Archive: News

Frank MooreFrank Moore is running for his fourth term as Village of Lansing Trustee.  He and his wife Nancy have lived in the Village for 9 years, and have been in the Ithaca area for more than 40.  They have six grown children.  Moore is a retired Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and still teaches a graduate course in fluid mechanic theory even though he retired from Cornell in 1993.  Soft spoken and deliberate, he has been a Village Trustee for six years, and is running uncontested for another term.  

When living in Ithaca he participated on the planning board, and chair it part of that time.  He was on the city board of zoning appeals for three years, and the Police Commission for three years.  At Cornell he did studies on environmental impact of power plants.  

Moore met with the Lansing Star at the Village Office Friday morning (03/31) to discuss his candidacy and challenges facing the Village.  He says he got into governance because of activism when he lived in Ithaca.  "I was in effect the leader of an opposition in a neighborhood to the electric company taking up four or five homes in the Cornell Heights area for commercial purposes," says Moore.  "We fought back and hired Wally Wiggins to represent us.  Oddly enough, we won.  This impressed (then Ithaca Mayor) Ben Nichols as being an interesting political performance, so he appointed me to various things."

Lansing Star:  Why are you running for another term?

Frank Moore:  I like the idea of being involved in local issues and problems.  I like to have something to say about them and talk to people about them.  So that's a very general thing.  There are specific issues such as the sewer business that we're so familiar with by now.  There's the lifestyle issues of the Greenway, sidewalks, that kind of thing.  It is something important and worth effort in contributing to that.

Largely, though, my first reaction is that it's citizenship.  It's something you do.  And we'll see where everything leads.  I certainly didn't become a Trustee with the idea of becoming especially interested in routes of sewer lines through the Village, but I think it's very important for Trustees to be interested in specific things, instead of just sitting like birds on a wire and responding to stimuli that somebody else provides.

So who knows, in the next couple of years, what other things might become significant?  I think that amongst the Trustees they differ in this respect.  You can see at the meetings that each of the Trustees seems to have a particular focus of interest.  I think that's a very valuable thing.  If you put it all together presumably you have a good government that arises from that kind of combination.

LS: What are the key challenges for the Village now and in the next two years as you see them?

FM: Well, the sewer service thing is an obvious one.  In other words, how the drama of route through the Village of Lansing plays out is, of course, of great interest.  Connected with that is the question of how the unsewered portions of the Village will become sewered.  Possibly in conjunction of what goes on with the route, who knows?  We don't as a Village have any plan in this regard.  I know the Planning Board had agreed to study this on behalf of the Village, and I think that's a good idea.  It's certainly a planning function.  What are the planning issues about the sewer provision for the rest of the Village?

Of course the Sundowns Farm tract, which is an immense area...  everybody wonders what the future of that is.  Maybe even the owner wonders, too.  I don't know, I haven't heard about any action in this respect.

LS: That's the last big area of residential development in the Village?

FM: Potential residential development.  Yes, it's zoned residential.  The long range problem for the Village is the identity problem that people talk about.  Why is it a village?  Is it a village?  In the ordinary sense is it a village in the same way that Groton is a village, or Freeville or Trumansburg?  And of course the answer is, no it's not.

Does it have the potential to be like that?  That's hard to say.  Most of those places such as Trumansburg have a history.  So does Groton.  So history is important.  They also have schools and activities that are normally associated with a village.  I think it takes children to make a village, to coin a phrase.  And we don't have school.

So much of what you'd think of as a village function is outsourced.  That's the way it is.  Now is that a good thing or a bad thing?  I don't say that it's either one, but it doesn't constitute defining a village.  The idea of trying to develop a village center -- I'm not sure that I believe that that's feasible.  Not that it's feasible to establish a center, but that it would accomplish a village sense is more obscure to me.

Being pessimistic about that, then it would be important for the Village to form relationships that are in some ways equivalent, like relationships with the town.  There was a separation at one time.  Maybe it's time to be more interested in participating more in town affairs.  Making connections of that kind.

Cayuga heights is kind of a village, but not much more than the Village of Lansing.  Cayuga Heights is not a Trumansburg, and it's not even a Groton.

LS: They do have a village center.

FM: Yes, there is a village center there.  They have a police department.  That's another one of the things that we outsource.

LS: You've anticipated two of my questions, so while we're talking about it let me skip ahead...  Lynn Leopold brought up the issue of village identity to me.  She said the Village wants to develop a sense of identity.  I have realized after talking to John O'Neill and hearing what you just said that I should ask two questions:  Is creating a village identity really a desirable goal?  And how do you see accomplishing a village identity?

FM: I think a village identity and village life is a wonderful thing.  We lived in Trumansburg for a couple of years, and we really appreciated that.  We lived in the Village of East Aurora, near Buffalo, for ten years.  We loved that village ambiance.  And it's not here.

The first question is, is it desirable?  Sure, it's desirable.  I think everybody should live in a village.  Even in the city you can live in a village, Greenwich Village or whatever.  So that sense of village is a very desirable thing.

The question is, can you get there from here as far as the Village of Lansing is concerned?  I'm dubious about the prospects for that, or dubious about the idea that the Trustees can do anything that will create that.  Because I think it's fundamental circumstances that determine whether you have a village or not.  It's not political.

LS: Lynn thought that the Triphammer renewal would help to define the village.  The trees, the bicycle paths, the Greenway areas...

FM: The difficulty with that is that a sense of pleasant surroundings is a characteristic of a village, but you might say it is a necessary but not sufficient condition to make a village.  You can have beautiful surroundings, but they don't make a village.  A village is a spirit.  A feeling, rather than a bunch of hard facts.

LS: That was one of Lynn's concerns, that a lot of Village residents think of themselves as Ithacans and may not even consciously be aware of being Village residents.

FM: I think if I were in the Town and a similar question came up... The Town of Lansing, is that a village?  It has many more of the advantages of circumstance that would produce that.  They have schools, they have churches, they have a very active athletic program, they now have a library.  That Lansing library  -- my wife worked for Tompkins County library for a number of years, so she's been volunteering up there.  It had very little to do with the Town government.  It wasn't a thing that was an initiative of the Town board.

It was very much a volunteer initiative and quite successful.  That's the kind of thing that happens in a village.  You have historical societies in Trumansburg and the Town.  So the Town has all these ingredients, and that's why it strikes me once in a while that we should be better connected with the Town, not just for peaceable resolution of the sewer route thing, but for longer range sense of community.

And they have a park.  The Lansing park is a wonderful place, informal.  I can easily imagine myself being an enthusiastic citizen of the Town-village of Lansing.  If I were a resident of the Town I'd be pretty pleased with that village aspect of the Town.

LS: That anticipates my other question.  When Tony Nekut spoke at the last Trustee meeting he suggested just that.  Do you think the Village would rejoin the Town?

FM: I've heard that from more than one person -- at least he's the second person I've heard it from.  The question is what's the advantage to us having a village?  There are advantages, certainly.  The decentralization aspect of the government -- this is a very effective government that we have here.  The Planning Board, the Mayor's Office, the Trustees -- it's a very good government.  Things are decided with care.  There is very little posturing or the nonsense that commonly goes on in local governments.   We have that.

We also have the process of managing commercial development that the Town doesn't have.  The Town, it's true, has got zoning now, which is the reason we have a village.  When Pyramid came in they didn't have any zoning.  Now they have zoning, but I don't think they have it in as sophisticated a form as we do in the Village.  So it would not be a simple thing to reintegrate into the Town.

Sometimes people ask, 'why are we separate?'  I think it's a fair question that deserves a more detailed and careful answer.    I think it's a question that should always be up there as a question.  We should have an answer to that that's clear and complete, because the Town has so many things that we don't have and ought to have if we were a proper village.


LS: That leads into my next question:  do you think the Village's point of view is closer to the Town's or to Ithaca's?

FM: I suppose more toward Ithaca, or somewhere between Cayuga Heights and Ithaca.  It certainly, as far as the voting people in the Village, is residential.  The residential values are of concern, zoning issues of that kind.  I think to some extent our environmental quality of life kind of thing, but they are residential or suburban type interests just like you would have in Cayuga Heights, probably, than Ithaca.  Because Ithaca's got all kinds of subsets that we don't have here.  (Laughs)  If you advertise for an anti-war rally in the Village of Lansing, how far would that get?!

LS: I want to ask about growth.  What kind of growth would you like to see in the Village?

FM: I haven't thought too much about growth as a particular thing.  I sort of assume there are certain currents of historic currency.  There's no sense in saying I'm against growth or in favor of growth.  In other words somebody in a poverty stricken town in the Great Plains would say 'I'm in favor of growth.'  So what, you know?  (laughs)

LS: But certainly you want to control it?

FM: Oh yes, it's a matter of managing and controlling it.  That's not like being pro or anti-growth.  I assume that the question of growth will be controlled by forces well beyond the control of the powers of the Village Board of Trustees.  So the question is can you manage it or moderate it or manipulate it?

LS: But manipulation implies intent.  For example, while the Town Board doesn't seem to be directly engaging in town planning, with the sewer it's clear that they are encouraging growth in certain areas of the Town while protecting the agricultural areas in the north.  While that's not a direct grasp of growth, it's a kind of plan.  And the Village has, as you say, stronger zoning, so I assume there is some intent there.

FM: I don't think so, not intent that you could characterize as being in favor of growth or against growth.  That question would be meaningless in Cayuga Heights, because it's all built out.  It's somewhat meaningless in the village of Lansing where there's room for residential and commercial development, but not a whole lot.  Therefore it's more a matter of modulation of what's going to happen.  I presume, for example, the Edleman property near Northwood will be developed.  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?  I guess it's a good thing, right?  People have got to live somewhere.

I think it's more a matter of doing it the right way to protect the interests of the people that are already there to the degree that's proper and reasonable.  I guess that's a pretty good principal, isn't it?

LS: What do you consider your key accomplishments in your tenure as a Trustee?

FM: I put a certain amount of pressure on the system in regard to the Greenway business.  As far as the sewer thing is concerned, I don't know whether I've accomplished anything in that regard or not.  I've tried to illuminate the issues for the Village.  At this point, for example, I'm inclined to say, 'OK folks, what do you want?'

LS: Say that to whom?  To the Town or the Village or Village residents?

FM: To the Village Board.  I'm not sure whether it's a question of accomplishments.  I influence the Greenway process and made a fuss about certain things.  I don't think I'm an expert on sewer service.  I think I add something to the Board deliberations in general.  I ask good questions and argue when it's appropriate, and I influence the details of the Village's business.  Generally I think I'm a pretty good critic.  I think I make a contribution in that respect.

I think there are a certain amount of defects in our system that I mention from time to time.  Mainly that stem from the fact that all our representatives are elected at large.  In the city they are elected by ward, so they become the representatives of the ward.

LS: The five of you are pretty well spread out in the Village, aren't you?

FM: I don't think it's very well distributed geographically, but on the other hand it's well distributed in respect to the people who are most active and vote.  There has been some eagerness to get someone who is a renter in one of the various apartment complexes we have here in the Village, but that's not been successful, certainly not as a continuing kind of thing.

So we have Trustees at large.  I mean I would like to see it happen that the Village Trustees had individual responsibilities.  What happens in the city, for example -- there are two things that happen because they are elected by ward.  They represent the ward.  If there's a trash problem you call your ward representative.  The second thing is they have a committee system.  They have a public works committee, a public safety committee, this committee, that committee.  The people on the city council spend every night of the week.  It's a hard job.  Anybody should think twice.  This is not a hard job, because we have a meeting once every tow weeks probably, but in the city it's terrible because they have committee responsibilities.  So each council member is chairman of a government committee.

LS: Do you think that's necessary in the Village?

FM: No, no.  That's a city and this is a village.  That kind of focus of the Trustees on either regional or subject areas is not necessary in the Village, but it shouldn't be zero.  And it's almost zero.  If a difficulty comes up from the people in the Northwood area about access to the highway, a fairly substantial problem, the Mayor takes care of that.  There's hardly any issue that a Trustee is ex-officio supposed to worry about.  I think it would be helpful in the Village to have a bit more of that decentralization.  

It would be more responsive in many ways, maybe to discover problems before they become acute.  You know, there are all sorts of advantages to that.  Public safety, for example, I don't say that's a big problem.  We don;'t have any Trustee who is supposed to be pro-actively thinking about public safety.  So I would like to see something like that, but that's up to the Trustees en masse to decide what they think about that.  It's a structural question.

LS: To finish up, what should I have asked you that I haven't?

FM: I think one thing you might have asked is 'what do you think of the services that the Village government provides?  DO you have a sense that people are happy with that?'

LS: Do you?

Yes, I think the answer to that is everything you see looks pretty good to me.  We have a new public works superintendent that I think is very effective.  I think the services the Village is providing, and in some cases provide by contract with the Town, are very good. I can't imagine that there's any big issue in that respect.

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