williams (the Board President) and Dana Robson won reelection.

(May 20): It’s an Alphabet-Soup of a name bound to challenge any bumper-sticker designer. And maybe nothing will come of it. But a woman from the Bronx—it’s legal for her to do it—may challenge incumbent Republican Marc Molinaro and Democrat Josh Riley in this year’s NY-19 District race for Congress.

A Binghamton TV Station (WIVT) reports Joy DaCosta Fasciglione has a team of people collecting petition signatures to place her on the November ballot as an Independent candidate.

Fasciglione would reportedly run on the “Patriot Party” line, suggesting she’d challenge Molinaro from the right, a move that could boost Riley’s prospects.

The station says people know little about the potential new entry: No news releases; no campaign website; and a Norwich man listed on her vacancy committee says he neither knows nor supports her.

But Congressman Molinaro is not pleased. He accuses Fasciglione of being a spoiler for the Democrats.

(May 18): It was the question never posed—and never answered—at an Ithaca Board of Education candidates’ debate last Monday: Will you or will you not vote for the proposed Ithaca City School District Budget with its 8.4 per cent tax levy increase?

After first reporting May 16^th that candidates Emily Workman and Steve Cullen would support the budget, The Ithaca Voice later that day revised Cullen’s and Workman’s statements to say that he or she was “not sure” of whether to back the nearly $169 Million spending plan.

(Note that a contentious May 14^th ICSD Budget hearing may have fallen between Cullen’s and Workman’s original and revised statements.)

Candidate Todd Fox was already firmly on the record as saying he would oppose the budget.

Fox would also not extend School Superintendent Dr. Luvelle Brown’s lucrative contract. Most other contenders in the seven-way race said they were “unsure” about the Superintendent’s contract extension.

The Voice reported that each of the incumbents seeking re-election, Moira Lang, Eldred Harris, and Adam Krantweiss, would support the District Budget in next Tuesday’s annual election. Challenger Barry Derfel would also support the budget .

(May 17): For weeks, the prospect of a June Primary for just one nomination—that for U.S. Senate—clung by a thread. Now that thread is broken. There’ll be no June Primary here this year.

Cairo-born, pro-Israel activist Khaled Salem, who’s run for Senate before, had challenged incumbent Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand for re-nomination. But the New York State Board of Elections had rejected Salem’s designating petitions for irregularities. They’d kept him off the ballot only to have Salem challenge their ruling in court.

Friday, a Tompkins County Board of Elections spokesperson said the judge has ruled, and Salem will stay off the ballot. Since no local races are being contested, a Democratic Primary becomes unnecessary.

Republicans once had multiple Senate candidates too. But party-endorsed Michael Sapraicone appears to have cleared the field there.

Neighboring districts, though not in Tompkins County, have contested Congressional Primaries to run. In Cayuga County, two Democrats are running to oppose Republican Congressman Brandon Williams.

(May 14): Twenty people (including this Councilperson) strode to the microphone at the Ithaca City School District’s Tuesday night Budget Public Hearing. No one supported the nearly $169 Million proposed spending plan, nor the $125 Million capital bonding proposal that voters will decide along with it. In fact, most commenters voiced strong criticism.

Near the close of the two-hour hearing, School Board members appeared to get the message. In fact, many seemed resolved that the budget would fail at the polls one week later.

“I agree with much of what you’re saying tonight,” Jill Tripp, the Board member who’d earlier called for deeper spending cuts and a smaller capital request, told Tuesday’s room of aggrieved taxpayers. “If you vote it down, this budget will be revised,” Tripp promised.

Board member Erin Croyle, who’d previously backed the more costly budget the Superintendent had first proposed, acknowledged she felt taxpayers’ pain, but was nearly drawn to tears by the criticism she’d heard.

“It’s not a cookie-cutter sort of district,” Croyle said about Ithaca, “and that’s something to be proud of.”

Commenters—nearly all of whom the gallery applauded after they spoke—frequently faulted the Ithaca District for its top-heavy, highly-paid administration. They also took aim at a just-released State Education Department review citing both Boynton and Dewitt middle schools for poor academic performance. / RL

(May 14): Nearly five years after Tompkins County, albeit secretly, began negotiating to purchase the “Key Bank Corner” for a new Center of Government, at least one legislator has gotten frustrated with rising costs and bureaucratic snags in making the project happen.

“I feel like this will be a grenade that doesn’t go well,” Greg Mezey cautioned as he tossed it at the Center of Government’s oversight committee meeting Tuesday, “but I just want to do a sanity check; am I the only one that’s starting to think that we could probably spend half the time and half the money at a different location, maybe up by the mall or somewhere like an adaptive re-use?”

Lansing’s Shops at Ithaca Mall, now largely abandoned by retailers, has been mentioned as an alternate site before; though not seriously, and not lately. Most on the Downtown Facilities Committee are still unprepared to abandon their current siting preference. But Mezey’s remark could give the idea renewed traction.

“We could be taking the ‘Center’ out of the Center of Government,” committee colleague Rich John worried. Yet he added, “If the train wreck that is quite possible starts to happen, I think we do need to be flexible and just give it up,” namely cast aside the Courthouse campus location.

State regulators hesitate to sign off on razing the downtown site’s current structures until they can study the new building’s design. But the County hasn’t even chosen the Center’s architect yet.

Legislator Deborah Dawson resists a change in direction. “I’m not going to run away with my tail between my legs,” Dawson told the committee. She described the downtown site as “centrally and conveniently located for all of our residents and all of our employees.”

(May 12): The 15 Megawatt Norbut Solar Farm on Enfield’s South Applegate Road is effectively finished.

But NYSEG has yet to put up the poles or string the wires to connect the power emitted by the array to the utility’s grid.

The electrical connection should be made “within the next 60 days,” Erin Enright, Norbut’s Property Acquisition Manager,” informed this Town Councilperson May 8^th, a tentative timetable shared with the Enfield Town Board that same night.

Enright said she’s not sufficiently versed in the technical aspects to discuss the reasons behind NYSEG’s slow-go hook-up. Members of the Enfield Planning Board one week earlier had speculated the delay may result from the need to upgrade a substation across from Cayuga Medical Center. That’s where the utility makes a larger grid connection.

Meanwhile, Heather McDaniel, Administrative Director for the Tompkins County Industrial Development Agency, said nothing should postpone the commencement of Norbut’s 30-year Payment-in-Lieu-of-Tax (PILOT) Agreement with taxing authorities. The company has not asked to toll its compensation, as sometimes happens. Norbut will start this fall paying $45,000 per year on the PILOT, split three ways, including with the Town. / RL

(May 10): It gets pretty bad when you can’t even invite your kids to watch a school board candidates’ debate.

But an Ithaca Board of Education online debate Thursday night among the seven contenders for Ithaca School Board took a wrong-turn when somebody either Zoom-bombed the forum, or more likely, disrupted the event with political malice.

Media reports say Board challengers Steve Cullen, Todd Fox and Barry Derfel got their speeches before the public. But when incumbent Eldred Harris began to tout his qualifications, an online heckler began booing and a p*rnographic video began to loop.

Harris is the race’s only African-American, and he’s a staunch supporter of educational programs and the proposed, albeit controversial, District Budget. Because of the unexpected interruptions, we’re told Board member Moira Lang and candidate Emily Workman never got to speak.

Giving up on the online option, the debate’s sponsor, the Ithaca Teachers Association, will start the debate from scratch, this time live Monday night (5/13) at York Lecture Hall.

(May 9): Armed with a recently-awarded $5,000 Tompkins County Parks Grant, skateboard promoter Daniel Woodring and Town officials detailed a much-revamped SkateGarden design to the Enfield Town Board Wednesday night.

Not at all the simple, curved plywood ramp that was earlier discussed, Woodring’s redesigned SkateGarden would now take the form of a recessed, heart-shaped bowl made of reinforced concrete sunk eight feet into the ground. It would be located on the Town-owned grassy area north of the Park-and-Ride lot across from the Town Hall. The designer modeled it after a now-demolished skateboarding park in Philadelphia.

“It makes a community space that everyone wants to hang out at,” Woodring told the Town Board.

But building what’s become sort-of a skateboarding amphitheater faces a time crunch. The Deputy Supervisor said the Parks Grant calls for completion this year. Winter’s onset would require finishing by Halloween, Woodring said. And a separately-funded “pollinator garden” companion project has a September deadline.

The Town Board voted to proceed with the pollinator garden and approved SkateGarden’s “conceptual design.” But the Board will likely revisit the project in June to manage details. Many remain. / RL

(May 9): Following a brief, yet feisty exchange, the Enfield Town Board declined Wednesday for this, the third straight year, to reclaim its Town share of Tompkins County Sales Tax revenue, funds used now for more than a decade to reduce the County’s share of taxes on Enfield residents’ property tax bills.

When this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, introduced his updated version of a Resolution to rescind the 2010 Board’s decision, no other Board member seconded it, leaving the resolution to die.

“What has changed this year?” Supervisor Stephanie Redmond asked.

Last year’s budget changed, this Councilperson responded, noting that without the Sales Tax cushion, Enfield’s Town tax levy rose for 2024 by seven per cent, and that the Supervisor’s tentative budget last September had called for more than an eleven per cent increase.

“You don’t knock on doors and get a tongue-lashing from residents angry about their taxes,” this Councilperson, rapping the table, admonished a colleague equally resistant to making the change. (No one else on the Town Board is known to campaign.)

To this Board member, the issue is tax equity: It’s our money and we have a right to claim it. But Redmond countered I’d be increasing residents’ taxes, since Enfield’s reclaiming the Sales Tax would reduce its collections from solar farms. A 2023 calculation had put the change’s average resident increase at $4.48. / R. Lynch

(May 9): Despite reluctance from the Town Planning Board and its chairman one week earlier, the Enfield Town Board signaled Wednesday its desire for a significant revision to its Comprehensive Plan, last adopted in 2020 following nearly a decade of work.

“The nature of the Town is changing,” Supervisor Stephanie Redmond stated in pressing for a rewrite and in outreach efforts which could include a constituent survey.

On May first, Planning Board Chair Dan Walker had suggested only minor plan revisions were called for and warned that a fresh survey could cost the Town $5,000.

“It seems like we should put more effort into revising the Comprehensive Plan,” Councilperson Jude Lemke, an attendee at the Planning Board’s session, told the Town Board Wednesday.

This Councilperson, Robert Lynch, argued that a rewrite might only have “limited utility.” Moreover, he cautioned, a revised plan could serve as a “front door to zoning,” regulations Enfield doesn’t now have; and he argued, most don’t want.

The Town Board instructed the Clerk to post an online invitation for residents to volunteer for a committee to help revise the Comprehensive Plan. Left unanswered at the meeting was whether the committee would convene privately or in public.

(May 8): “It’s kind of difficult for me to really figure out what is changing,” Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners Chair Greg Stevenson told Commissioners Tuesday night. But he intends to find out.

And by the Board’s subsequent meetings either later this month or in early-June, Commissioners intend to comment on proposed revised federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules that would impact the volunteer fire service.

They’re “documentation changes, ”Enfield Volunteer Fire Company (EVFC) President Dennis Hubbell advised the Board, “so that the Fire Chief will have enormous hours put on him,” he said. Hubbell estimated the documentation could add 40-60 hours weekly to Chief Jamie Stevens’ work.

The some 680 pages of OSHA revisions have produced outcries on social media and from the Firefighters Association of the State of New York (FASNY). In the opinion of FASNY, the new rules’ cost could drive some volunteer companies out of business.

In response to FASNY’s concern and that of a downstate Congressman, OSHA extended the rules’ comment deadline until June 21^st. “We should prepare some comment,” Stevenson told the Board Tuesday.

As a second item of business, Enfield Fire Commissioners switched insurance carriers. They dropped the Emergency Services Insurance Program and signed on with Eastern Shore Insurance. “We’re getting a better product,” Stevenson said, and at less cost.

(May 6): A bill to resolve the confusion and anger Enfield voters experienced last December in electing their first-ever Board of Fire Commissioners is now before the State Legislature.

On April 30^th, State Senator Lea Webb introduced legislation that would clarify New York Town Law to provide that as five new members are added to a Board of Fire Commissioners when first established, each eligible voter gets to vote for five positions for that office, not just one.

Current law remains ambiguous. And the Enfield Fire District’s former legal counsel had interpreted the provision narrowly, the then-appointed Commissioners endorsing his one-vote-per-voter rule that frustrated both residents and candidates.

Webb’s measure, with wording similar to what the Enfield Town Board recommended for adoption in March, was drafted with assistance from the Association of Fire Districts of the State of New York. The bill is before the Senate’s Local Government Committee. A similar bill is before an Assembly committee.

“Thank you for sharing your experience in hopes that another community will be spared these issues in the future,” Mandy Fallon, Senator Webb’s Legislative and Committee Director wrote Enfield’s Town Clerk last week.

(May 6): While Tompkins County Democrats (or Republicans) have no party Primary choices this year for Congress, a hotly-contested Democratic contest is brewing to our north.

Monday, the Cortland County Democratic Committee announced its endorsem*nt of DeWitt Town Board member Sarah Klee Hood for their party’s nomination to oppose Republican Congressman Brandon Williams in New York’s 22^nd District. Two months ago, the Cayuga County Democratic Committee endorsed Hood’s Primary opponent, State Senator John Mannion.

“Sarah Klee Hood’s supporters pointed to her commitment on key issues and her dogged efforts at making grassroots connections in the Cortland area as reasons why she was so easily able to earn the committee’s endorsem*nt,” Cortland Democrats posted in a statement on social media.

Klee Hood ran for Congress in 2022, but lost the Primary. Republican Williams went on to secure a narrow victory in a district that includes Syracuse, and has since been redrawn to favor Democrats. Northern Cortland County, including the City of Cortland, was added to the 22^nd District.

In Tompkins County, Republican Congressional Incumbent Marc Molinaro and Democratic challenger Josh Riley face no Primary competition. In Seneca County, Incumbent Claudia Tenney faces a Republican Primary challenger, Geneva’s Mario Fratto.

(May 6): After some initial jitters, it appears plans for a modest wooden “SkateGarden” ramp across from the Enfield Community Center will move forward.

Word came late Friday (5/03) that Enfield will be awarded a $5,000 Tompkins County 2024 Municipal Parks and Trails Grant to underwrite a large portion of the skateboard ramp’s cost. Since promoters of the ramp plan to construct it with volunteer labor, the County grant should cover most expenses.

The second good news came as this Councilperson confirmed an insurance agent’s earlier quote to the Town Supervisor that liability coverage for the ramp—a big obstacle to non-governmental parties—will cost Enfield only $330 a year. The policy would provide the Town $1 Million of coverage for any one incident; a total of $2 Million for the year.

The Enfield Community Council, itself, had wanted to locate the SkateGarden on its own land, but its insurer declined to cover liability.

Former Enfield resident Daniel Woodring will likely oversee construction. The Town has designated vacant property adjacent to the Park-and-Ride lot as the site.

(May 6): Leave nothing to chance, I say.

This coming Saturday, May 11^th, beginning at 10 AM, we’ll hold the annual Enfield Cemetery Cleanup. But with the weather as it’s been lately, this volunteer on the Cemetery Committee chose quietly to get a head start.

Last Thursday and Friday, May 2nd and 3rd, I scoured Rolfe Cemetery on North Applegate Road and picked up the branches and limbs from amidst the stones and hauled them away. A couple weeks earlier, I performed a similar pickup at tiny Budd Cemetery on Gray Road, down the road from my house.

Both are clean to mow now (though there’s always more to trim around the edges.) Christian and Presbyterian Cemeteries along NY Route 327, await this weekend’s volunteer effort. / RL

(May 3): There will be competition, not a coronation, this year as seven candidates have filed for three positions up for election on the Ithaca Board of Education.

Todd Fox, Barry Derfel, Emily Workman, and Steve Cullen have joined incumbents Eldred Harris, Moira Lang, and Adam Krantweiss in seeking full, three-year terms on the Ithaca School Board. The election will coincide with the May 21^st district referendum to decide the School District’s budget and a $125 Million capital program.

Brief biographical statements on the ICSD website fail to indicate where each of the four newly-competing candidates stands on the controversial $168.9 Million dollar proposed budget or the capital request, the largest in the District’s history. Candidates will, no doubt, make preferences known prior to the election.

Of the challengers, Derfel enters the race as a retired teacher, Workman as the current President of the Northeast Elementary PTA, Fox as a construction manager for Visum Development, and Cullen as the CMS Managing Director at Cornell.

Among the incumbents, Moira Lang currently serves as School Board Vice-President, and Eldred Harris strongly defended small class sizes and vibrant extracurricular activities on the night the Board finalized the budget.

(May 2): At least for one Tompkins County lawmaker, the post-pandemic allure of the virtual meeting has ended.

“I’m going to be the bad guy,” Dryden’s Mike Lane remarked Thursday as a legislative committee prepared to recommend a two-year extension of the local law that allows legislators to attend meetings remotely, rather than in person. Committee action followed state passage of legislation that sanctions the attendance practice through 2026.

“I think we should terminate this idea of having people not in person,” Lane said. He maintained that living room legislating has outlived its pandemic purpose.

Lane, and only Lane, dissented from the committee’s recommendation, which will now go to the full Legislature for a vote.

“I think we do far better work in person, and we should not work remotely as a convenience for ourselves,” committee member Rich John conceded. Yet he added, “I don’t think we’ve abused this.”

State law supposedly excuses in-person attendance only under “extraordinary circ*mstances.” But presiding officers—both at the County Legislature and in Enfield—never explain those circ*mstances to the public, leaving some to question whether lawmakers flout the rules.

Enfield, like the County, must extend its own virtual attendance law beyond this July.

(May 2): Unless the Enfield Town Board instructs otherwise, expect the Town’s Planning Board to avoid a complete rewrite of Enfield’s Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2020.

“Not a lot of change (has occurred) in the Town in the last five years,” Chair Dan Walker remarked at Wednesday’s Planning Board meeting. “And I don’t think the philosophy of the Town has changed that much.”

In February, Supervisor Stephanie Redmond raised the prospect of the Comprehensive Plan’s rewrite, and the Town Board directed the Planning Board to look at the document first. Wednesday’s brief discussion indicated that if changes are made, they’d be minor and considered cautiously.

Planners noted that in the last decennial census, Enfield’s population had actually shrunk by 150 people. And whereas the current Plan’s drafting involved a 2015 community survey, Walker cautioned a new survey could cost $5,000. He questioned its need.

Comprehensive Plans often guide future land use controls. Enfield lacks zoning. The 2019 Plan did not recommend zoning, and Walker saw no groundswell of resident support for zoning having arisen since.

“I think we will find the goals we reached (before) are pretty much the same,” Walker told colleagues. “I don’t see us completely rewriting the Plan.”

(Apr. 30): In a straw poll at a “Budget Retreat,” where votes carry no official weight, Tompkins County legislators signaled Tuesday they’d support raising next year’s property tax levy no more than two percent over this year’s.

Legislators’ 11-to-three show of hands came despite County Administrator Lisa Holmes’ forecast that maintaining County operations as they are at present would require a 5.9 per cent rise in the levy.

“We’ve got to cut. And how we get there is the question,” Budget Committee Chair Mike Lane told fellow legislators, few of whom showed any interest in raising taxes to meet the “maintenance of effort” budget that Holmes had laid before them.

In fact, five legislators, led by Dryden’s Greg Mezey, would actually have cut next year’s levy two per cent below this year’s amount. Almost the same number called for a zero per cent increase.

Lowering Holmes’ projection to a two per cent levy increase would entail $2 Million in spending cuts. Just where the cuts would come, lawmakers gladly left to the Administrator to determine. Legislative consensus Tuesday held that County Administration should drill down department by department.

Specifying a budget figure comes far easier than applying it. “We tell ourselves we have to rein ourselves in, but we actually have to do that,” Amanda Champion remarked, echoing the frustration of the night.

Largely because of increased property assessments, even a stable tax levy would place increased burden on the average homeowner.

(Apr. 29): Wells College in Aurora, founded 106 years ago, will close its doors permanently at the end of the spring semester, Wells College trustees announced on the college’s website Monday.

“We have determined after a thorough review that the College does not have adequate financial resources to continue,” Board of Trustees Chair Marie Chapman Carroll and Wells President Jonathan Gibralter explained in a joint statement.

Carroll and Gibralter thanked those who’d driven to save Wells with what they described as “aggressive fundraising campaigns” and careful resource management. “But revenues, unfortunately, are not projected to be sufficient for Wells’ long-term financial stability,” the college leaders said.

The college’s announcement explained that trustees considered the financial situation too dire to make any further appeal to alumni and others to come to the rescue. Fundraising, itself, “cannot carry the College,” the announcement admitted.

The statement said students not yet graduating may get favorable treatment transferring to Manhattanville University in Westchester County, described as a “preferred teach-out partner.” No decision has been made as to the disposition of the Wells campus. The future of real estate is “currently under consideration,” the statement said.

An all-women’s school until recent decades, Wells College currently enrolls approximately 335 full-time students, 60 per cent of them female.

(Apr. 26): It was once called the Country Faire; more recently the Rhubarb Festival. Whatever the name, the Enfield Community Council’s (ECC’s) traditional springtime indoor/outdoor event will take a year off.

Citing a variety of reasons, most critically the lack of sufficient volunteers, the ECC Board of Directors decided Thursday to call off the Rhubarb Festival, which had tentatively been scheduled for May 18.

There’s a second scheduling consideration that makes the theme for next year’s event an open question. ECC President Cortney Bailey explains that the interest of vendors—their presence is a money-maker for ECC—peaks just before Mother’s Day. But the rhubarb isn’t ready until later in the month.

“May’s meeting will be the planning for events,” Bailey announced. She says ECC firmly intends to hold its time-honored “Harvest Festival” this September. And instead of the rhubarb event, ECC will host a Mother’s Day Breakfast May 12.

On a separate topic, ECC Directors learned that their insurance policy won’t cover a skateboard ramp earlier suggested to locate on Community Council property. Consideration of the ramp now shifts to Enfield Town Government. Expect discussion at the Town Board’s May meeting.

(Apr. 25): Enfield and other towns dodged a bullet this week as the New York State Budget, now adopted and signed, added back $60 Million in statewide cuts Governor Kathy Hochul had earlier proposed for the Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS), according to an advisory Enfield received Tuesday from the New York Association of Towns.

The adopted Budget retains CHIPS base funding at $598.1 Million. Hochul’s Executive Budget had proposed the base be brought down to $538.1 Million. What the State Legislature adopted is a compromise of sorts. Lawmakers resisted Republican attempts to raise the base to $798 Million.

Characteristic of a politician who crows about the fruits of spending she’d earlier opposed, Governor Hochul, through her Division of the Budget, stated Monday that, “The FY 2025 Budget continues to deliver on the commitments [Hochul] made in establishing a five-year transportation capital program, which supports nation-leading projects to reconnect communities and make critical infrastructure important.”

At its March 13^th meeting, the Enfield Town Board unanimously urged restoration of the $60 Million in Hochul-proposed cuts. CHIPS provided Enfield over $153,000 last year. Together with three other state programs, CHIPS helped pay for 56 per cent of last year’s Enfield road improvements.

Republican Senators Tom O’Mara and Pam Helming, who’d fought hard for the funding restoration, have yet to comment on their official websites.

(Apr. 24): Just like that, with a vote in the State Legislature and the stroke of the Governor’s pen, talk has ended about local municipalities sharing any expense for the second year of Tompkins County’s Rapid Medical Response (RMR) program.

Tucked away in the mammoth 2024-25 New York State Budget, at the apparent urging of State Senator Lea Webb, is $300,000 in New York State Health Department funds to underwrite the bulk of the new service’s projected half-million dollar operating cost for 2025. A combination of County money and a separate state grant has covered the 2024 first-year expenses.

Tompkins County Legislature Chair Dan Klein, attending a hastily-called Dewitt Park news conference Tuesday, was reported as saying that this newest money effectively puts cost-sharing discussions “to rest for the time being.”

Trumansburg Mayor Rordan Hart, supported by a Resolution from the Enfield Town Board, had urged Tompkins County fund the RMR service completely and not rely upon municipal contributions.

In a news release posted by Senator Webb’s office, Hart commended Webb “for securing additional funding for this program which will have a positive, long-term impact on the quality of EMS services provided to all County residents.”

The most recently-proposed cost-sharing models would have had municipalities collectively paying $159,000 next year toward the RMR, of which Enfield’s share would be $10,000.

(Apr. 23): With big decisions like bonding fire trucks resolved at prior meetings, the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners Tuesday addressed a housekeeping matter Chairman Greg Stevenson thought necessary: a switch in insurance carriers.

Kevinn Townsend, an agent with Eastern Shore Insurance in Fulton, presented his company’s proposal for insuring Enfield Fire personnel, apparatus and the fire station itself.

“We’re falling short, and we’re not getting the insurance we deserve and are paying for,” Stevenson told the Board, recommending the Enfield Fire District move its coverage away from a Cortland-based insurer. “This wasn’t even on our radar until the (Cortland) agent sent us a pile of papers so we could apply for our own insurance,” Stevenson remarked.

Townsend represented he could get the Fire District a better deal, with an annual premium of about $15,000 a year, compared to the other firm’s more than $19,000. Commissioners Tuesday suggested a bump-up in coverage, making for a revised premium of about $17,000.

Stevenson expects Commissioners will approve the change May 7^th.

(Apr. 19): The Tompkins County Legislature April 16^th followed through with a committee’s plans that could extend broadband Internet service to more than 1200 households countywide, including some in Enfield.

The unanimous vote authorized a partnership agreement between the County and Point Broadband to fill in the high-speed Internet gaps. It would also commit $100,000 in County funds toward initial engineering studies.

On the county’s eastern side, Dryden’s fledgling municipal service could cover Dryden and Caroline. In Enfield, Point Broadband would likely partner with Haefele Connect, the local cable franchisee.

“Both Ulysses and Enfield did not seem to be cost-effective to have us do the two towns,” Point Broadband’s Charles Bartosch told the Legislature. Contracts have not yet been signed. “We can’t say we will do something unless we strike an actual agreement,” Bartosch said. But “you can be assured that we’re going to try to do it; I expect we will.” If Haefele cannot do it, Point Broadband will.

Building the system, itself, will hinge on state and federal grants. Best case, Legislature Chair Dan Klein said, grants could even cover the seed money. “There is a scenario that’s not a crazy scenario where this whole thing, this $7.5 Million project, will cost Tompkins County zero.”

(Apr. 18): Tompkins County conducted a nationwide search, but its final choice came from close to home.

Maury Josephson, Assistant City Attorney for the City of Ithaca, earned unanimous approval by the Tompkins County Legislature April 16^th to become the new Tompkins County Attorney.

Josephson succeeds Bill Troy, who resigned suddenly last September. Holly Mosher, Troy’s former deputy, has served since then as Acting County Attorney and will continue in that role until Josephson takes over May 28^th.

“I am deeply humbled at the trust and faith that the Legislature is placing in me,” Josephson told lawmakers during his brief, two-minute acceptance, “and I pledge to you to do my utmost to provide advice and counsel that is sound, timely, and most important, useful to the County in accomplishing its objectives.”

Josephson acknowledged that his departure from City Hall, where he’s served for the past four years, is “bittersweet.” But, he said, “A time comes to turn the page and move forward, and this is the right time.”

(Apr. 17): After 15 taxpayers, cheered on by a packed room of their supporters, told the Ithaca Board of Education Tuesday in no uncertain terms that its proposed 12 per cent tax levy increase was too high, the Board voted that night to cut the district’s proposed next year’s budget by $2 Million, and reduced the projected levy hike to 8.4 per cent.

“You cannot have everything. You should have to more carefully spend what you already have,” taxpayer Anita Graf, a home schooling mom, told the Board during a nearly hour-long parade of protest.

Though the Board’s own discussion later bogged down and appeared to leave a final decision until a later date, member Moira Lang offered a compromise that passed. It trimmed the budget’s proposed spending increase from 7.8 per cent to 6.5 per cent, and tapped reserves to cut the proposed tax levy by about $4 Million.

Lang prodded the Board for action, which seemed doubtful until the final minutes of the nearly four-hour meeting. Lang’s compromise passed 8 votes to one. Erin Croyle, the lone dissenter, tried, but failed to get the Board to adopt the School Superintendent’s original proposal.

At least one Board member would have cut deeper. “I specifically would not find (a) six Million cut undoable,” Jill Tripp said at one point in the discussion.

District voters will decide the Board-endorsed $168.9 Million Ithaca School budget May 21.

(Apr. 10): Over this Councilperson’s strongly-worded objections, the Enfield Town Board Wednesday named Daniel Cohen and his Pittsburgh-based law firm to lead renegotiation of a now-expired, ten-year contract with Haefele Connect, Enfield’s cable television franchisee.

It would be the fourth time since 1984 that a contract’s been negotiated, but the only time specialized legal counsel has been retained.

“I am confident that we can negotiate an agreement that is stronger and provides more benefits and protections to the Town,” Cohen wrote Enfield in his engagement letter.

By a vote of 3:1 (with Councilperson Jude Lemke excused), the Town Board agreed to sign the engagement letter and thereby commit to Cohen’s $8,900 flat fee.

In the past, Town officials had negotiated directly with Haefele. It was “collegial” and “non-confrontational” this Councilperson, Robert Lynch, told the Town Board. Now it will be “lawyered-up” and “adversarial” with a “hot-shot Pittsburgh attorney” in charge, he said. There’ve been no complaints from customers, Lynch said, and Enfield should be lucky its provider isn’t Charter-Spectrum.

Enfield’s losing out on tens of thousands of dollars of franchise fees, Supervisor Stephanie Redmond argued in Cohen’s defense, fees that the most recent Haefele contract failed to impose. Franchise fees are passed on to subscribers, Lynch reminded Redmond. “It’s a tax, and a regressive one at that.”

Lynch pledged to talk with Haefele’s principals himself.

(Apr. 12): No real surprise here. After assuming the post of Interim General Manager six weeks ago, Matthew Rosenbloom-Jones was named Friday as the new permanent General Manager of Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT).

Rosenbloom-Jones was hired as the transit agency’s service development manager in January. He assumes the top post from Scot Vanderpool, who retired in early-March. We’re advised that as many as 70 candidates applied for the GM’s job, of which three were interviewed as finalists.

“What clinched the selection for us was (Matthew’s) ability to clearly articulate practical plans to help TCAT to rebuild service and ridership to pre-pandemic levels,” TCAT Board Chairperson Deborah Dawson said upon Rosenbloom-Jones’ selection.

Regarding TCAT’s ridership rebirth, Rosenbloom-Jones said, “It will take time, but with well-thought-out capital spending plans for new buses and solid operational and administrative strategies and teamwork, I am confident we will get there.”

The new GM since his interim appointment has voiced increasing skepticism about electric buses, having idled TCAT’s current fleet of seven after detecting a frame defect. “The technology is just not there yet,” Rosenbloom-Jones said about electric buses at a TCAT committee meeting in March. / RL

(Apr. 10): Lisa Holmes, who guided Tompkins County Government as its top administrator for much of the past three years, will retire at year’s end, County legislator Randy Brown disclosed to the Enfield Town Board Wednesday, a disclosure County Government concurrently announced.

Holmes, elevated to Interim County Administrator upon former Administrator Jason Molino’s departure in May 2021, and subsequently appointed a year later to the permanent position, guided Tompkins County through the final months of the COVID-19 pandemic and guided the County through its first steps toward building a new Center of Government.

Soft-spoken, yet a solid leader, Holmes became the first woman to lead Tompkins County’s administrative arm. She’s served Tompkins County for 26 years, first as Director of the Office for the Aging, and then as Deputy County Administrator.

“Being the County Administrator has certainly been a privilege and the pinnacle of my career in public service, and I’ll continue giving the role my best effort until my retirement.” Holmes said as she announced her planned departure.

“The County has had a steady and measured leader in Lisa, we’ll be lucky to find those qualities in the next Administrator,” County Legislative Chair Dan Klein said.

(Apr. 9): For the second straight election cycle, Tompkins County‘s Democratic Assemblymember, Anna Kelles, will face no Republican challenger for re-election. And indeed it’s also quite likely that Tompkins County will have no primary election contests this June at all.

No Republican met the April 5^th filing deadline to face Kelles in the November election. And no Democrat filed to oppose Kelles herself. An Independent candidate could still petition to oppose the two-term Democratic incumbent in November.

The race for 52^nd district State Senator is set. No surprises. Incumbent Lea Webb filed on the Democratic side to seek a second term; Republican Tompkins County legislator Mike Sigler will oppose her. Neither will have a primary challenger.

Josh Riley was the only Democrat filing to oppose Republican Marc Molinaro in the 19^th Congressional District race. No one will “primary” Molinaro, so that race is also set.

New York State Board of Elections filings do indicate that four Republicans have filed to oppose U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and that a virtual unknown, Khaled Salem, seeks to challenge Gillibrand for the Democratic Senate nomination. If so, that would trigger a June 25th Primary locally.

But a local election spokesperson says such is unlikely. We’re told the Republicans may clear the slate to one candidate soon, and that Salem could be disqualified next week.

(Apr. 8): I hope everyone enjoyed the Solar Eclipse, no matter where they were.

My vantage point: Clouds, but no lack of an experience, gazing at the eastern horizon north of here. / RL

(Apr. 3): Much talk turned into action Wednesday as a committee of the Tompkins County Legislature recommended that the County spend seed money toward providing broadband Internet service to those local residents in seven rural towns that don’t now have it.

“The benefit we’ll see from that $100,000 will far exceed the actual cost. So, I think, money well-spent for sure,” legislator Greg Mezey told the Housing and Economic Development Committee, which he chairs.

Point Broadband—once called Clarity Connect—will be the firm providing the service, directly or indirectly. In Enfield, Point Broadband will contract with Haefele Connect, the town’s cable franchisee.

Countywide, the broadband gap-fill will reach about 600 unserved addresses. Another equal number will be serviced by Dryden’s municipal broadband venture in its own town and in Caroline.

The total buildout will cost millions. Point Broadband commits to fund at least one-quarter of the expense. Making the expansion work hinges on federal and state grants.

As to the Haefele Enfield tie-in, Point Broadband’s Charles Bartosch explained, “There’s no formal agreement yet. But my philosophy when I talked to Lee (Haefele) was it’s going to be cheaper for you to serve these households than for me.”

The “walk-out” engineering funded by the County money could take place within months. Construction lies farther off.

(Apr. 3): Tompkins County’s Rapid Medical Response service answered its first call Tuesday. We’re told it was for a hip injury someone suffered at home, an “Alpha” level call in EMS terminology, one of the lowest response categories.

And while the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners, at its meeting later that day, welcomed Tompkins County’s new assistance, those same fire officials qualified that no one should expect county-paid EMT’s to will take the place of Enfield’s own fire-based rescue squad.

“This program doesn’t mean our rescue squad is out of business,” Fire Company President Dennis Hubbell said emphatically. ”We will communicate that to members Thursday (at weekly training),” Hubbell said.

County-paid EMT’s will now respond to lower-priority calls than most fire service volunteers do, including in Enfield. And Enfield Fire Chief Jamie Stevens cautioned Tuesday that as a consequence, the County unit could be deployed far away on a low-level call when something much more serious happens closer to home.

Of the County service, Fire Commissioners Chair Greg Stevenson said, “This does not supplant anything that’s in place.”

(Apr. 2): With Democratic and Republican Presidential nominations decided nationally, it’s little surprise that Joe Biden and Donald Trump captured majority support by Tompkins County’s electorate in Tuesday’s New York Primary.

But the major story here on the Democratic side was not who voted for a candidate, but rather who didn’t. While President Biden secured 79.3 per cent of the slightly over 3,000 Democratic ballots cast, a surprising 415 Tompkins County voters (13.5%) left the ballot line for President blank.

The “leave-it-blank” strategy was advanced in recent days by Democrats who sought to oppose Biden’s handling of the Gaza war, since New York election law denied them from voting “uncommitted.”

Of the only two other candidates on the Democratic ballot, Marianne Williamson secured 4.8 per cent of the vote, Dean Phillips 1.9 per cent in Tompkins County.

On the Republican side, even though she’s dropped out of the race, Nikki Haley did remarkably well. Haley secured 152 Republican votes (23.3%) compared to presumptive nominee Donald Trump’s 428 votes (65.6%). Chris Christie got 7.8% Republican support.

As predicted, Tompkins County’s Presidential Primary turnout Tuesday was incredibly low. Only a combined 3,721 persons voted.

(Apr. 1): Well, sort of. And only for a brief while.

Enfield Town Clerk Mary Cornell has closed her Town Clerk’s Office at 168 Enfield Main Road to allow temporary relocation for planned office renovations.

The Clerk’s Office will be closed from Tuesday, April second through Monday, April eighth.

Beginning on Tuesday, the ninth, the Town Clerk will use temporary quarters in a portion of the Town Board’s meeting room and Court at the Enfield Courthouse, 182 Enfield Main Road.

Planned Town Hall renovations, funded with federal American Rescue Plan funds, will likely take up to four weeks. So expect the Clerk to remain at the Courthouse through early May.

During the planned week of closure, Clerk Cornell will attempt to answer phone calls, as her time permits. But office visits for services like buying dog licenses will need to wait until Tuesday, the ninth.

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:

1. Treat everyone courteously
2. Listen to others respectfully
3. Give open minded consideration to all viewpoints
4. Focus on the issues and avoid personalizing debate
5. 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.