Archive: News

Village of Lansing elections are scheduled for April 24th at the village firehouse on Oakcrest Road.  Mayor Donald Hartill, Trustee/Deputy Mayor Larry Fresinski and Trustee Lynn Leopold will all be running unopposed for a new term.  All three are running in the Community Party, which seeks to unite Village residents regardless of political affiliation.  This week we begin a series of exclusive interviews with the candidates.  These interviews will be kept live on the 'Elections' page (click News, then click Elections) at least until election day.

Hartill has been Mayor of the Village of Lansing for 10 years, and was a Trustee before that beginning in 1989. He and his wife Marion have lived in Lansing since late 1968.  He is a Professor of Physics at Cornell University.  He is currently finishing his fifth term as Mayor, and is running unopposed for a sixth.  He met the Star at the Village Office last Monday to talk about his candidacy.

Lansing Star: Politically, what are your credentials?

Donald Hartill: I am a fiscally responsible person.  I think that is the proper credential.  I'm actually a registered Republican, but it's the very middle of the road, in fact the liberal part of that approach.

LS: So that makes you a compassionate conservative?

DH: No, quite the opposite.  I'm a fiscally responsible person.  Compassionate conservatives are not fiscally responsible as far as I can tell.

LS: My first question is why are you running for another term?

DH: Number six?  Why not?! (laughs)  Basically we do have Triphammer Road finished which is a great stride forward.  It has really changed the character of the Village in a very significant, very positive way.  We still have the question of sewers.  I would like to see that through.  At least see the agreements in place.  That's been a process in which we will now have been engaged in for seven plus years.

As far as the Village is concerned, we're in very good shape.  The moratorium is no longer, the Kline Road bypass works well, and so no further issues there.  You do have areas in the Village that are unsewered and those have to be tended to in some way.  We're very sympathetic to our neighbors to the north who have had problems.  

LS: What interested you in serving in the first place?

DH: The reason I got involved in politics in the first place was the Sun Downs farm proposal, which was just crazy in terms of both its scope and appropriateness.

LS: I'm not really aware of the history of that.

DH: There was a proposal to develop the Sun Downs property as a golf course, highest possible density of housing, the strip businesses along the eastern portion which by some distortion of the zoning could have been commercialized.

LS: I see.  It sounds like the kind of thing they are thinking about for Kingdom Farm.

DH: At some level, yeah.  But those kinds of things you have to be very careful.  First of all there has to be a market.  And the proposal is something like 700 to 800 housing units in a couple year period.  There's no financial basis in the region to support them.  It made no sense at all.  What was actually being proposed as was way of solving financial problems with the proposer to bail out some of his Texas properties, and a bank in Chicago got rolled for 6 million dollars.

LS: The Town sewer project has been a bumpy road.  In the past we didn't know which bumpy road it was going to be for awhile.

DH: We still have a fair distance to go on that same road I'm afraid.

LS: But it sounds like the Town and the Village are in general agreement.

DH: Yes, I think many of the things that you hear in the press are really the result of a misunderstanding the tensions.  There is no basic disagreement.

LS: It sounds like it's just a matter of the details now.

DH: It's the matter of the details, and we are still trying to explore a separate plan which makes a lot of sense.  There is a new world in DEC and we hope they are more sensible than the people in the past have been.

LS: So you think there is still a possibility that they would back-off a shared plant?

DH: There is still a possibility.  How big that possibility is would be hard pressed to assess numerically, but it's not a closed deal.  

LS: Do you think that the town is to invested at this point?  If the DEC backed off would they be able to do it?

DH: No, the cost of that transmission line is seven million dollars.  You can get a very nice treatment plant for seven million dollars.  No, its typical number is six or seven dollars a gallon installed cost.  

LS: If the town sewer doesn't come through, I know that you have been linking some of the plans for expanding the Village sewer to this town sewer.  What would then happen with sewering the rest of the Village?

DH: Well, the Cayuga Heights Road routing makes it easier in some respects for the Village because they are digging a hole and a good fraction of the cost of installing a piece of pipe is digging the hole.  They would have to dig a little bit bigger hole, but nevertheless, it's still cheaper than digging the hole first.

So, that would accommodate most of it.  There are lesser solutions that are cheaper that would accommodate the areas of the Village that need it.  So, it would be likely that that would be the first permutation.

LS: What percentage of the Village is still not on sewer?

DH: Area-wise?

LS: Yes.

DH: Maybe a third, something like that, a quarter to one-third.  In Sun Down is a large fraction of total surface area.

LS: The Sun Downs area it's not developed.

DH: It's not developed.  I have not heard of any development plans, there are rumors once in a while.  It's a large enough area that if you work out using your current zoning ordinances it amounts to something like 700 housing units overall.  The areas of the Village that haven't been developed amount to about 700 housing units.

LS: Is there any kind of plan to get those houses sewered?

DH: The areas the existing houses that aren't sewered is probably less than 100.

LS: So when you said 700 you meant all possible future development?

DH: I think the existing houses that are not sewered is significantly less.

LS: Did they want to be sewererd?

DH: Not particularly.  Almost all of them have large lots and are not very for replacement septic systems, even though those rules are becoming increasingly stringent, I realize it doesn't include them.

LS: What do you see as the key challenges for the Village, especially now that Triphammer is done?

DH: I think maintaining -- keeping things on a very stable financial footing is my chief goal.  Being able to lower the tax rate significantly is a nice step forward in that direction.  I think that's the challenge that all municipalities face.  We've been more careful than some of our sister municipalities being very careful with some of the projects we take on and execute.


LS: I understood from the last night's board meeting that there wasn't a bond for Triphammer.  The Village raised the money and did the project and now it's being taken care of?

DH: We received a very significant amount of money from both the Federal Highway Administration and the state.  All municipalities have that opportunity so you really have to pay attention to those opportunities and use them.  We ended up with a very nice situation in which we were able to pay for them without bonds.  Any bonds put our future citizens in debt and we really don't want to do that.  

LS: So going back to the question of goals for the Village.

DH: Well, the next goal is of course is resolving this sewer situation to the satisfaction of all parties.  

LS: The main issues, as I understand it, are the actual percentage of the Village share of the trunk and the ownership issue.

DH: Right, the Village share of the trunk is easily calculable and I have done that calculation.  One thing that has changed in that area, I'll be talking to Steve (Farkas, Lansing Town Supervisor) next week or so, is that the gravity part of the system from Cedar Lake down to the treatment plant certainly is more than adequate for any future needs of the Village.  On the other hand, it is now 30 years old so systems like that have a lifetime of 50 to 60 years, so we have used half of its life.  

One can view this new system as a preemptive replacement plan so we should share the cost of that rough proportion to the lifetime of the system and our usage.  So that is the proposal that I have.  Last night's meeting met concurrence with my colleagues on the board that I can now go forward with the town, we can begin negotiations on that basis.  So, it helps the town with the cost of construction.

LS: This is kind of a funny question because there's not a lot of room for it, but what kind of growth do you want to see in the Village?  I know it's not as big an issue as in the town but it's still an issue.

DH: I think there is no reason to expect our growth rate to change.  The current growth rate is, I think, very sensible and healthy.  In the commercial side of the equation, we have one very small high density commercial parcel left in the Village.  I eventually expect to see that developed.  We have some amount of road traffic commercial available.  One of the things that the planning board is interested in exploring are what kind of opportunities that that might provide.  So that's an ongoing process.  Eventually we will come to some conclusion.

LS: You are thinking along the lines of the Cornell Technology Park kind of business?

DH: Let me come back to that.  That's different.

The commercial road traffic is adjacent to Triphammer.  The other commercial area in the Village is the Business and Technology Park.  It's been a great addition of in excess of 1,400 well-paying jobs in that region.  There is some vacant land left to develop on the airport side, and there will probably be opportunities on the west side of Warren Road at some point.  It's all becoming a part of an Empire Zone.  New application is just going in, and so I expect the kind of growth that we've seen in the past in those kind of areas will continue.

LS: That's the kind of key growth that the success of Tompkins County depends on.

DH: We are the economic engine or at least part of the engine.  We will continue to grow.  Research activities at Cornell in terms of nanoscience and some of the bioscience initiatives are bound to have spin-offs.  People like living here, it's a natural place to come.  

LS: Aside from better traffic flow, what do you intend to accomplish with Triphammer?  

DH: Maybe a pedestrian and bicycle friendly area.  I think we have accomplished that goal.  I've been helping John with snow removal during the last snow storm on the new sidewalks.  I know the new sidewalks very well on a personal basis!

The thing that surprised us is -- Sunday morning we were cleaning off across the bridge somebody actually walked through the snow at 7am on his or her way to some place, probably to Cayuga or P&C or something like that -- that people really do use it.  

I noticed last evening coming in for the meeting there were fresh footprints in the white snow just north of the Village office.  So that's been very satisfying to see.

LS: Have there been any kinds of surprise, I guess you would call them side-effects?

DH: Not really.  One of the things that has come up as a concern from local station owner, Tom Burney, and HSBC is the way that we have ended up yellow striping.  It is somewhat confusing.  There has been at least one accident associated with it for making the left turns there.  So we are going to revisit that in the spring to see if we can't make it a little bit easier to understand what's going on.

There are certain constraints that we have satisfy both with NYSDOT and the Federal Highway monies.  I think we can accommodate something.  I'm still waiting for NYSEG to turn on the lights on the bridge.  It was very dark Saturday and Sunday mornings at 6:00am.

LS: Are they like the new street lights?

DH: No, they're the cobra-heads on the bridge itself.  So I will continue to press that.  I was impressed at how dark it was.  

LS: Especially now that the rest of this area is not lit.

DH: Exactly.  The contrast is very dramatic.  

LS: One of the things that has interested me as I have been covering the Village is the idea of a Village identity.  I know there has been concern about it because -- at least before the Triphammer project was completed, the perception was that there wasn't a center of the Village of Lansing.  Do you think that the Triphammer construction addresses that?

DH: It goes a long way.  The stone walls add a certain character to that.  It happens to be a linear center and that's okay.  It really has transformed in a very dramatic way the peoples' outlook on the Village.  I hear continual positive comments about how nice things are and what a change it's been.  We do have an activity looking at wayfinding that will add to the character of the Village.  

LS: And that will be the series of signs?

DH: The series of signs, logos, the common things.  There will be a uniform approach to that.  The homeowners have been reasonably cooperative.

LS: Along those lines, one of the things that is missing from our malls is directory signs, and I know that some of the store owners have been vocal about wanting a little more visibility out where people are.

DH: This way-finding is part of that.  What we are trying to do is do it in such a way that you don't have huge billboards, but you see enough information so that it provides needed information.

LS: This is a question from last year and I guess it still applies here.  Do you feel that the Village's point of view is more in line with Ithaca or with the Town of Lansing?

DH: I'll say it's half way in between.  

LS: (Laughs) Geographically and philosophically.

DH:There's still an open area, plus we're not a strictly urban enterprise.  We have by far the largest inventory of apartment dwellings.  

LS: I wanted to ask about the Greenway.  I am sure that I'm wrong so please correct me, but it appears that the Greenway is largely theoretical at this point.  

DH: No, we have developed reasonably extensive trail system.  As development happens in various parts of the Village that trail system will expand.  We're hopeful we can have a significant expansion of that in the not too distant future.  The sidewalk system adds to that so, quite the contrary, the Greenway is alive and well.  We're making good progress.

LS: Mainly in terms of trails at this point?  Not so much in terms of parks?

DH: Right.  We do have various pocket parks around.  One of my concerns is that Route 13 represents an impediment for the north side of the Village to access Dankert Park which is used extensively by people on the south side.  So at one point I was facetiously  offering to take the bridge to nowhere on Route 13 in Ithaca off their hands and putting it here to put it to good use.

(Laughs)  I avoided that!

LS: What would you consider your key accomplishments in your tenure as mayor?

DH: Getting Triphammer Road done certainly.  Then getting the sewer situation in respect to the Village resolved.  The other thing is maintaining our tax levy at an affordable level.  In fact, has not quite kept pace with inflation because we've had enough other income from various things to offset the lack of increasing tax rate.  We did have the tax rate up during the Triphammer Road episode, for obvious reasons.  It's now finished.  The rest of our roadway system is in a well maintained condition.  We have a list of the projects that (Village Superintendent of Public Works) John Courtney s assembled to take us through the next 10 to 20 years to maintain the system.

LS: I wanted to ask you about the situation where the elections are uncontested.  Do you think that's good for the Village?

DH: It's good in the sense that we have a very stable environment.  One of the challenges is that when things are working well there is no interest.  Everything is fine, no need to get involved, no need to get any excitement.  When things aren't working well, then it's already too late.  One of my challenges is to find people to serve on boards, finding people who stand for election.  Our turnout is typical maybe 100 or so I imagine.  

LS: Last question has to do with this Village services area that's been under discussion.  I know that the firehouse discussions have been going very slowly, but maybe surely.

DH: Hard to tell.  There seems to be great excitement for a long time, but then nothing.  The offer is still there.  I would like to have it resolved at some point so we're going to have to do something with our DPW storage and office, garage space at some point.  I'd like to be able to go forward with this with the project understood as to what is going to happen.

LS: Essentially you're waiting for that to firm up to make a general plan for this property.

DH: Right.  Survey the area, certainly that kind of use is permitted, we will be taking out the water tank at some point, before it comes down.  It hinges on we have to repaint the Burdick Hill tank and this plus the Village Circle tank will then provide the backup while we take that tank down.  

LS: When you say repaint do you mean the interior?

DH: Yes, we can always paint the outside.  (Laughs) That's not the issue.

LS: Do you envision other services coming here?

DH: Not really.  I don't see any need for other services.  We will probably have to do something with the Village office again at some point.  But I don't foresee any increase in staff.

LS: No police department?

DH: No police department.  If we were to do something like that, then we will most certainly need to contract with the sheriff or with Cayuga Heights police.  That's one of the reasons we've been able to lower the tax rate is because instead of developing our own large construction enterprise, or our own police department or whatever, we outsourced it.  By doing that, you pay for what you need.  You don't pay for large staff and overhead.

LS: What haven't I asked you that voters would like to know about your campaign?

DH: Well, it's my way of giving back to society.  It's been very, very good to Marion and me.


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