Archive: News

Gay Nicholson is running for Lansing Town Board.  Originally from Wisconsin and Illinois, she came to the area for graduate school.  She has lived in Ludlowville 34 years.  For seven years Nicholson served as the Executive Director of the Fingerlakes Land Trust.  In 2004 she became a founder of Sustainable Tompkins, where she serves as President, and a founder of the Green Resource Hub. 

Nicholson says her experience as a community leader on countless Ludlowville and Lansing organizations and projects, and a non-profit leader in Tompkins County will bring skills to the Town Board that will be good for the Town.  She dropped by the Lansing Star to talk about why she wants to be a Lansing Councilwoman.

Lansing Star: After the debate that stemmed from the latest and failed sewer project I think the question has to be asked: does the Town Board have an overarching vision for the Town?  I understand that we are all waiting for the Comprehensive Plan Committee to come up with its revision, but I also think that people will vote for representatives who have an overall leadership plan.  What is your own overall vision for Lansing's future in the next four years?

Gay Nicholson: I think we have to lay down a lot of ground work over the next four years for what's coming in the next four decades.  We are facing growing complexity in the problems that humanity is facing on our dear little planet.  We have to understand what the trends are and understand that we have to start adjusting to those trends.

One very important area that local government needs to deal with is land use with respect to climate change, to the climate impacts.  For example, the storm that we had August 8th was one of these extreme rainfall events that we will be seeing more of.  Our pattern in the past has been to lay down drainage tile, and deepen the ditches, and move the water off quickly.  But we are reaching the limits of our ability to process the water movement in that way.

So now we need a different plan when we are thinking about development.  We're going to have to deal with the water loading we already have.  We've now designed things to push it all off one parcel onto the next parcel as fast as possible.  Then people down the road get flooding.  And it's expensive to repair and almost impossible to insure.

In light of those kinds of trends that we're going to be seeing, how should we be planning for development?  That's where a comprehensive plan needs to be truly far sighted and needs to engage as many people as possible, because one mind can't figure it all out.  So we have to collectively be finding solutions to these complex problems.

I think that the sewer project was an example of not having done that.  There were a lot of assumptions made about that sewer proposal that if you queried and looked into it, maybe weren't safe assumptions to make.  Like the idea that putting in the sewer would protect the farmland in the north of Lansing from development.  You hear that zoning does that.  Well, it only does that if you have identified the sources of pressure on development of the farmland and relieve those pressures.

Putting in multi-family housing or senior housing in clusters is good, but it doesn't do anything about the desire for vista houses, or a farmer needing to sell off road frontage to pay taxes and people wanting to put a modular home in.

So it wasn't thought through.  That's just one of the aspects that wasn't thought through in the sewer project.

I think that we still need to come up with a thoughtful plan around the South Lansing area.  We would like to see a commercial district evolve.  I've lived here 34 years and have witnessed the many failed roadside businesses in South Lansing that are eyesores and then prevent other entities like Rogue's harbor from being able to be in a nice neighborhood.

But in 200 years a village hasn't evolved there.  So we have to look at why.  Just sticking in sewer might not be the answer to making a village happen overnight.

I've been in conversation with people.  One of the things I am interested in is increasing the tourism part of our economy, because it can be a real jobs generator and employ a lot of our young people in those kinds of recreation and wineries and restaurants, B&Bs... This is a booming industry in the Finger Lakes.

As I said, I've lived here 34 years.  I've watched the east side of Seneca Lake blossom with this wonderful array of locally owned businesses that are just thriving.  Our Cayuga east side hasn't had that kind of renaissance yet.

So one of the things I'm doing now is starting to organize around that -- that's what I do.  I'm a community organizer.  So I am hosting with Eileen Stout a meeting on October 28th at Rogue's Harbor, inviting all the businesses related to tourism here on the east side, even into the Aurora area and King Ferry, like Treleaven Winery.  The Saltonstalls will be down.  It's to start to explore how we can tap into some of the economic development funding that's out there to provide more shared marketing vehicles for our existing businesses, and also start looking at what's missing in the array.

That's why I am so excited and hopeful to see the Bell Station land, the NYSEG land, be turned into a state-owned recreational area.  Because then we have this wonderful set of destinations offering a different array of things.  Myers Park -- Paddle N More is down there and picnicking and flush toilets.

And then there's Salt Point.  I'm the founder of the Friends of Salt Point with another guy from Myers.  So I am delighted to see how Katrina has carried that to our vision of having it be a vehicle-free and litter-free environment for quiet enjoyment and feeling a little safer when you go down there.  I feel much more safe about walking down there now.  That's a wonderful destination with the osprey nest and water draw.

Then if there is this recreational land at the end of the town on your way to the wineries and other things, that's another draw.  So we'd have these three lake-based recreation jewels.  Then we need to start looking at where would a food truck be able to thrive?  Where would the equivalent of a Stone Cat Café be able to thrive?  I'd love to see something like that over here, or the equivalent of a Glenwood Pines where people who have been out boating or canoeing or hiking can stop for a more medium priced meal.  Sit outside, enjoy the view, look at the lake.

So there's so much that we could be doing and growing that.  The Town Board's role in that could be to help inspire and help repopulate the Economic Development Committee and have more of us working on identifying the grant sources that could help us do the marketing piece.  Maybe businesses can't afford to pay for it all, but we could get some grants to put this together.

Not only is that valuable and would employ more people, and it's locally owned and therefore creates more diversity in our economy and our tax base, but maybe with that you eventually grow enough critical mass that other kinds of village-type services and businesses could exist, that there's a marketplace.

Then you could see development in the South Lansing area, around Rogue's Harbor and the town land.  Maybe there's a package plant there to enable enough density.  Maybe there is some mixed income and mixed age housing that is part of that.

I am very nervous about some of the assumptions they've been running with -- if you build it they will come.  Especially if you just plunk down a piece of it that somehow it will work out that it will connect and be integrated into the next piece.  I was very concerned about where the proposed senior housing would be sort of set down in isolation on the town land.  If it's senior housing it needs to be integrated right into the walkable nature of it, not still a Gadabout ride over to whatever may be in that little center.

What single town issue to you see as the most important and challenging for the Town Board as a whole now, and what do you intend to do about it if elected?


I think this work of taking the comprehensive plan and actually digesting it, and not just those five people on the board.  But really working to figure out how are we going to design for more citizen engagement so that we have as many minds as possible working on the plan and its elements.  People are wanting scenic views and they love the natural areas, and they want bikes and trails and those amenities.  We want to work on that, but we also need to work on the things that could be getting expensive in the future: as I was talking about earlier, climate impacts.  Just as we have a lot of unfunded mandates these days, as the federal government gets overextended and passes things to the state, the state passes them to the county, the county passes them to the town, we're going to be seeing a lot of these difficulties of paying for climate impacts trickling down into the local communities.

One of the things that I think we need to be working on is what are called climate adaptation plans.  This is probably an iterative process every community is going to have to go through.  You can start with the first task, which is really knowing where your vulnerabilities are, and who's vulnerable, who's disabled, who's elderly, who's in the flood plain.  Exactly who they are and what's our plan for helping them in case of an emergency.


So you're going beyond the new storm water regulations.


Yes, the reality is that we're going to have to do this kind of neighborly engagement with each other at the community level.

So the idea is that first you identify your vulnerabilities, assess the risks, and then figure out how will you cope with that and start implementing those plans.  I met with the American Red Cross last spring in the process of putting on the Climate Smart, Climate Ready conference.  They're seeing the big picture of what's coming at them.  They used to be in the rescue business and now they're finding themselves in the recovery business.  The recovery business takes a long time so they're realizing they need to get into the resilience business and help communities prepare for taking care of themselves at the household level and at the neighborhood level.

That, actually, lends itself to a lot of community building and good things that can flow out of that.  It isn't something that is a negative chore that we have to do, but rather something that could help knit us back together and identify individuals who then want to come in and start working on some of the other opportunities that go along with that resilience, which often is about local food, local energy production, clean energy production and figuring out transportation and critical services.


You may have already answered this, but what town issue is closest to your own heart, and what do you intend to do about that?

The tourism.  Helping to facilitate the growth of tourism-related business as a way of a gradualism approach towards building a village in the South Lansing area.

But the other key thing I'm leading on, where I have a lot of expertise that is missing on the Town Board, is around clean energy.  I've been hosting these Solarize Lansing meetings to pull Lansing residents together to be poised to join in the next round of the Solarize Tompkins group purchase of solar electric.  This next round will just be solar electric, so for solar hot water we'll probably do our own little Lansing-based solar hot water bid.  A third thing -- this is my favorite part - is a little think/do-tank around what other kinds of community owned renewable energy can we be looking into?  Such as micro hydro or biomass-based, or larger solar array projects similar to the Black Oak Wind Farm over in Enfield, where a lot of local investors are owning that wind farm and the profit can stay here and circulate here.

We have this situation with the power plant.  The Town Board doesn't have control over it's outcome.  We know that power plants across the nation are going out of business.  It's too bad that we're in a situation where 30 Wall Street bondholders are calling the shots based on their business models, which has included a $450 million fine to Morgan Chase for breaking the rules around buying up these old coal plants and manipulating the energy markets.

It makes us feel like pawns on a chess board.  The repowering with natural gas -- we could be looking at a stranded asset in a few years that the ratepayers have been asked to pay for.  When I first heard all this I thought, 'if it's such a sure thing why aren't those 30 bondholders building themselves a natural gas plant?'  As an investment if it's such a sure thing.  Why are the ratepayers paying for it?

Well, it makes it easier for them to take the risk of the investment if they don't have a mortgage.  And they could just walk away from it.  I don't know if you know that some of the largest energy utility firms in Germany are already closing natural gas power plants because they can't compete in the market against wind and solar that's coming on the market -- and the efficiency measures which are reducing demand.  So you are getting less peak load.  When your business model is all based on sales at peak and everybody else is realizing there is money to be made in peak by megawatts through megawatts, which is really taking off, or even learning how to send other types of energy in at that peak load, it makes these large power plants look like -- maybe -- they're exiting the marketplace.

We're already down to $60 million assessed value on the power plant.  I think the responsible thing for the Town Board to do is to get busy on diversifying and expanding on the local tax base in a way that keeps in mind the trends of the future and what would really be resilient.  What would stick.  What wouldn't be vulnerable to the next pervation in the marketplace.


Is there going to be a town center?  What would you like to see happen to the town center land?


I think we are OK to go slow on the town center.  I don't see where the critical mass is and where the marketplace is.  And I get very worried about stranded assets.  I'm fiscally very conservative.  Having run smallish non-profits for the last 20 years I know what it means to be careful with your money and your investments, and to go step-wise and slowly build up capacity to do things without getting overextended.  A local government needs to do the same.

There are many paths that we could pursue around diversifying our economic base.  I think it's likely that we're going to be losing that coal plant.  For sure the coal plant is going away.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be doing the feasibility study.  I completely agree with Martha Robertson and Barb Lifton that we need the feasibility study to look in... that's a lot of infrastructure sitting up there.  What are the conversion possibilities to a mix of other sources of energy using that infrastructure?

I don't know anything about that.  You need serious engineering studies and market analysis.

Meanwhile we need to start thinking about replacing that in the budget.  Probably in the short term we have to reduce expenditures while we're growing the local economy and the local tax base.

I approached Ruth Hopkins with my concerns more than a year and a half ago around the sewer proposal, because it felt like it was too piecemeal.  My brother is a developer in the Seattle area and I see what people are looking for these days in terms of wanting a sense of neighborhood and a sense of community.  Wanting it to be green and to be based in a small carbon footprint, and therefore less risk in terms of utility bills, and having amenities like community gardens and parks and trails and the rets of it all packaged together into an attractive place.  Otherwise -- it's not like that town center land has great lake views, and it's right on a state highway.

So what's the appeal there?  You need to put something together that is a lifestyle.  That's attractive to the segment of the population that's looking for a home.


I've said that I think the Town should have more planning as to what a town commercial center would look like.  We've seen the piecemeal approach.

Yes, we know that doesn't work in Lansing.  And we know that Ithaca is growing a lot right now.  So rather than compete with Ithaca for the nice density infill development that they've got going on, which is a much more sustainable type of development, how do we mirror that?  Or take advantage of the fact that there may be more tourism dollars to pull up our side of the lake?  To slowly build up our coffers to have the critical mass and density to be able to start putting together the elements that would result in high quality of life and resilience.

Because I think the global economy -- I call it the global casino -- is always going to be taking these tumbles.  This growing gap between the rich and the poor is accelerating.



In the final sewer meeting there was some discussion of a 'split Lansing' with relatively affluent neighborhoods in the south of the town that see themselves more a part of Ithaca than Lansing and more traditional families in the north that grew up here and want to maintain the character of the town they remember.  Do you agree that there are 'two Lansings' and, if yes – or no, how does that impact your vision of how the Town should led by the Board?  Also, if 'yes' is there a political divide in Lansing and how is that driving the campaign?

I'm sure there are several sub-Lansings.  I think absolutely that the folks in the Village have more of a sense of connection to Ithaca, to the Ithaca School District, to jobs that are Cornell or Ithaca related.  That's OK.

But we certainly could be doing a lot more around creating a sense of community and the relationship between village and town.  I've been talking with others in the Village about doing exactly that.  The Village pays 30% of the taxes to the town, so I'm wondering how we, with our strong Parks & Recreation department, share more of that with them.

Another thing is that this vision of tourism around Myers, Salt Point and the Bell Station... well, all those folks who live in the Village could be coming north into Lansing to play and to relax and go out to eat, rather than more limited choices in the Village or going downtown.

Lynn Leopold and I had a long conversation about this.  She really thinks a lot of people in the Village would embrace playing in the Town of Lansing as their town, too.

Through Sustainable Tompkins we have given out quite a few mini-grants on community gardens.  I think that's another place for community members to come together and do something fun and worthwhile, especially when it is aimed at helping lower-income members of the community.  Caroline has a whole planted row for the hungry, and we've given several mini-grants to the Caroline Food Pantry to put up deer fencing to create a gardening area for low income folks, as well as some chicken tractors for people to raise their own eggs.  I think there's a lot that can be done for not a lot of investment to start building a sense of community instead of alienation around snow plowing.

I know that the folks in the Village often feel they don't have a sense of community, because they don't have neighborhood associations.


Lynn said this the other night at a Trustee meeting: the town has more of a village community feel than the Village does.

I remember back in the '80s when I started the Lansing Trailways Committee, when we were forming the Tompkins County Greenway Coalition.  There was this great little group out of the Village of Lansing that was doing the greenway plan for that area.  But it seemed to have petered out once it spark plugged people were no longer engaged, I guess.  And nothing seems to have taken its place at the community level. So I think what's needed are some inspirational projects to work on together.  Do something fun together.


While some people have told me that town taxes are too high I think most people agree that school and county taxes are the real culprits that are burdening property taxpayers.  One of the most oft-sited justifications of the sewer and town center projects was to increase the tax base to mitigate the school tax rate for current property owners.  Is it the town's job to do something about school taxes (if no, whose is it)?  And what should the responsible entities do about it?

That's a good question because the Town Board doesn't get to control how the school budget is spent.  And yet we're all in this together.

The schools, like the County, are faced with these outrageous health insurance increases and the burden of the pensions.  It's not that everybody's being a wastrel.  We're all collectively dealing with... especially health and retirement payouts.

I think that the Town is responsible for making sure that how we grow isn't done willy-nilly rapidly just to deal with the health insurance problem over here in the school district.  We should not get pulled into that vortex, because it could be this endless spiral, right?  Where suddenly you want to let in heavy industry because at least it's some money to deal with this black hole of health insurance needs.

So step back and think about the larger view.

In my world, in the sustainability and social justice movement here in the County, I'm considered one of the systems thinkers, because that is key to trying to figure out how you actually form a more socially just, sustainable, environmentally stewarding, and economically viable way for humans to work and live.  So you have to take that systems level work and collaborate with others and try to figure it out.

At the town level I think that if we can help everyone in the community start to avoid some of the expenses of climate impact, safeguard against those, help people avoid future energy shocks b helping people move to clean energy, some of that community owned and invested in... we have the responsibility at the Town Board level to see what we can do to grow the local economy without ending up increasing the actual demand and tax burden.

Every cost-of-services study I ever saw when I was the Director of the Finger lakes Land Trust showed that residential properties cost you more in cost services than the increased property taxes in the system.  What you want is business development because the services you provide are less than the taxes.

But we can't be a bunch of wishful thinkers and think that if we build it they will come.  We've seen how we've struggled with roadside businesses in South Lansing.  We've got that cautionary tale.  The whole 34 years I've lived here, that's a cautionary tale.  I drive by it all the time.

That's why I get back to this idea of lets help out the schools by seeing what we can do to grow this tourism-related business, which also can employ some of our young people, and see if we can get some kind of critical mass that then leads to other successful businesses.

I think that what Lansing has here on thie gorgeous finger lake, Cayuga Lake, with fine framland that needs to stay in farming and not be covered with houses... this is an opportunity to really look at a more sustainable future together that is taking advantage of the businesses that could be based on the lake.  The wineries.  The local beverages.  The breweries, the distilleries, the cideries, the wineries that are growing around here.  The tourists that that's attracting.  The local foods movement, which is growing so significantly.  We have an amazing number of people in Tompkins County and the surrounding region who are growing a very resilient and sustainable local food system.  Restoring that.

My doctorate is in crop physiology, vegetable crops.  So I'm very familiar with the history of agriculture in New York State and what our economy used to be based on.  It was a lot of food grown and processed here.  With the new Challenge Industries food processing hub going up, we're starting to rebuild that.

This morning I was at a meeting trying to help Cayuga Pure Organics recover from the fire and find community investors to help pay for that through our Cayuga Lion, a local investing opportunities network we put together. 


Ready for the lightning round?



Sure.



Hydro-fracking?  For or against?


I was probably one of the first people in the county for a full ban on fracking in New York State.  I am a systems thinker and I could see that we would not be able to do that technology and guarantee clean water and public health.  Even more importantly, prevent the kinds of climate impacts that are going to be so expensive that they're going to become the new problem on top of the escalating health insurance problem.


Town services.  Is the level of services too much, too little or just right in Lansing today? 


As a resident, my needs are met in Ludlowville.  I don't know in detail how others would feel about town services, but I think most people are happy with our road service. And Parks and Recreation, of course, is extremely popular and pays for itself.  So no complaints there.  People are glad for the nice parks that we have.

I do think that the Town could do more in terms of hosting engagement and communication and a sense of open-door collaboration with the citizens.  That's been a problem here for a long time.  I'm not talking about the current board.  But as a citizen who was very active and did a lot of work through the '80s and '90s for the Town of Lansing and was continuously met with disrespect from the Town Board officials.

I got into volunteering in Lansing when I went before the Town Board, and all-male board, and asked them to do something about getting a speed limit in Ludlowville.  We were unmarked, therefore the speed limit was 55.  The cops couldn't do anything about our bad problem in that little tiny hamlet.

They all just laughed at me and said that somebody would have to die before the DOT would do anything about it.  And they were not going to do anything about it themselves.

I found that so astonishing in those grown men who were supposed to be the protectors of our community.  I went and petitioned everyone in Ludlowville.  i went to the DOT with that petition.  Within six weeks they came out and said, 'Oh you don't need a 30 mile per hour limit.  You guys need a 25 mile per hour zone here.'  And we got our speed limit so we could enforce it.

So it's that kind of attitude that I think needs to shift in elected officials.  I think we have in people like Ruth and Katrina, people who are very good listeners and comfortable with being in a conversation with other citizens.  But you ened some structure for that.

I had a member of the Economic Development Committee complain to me that they were never charged with any specific mission.  They were never asked to do anything.  It just consisted of going to the meetings and hearing reports from Andy.

You have to design for collaboration and get some ground rules.  And give people the facilitation training they might need to cope with the inevitable -- people who may dominate and talk too much, get the quiet ones to participate... there is a lot we can be doing to set the tone of engagement so that it isn't as much about what the Town Board's purvue is as creating this sense of community where if you want to plug in and get something done there will be active listeners saying 'good for you!  We'll support you in making a nice trail happen.'  Or 'Salt Pont' happen. That kind of thing.


It seems that the town courts are busier these days.  Should Lansing be looking at expanding its law enforcement, ie. Hiring a full time or more part time constables or considering a modest police force?

I haven't heard of any need to do so.  I know that the jail is having to expand.  But I also know that a lot of those are not necessarily violent offenses.  It's poverty and drug related.  In fact there are more and more female inmates that have been arrested for shoplifting for food.

So I'm not sure that spending our tax dollars on constables is getting at the nature of the problem.  I'd need to see a lot more data before I would advocate for expanding a police force.


What do you bring to the Town Board that the other three candidates don't offer?


I'm probably the only one with a deep knowledge around energy and climate issues.  I've been working at it for many years.  I was a Southern Tier Energy Smart Communities Coordinator for a number of years, so I'm familiar with all the NYSERDA programs.  I've been a citizen leader and non-profit leader on all sorts of initiatives in the energy and climate arena.

Do you know Dave Ferris?  He was one of our featured speakers at the Climate Smart and Climate Ready conference.  What he describes in terms of what's going on in the insurance industry around climate change is a real wake-up call.  The video of his presentation is on the ClimateSmartClimateReady.org Web site.  What he speaks of is part of the preparation that has to happen at the local level.

That is one of the things I will be bringing to the Town Board along with the fact that I have been involved in so many community partnerships and collaborative endeavors.  Those skill sets along with being a systems thinker would be very useful on the board.

We're such an ADD society.  It's easy for group think to occur because people are too distracted with too much information coming at them to step back a little bit and question the assumptions behind the direction we're all running in.  I tend to be someone who steps back and question assumptions like I did on the sewer project.  That's what I would bring.


Would you like to add anything we haven't talked about?


The things I'm very interested in bring is clean energy, tourism and the collaboration.  Getting the infrastructure in place for collaboration.  More citizen based solution finding.

One thing that I might mention about systems thinking is that its a very useful tool for getting a group of people to work on a problem together.  When you try to take a systems analysis approach and draw it out --- how things work, where the feedback loops -- it makes you have a discussion about what you think the feedback loop is and what are your assumptions about how things are working in that system.  That depersonalizes it a little bit so peoples' egos and emotions aren't as involved.  It's a little easier to get some distance and just be like engineers looking at the system and build one that works.

I think that would go a long way towards overcoming some of the emotional reactivity that happens in our town where you can't even start asking larger questions around coal plants and natural gas plants without it being seen as somehow disrespecting workers at the plant or not being loyal to the schools.  We have to learn to not jump to those conclusions, and instead learn how to be responsible for how we're thinking through things.  What are the options and what are other communities doing?  How do you get around this?  Where are some of the creative solutions that other communities are finding and what can we put together?

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