Archive: Around Town

Viola Miller was presented a certificate of recognition last friday for more than 44 years on the Lansing Town Planning Board.  Miller is credited with bringing planning to the town and was instrumental in the formation of the Planning Board in 1967.  Miller was honored in her home by Town Supervisor Kathy Miller and Planning Board Chairman Lin Davidson.  She spent some time reminiscing about her experiences bringing planning to the town.

"It was a matter of bringing some organization to what was going on, Miller says.  "That's all I've ever wanted, something where you had some idea of what you were buying when you bought it.  I fought pretty hard for these things."

Miller got interested in planning at a time when Lansing residents were split on whether it should be imposed in the town.  A water tower had been built next to her friend's house near what is now the Village of Lansing office.  Her friend was incensed by this intrusion, but uncomfortable about speaking in public.

Three years prior Miller and her husband had bought a farm to prevent ugly warehouses from being built next to their home.  So she was willing to take up the planning banner.  Her speech was so compelling that then Supervisor Harris Dates asked her to become involved with the Town as it explored the possibility of imposing zoning ordinances.

She became an advocate and prime mover in an effort to create zoning ordinances with Town Councilman Charlie Howell just as passionately opposed.  Howell became Supervisor when Dates was elected to the Tompkins County Legislature, and fought hard to keep zoning out.

She became the coordinator of a planning council that included more than a hundred volunteers who worked on committees covering topics including base mapping, existing land use, population and economic analysis, natural features, community facilities, traffic, housing, and fiscal analysis.  Eventually this led to a zoning ordinance that was only to be applied to the southern part of the town.  Special legislation was passed to allow Lansing to be the only town in the state that was half-zoned.

This work, compiled in the 'grey book', was the foundation on which town zoning was formed, and in 1967 a planning board was formed.  Miller served on this board until early this year.

"Our traffic committee spent the night on Warren Road to count the cars.  We did it all ourselves," Miller recalls.  "There were a lot of very competent people.  Ken Gardner and Ernie Cole were at New York State Extension Services.  They had both studied planning.  Ken and I became very good friends.  I didn't know what all these committees should be, but they did."

Once the Planning Board was formed it was up to its members to implement the work that had been compiled in the grey book.

"For the first ten or fifteen years we were treated as a planning board that was planning for the town," Miller says.  "If something big was going to go on in the town they consulted with the Planning Board.  That has not been done in recent years.  It made it worth working on that board."

In the early '70s residents in the southern part of the town wanted to keep the Pyramid Mall (today the Ithaca Mall) from being built in their neighborhood.  They began meeting to talk about incorporating in an effort to fight the mall.

	For more on the formation of the Village of Laning see Lansing at the Crossroads: A Partisan History of the Village of Lansing, New York by Rita Schmit.

"We were getting to the point where the Town Board had to accept the zoning ordinance," Miller recounts.  "We had been fighting them for months.  I explained to him that I had been going to the village meetings so I could watch what they were doing.  I said to him, 'They will form a village if you don't accept this zoning ordinance for the town.  And he ordered me out of the room.  That was the first time and ever since that I was ordered out of a meeting!"

In 1972 a petition to incorporate the Village was presented to the Town Board.  At that time zoning was instituted in the southern portion of the town only, south of Peruville Road.  As Howell tried to delay a vote on incorporation lawsuits ensued.

"The Village was finally formed because they couldn't get the votes for zoning," Miller recalls.  "Pyramid wanted to come and build.  Approving it was the biggest thing we ever had to do.  We had the zoning ordinance for the southern part of the town at that time, and they were trying to get the village started.  They went door to door telling people what would happen if Pyramid went in."


Once formed, the Village sued to keep the mall out, but lost their case because under town zoning the mall was already permitted.  They also tried running a candidate against Howell, but he maintained his seat as Supervisor.  Miller says the Village used the Town zoning ordinance for three years before instituting their own.  Villagers had lost the battle, and Howell had lost his fight to prevent them from incorporating.  Two years later Miller ran into him as she was leaving Agway.

"When I got to the car I heard a very familiar voice," she says.  "He told me he was sorry.  He said, 'You were right and I was wrong.'"

Last year Miller submitted her resignation from the Planning Board to allow the board time to find a replacement.  Davidson says he did not accept her resignation.

"We didn't let her resign," he says.  "Her term ran out this year."

Over the years the zoning ordinance grew to encompass the whole town, and the 2010 Committee went through a process similar to that of Miller's Planning council to rethink Lansing's future.  Each iteration brought the town closer to the notion of a town center.  Construction on a town center may begin as early as next year, and officials are hoping that the third sewer proposal since the 1990s will be the charm that finally brings a municipal waste water system to the Town.

Miller argues that planning has helped maintain the character of the town, something she wanted years ago when she bought her farm to keep the warehouses from becoming an eyesore next to her home.

"It hasn't changed too much, to be honest about it," she says.  "There are more people, but they're in the spaces where it looked as though they could be.  We did plan things for the future."

The certificate, signed by Supervisor Miller (no relation) and Davidson says, "Certificate of Recognition Presented To Viola Miller for her leadership in the formation of the Lansing Planning Board.  Viola's term began February 14, 1967 and she graciously served as a Planning Board member for over forty four years.  The lansing Town Board and the Lansing Planning Board wish to thank her for her years of dedicated service to the Lansing Community."

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