Archive: News

	The Village of Lansing election is slated for April 28th.  Mayor Donald Hartill , Deputy Mayor Larry Fresinski , and Trustee Lynn Leopold are all running unopposed for another two year term.  The election will be held at the village Office at 2405 N. Triphammer Road, from noon to 9pm.

Lynn Leopold is running for her fifth term as Village of Lansing Trustee.  She began over ten years ago when she was appointed to finish Audrey Kahin's term, and has successfully run for the office since then.  Leoplold was the recycling specialist at the Tompkins County Solid Waste Division, now retired, and is a life-long environmentalist.  She has lived in the Village with her husband, Carl, for 28 years.

Leopold sat down with the Star on Tuesday to talk about the issues she has been involved with and why she is running for a new term on the Board of Trustees.

Lansing Star: What do you think your top achievements have been in your last term?

Lynn Leopold: Since I was last elected I believe my main achievement was getting the Village to adopt its storm water law.  That was five years in the making, really.  Not that we worked on the law itself for five years, but it was getting the Village to the point where we were ready to think about it.  It took a lot of softening up.  It took a lot of strengthening the idea that this is a mandate that we had to do whether we liked it or not.

LS: Part of that was figuring out a way to enforce it.

LL: You have to implement it.  That means enforcement, that means more time for the existing staff to go about their daily routines and add new responsibilities for storm water maintenance, particularly in the areas f construction and development.  Our Zoning/Code Enforcement officer has many, many hats that he has to wear, including storm water management officer.  That was a big achievement.

I guess you could say I've been the Jiminy Cricket of the storm water issue for the Village.  I'm the conscience that keeps kicking away and reminding everybody that we have to do this stuff.

If it is all about the lake I know that it's for a good reason, but there is a lot of feeling on my board about not doing work because there is no money coming in for it.

In the last two years I've continued to represent the Village as the liaison to the Cayuga Lake Watershed Intermunicipal Organization, and the Stormwater Coalition of TOmpkins County.


LS: When you talk to people in the Village do they seem to realize how important the stormwater issue has become?

LL: I don't think so. 

LS: I know this was an interest of yours going in, but did you ever dream it was going to turn into such a big unfunded mandate monster?

LL: No.  I remember going to a training on stormwater phase II -- and I bet it was ten years ago.  I remember looking at that and saying, 'Good grief!  This is huge.  I have no idea how we're going to manage this.'

We applied for and actually won several rounds of grants.  We have yet to see a single penny from any of them going back six or seven years ago.

LS: That's not just the Village, but all the municipalities...

LL: Yes, all the municipalities.

LS: But the mandates continue.

LL: The mandates continue and the frustration level has been mounting.  As we all went into this we couldn't really see all the ramifications of what it meant to us in terms of our owwn municipalities.

LS: What else have you been particularly involved in during the past two years?

LL: The deer program to dome extent, although we don't really have a deer program per se.

LS: You have it on the books...

LL: We have it on the books that we would like to be able to sponsor a bow hunt in the Village if we had the right property-owners collaborating with us.  As it stands now we have sponsored hunts on my property for two years in a row through the Village permits.  It's been very successful, but it doesn't begin to make a dent in the population.

I am also doing my green-thumb, getting my hands dirty, back-breaking work helping a lot with the Village gardens up and down Triphammer Road.  My goal for this year is to make contact with the owners of the various malls and have them adopt the gardens that we planted, because, frankly, I can not take care of them all myself.

I still work on the garden by the Trust Company because it's sort of my baby.  And I take care of the gardens at the Village Office.  It's fun.

LS: That's already a year late.

LL: It is well over a year late.  We could be at risk by not having something on the books that we are supposed to have.  The DEC is auditing local municipalities in spite of all I just said about unfunded mandates.  We have to do this.  We have to tow the line, but it's really tough.  (Mayor Donald Hartill) talks about pushing back a little bit, but legally how are you going to do it?

LS: It has seemed like there has been some movement on unifying the Village Greenway.

LL: Well, there is, but we can only move forward in increments as land gets developed.  We can't just push into undeveloped areas and say we're going to lay in a trail system.  We have theoretical trains on a map so that when a piece of land such as Sundowns Farm comes up for sale as a subdivision we can say this is our vision of how we would like to see a trail system.

But, again, it is expensive to do that.  If we want to put in trails so they can be multi-modal so that people could bicycle on them or go on them in a wheelchair, you have to pave them.  I think the South Hill Recreation Way is a fine example of a multi-modal trail, but it took years to make it.

LS: What are you looking forward to in the next two years?

LL: I'm looking forward to keeping our Village going, dealing with the issues as they come up.  Also, I don't see anybody else on the board willing to take on the stormwater issue.  So I'm going to continue to be Jiminy Cricket.  That's my calling.  It keeps me in my environmental realm, which means a lot to me.

There is the stormwater, and then there is the floating classroom, which is doing really, really well.

I would like to see us get our illicit discharge detection and elimination law on the books.

LS: Why do you want to run again?

LL: We don't have term limits.  I figure if anybody wants to run and do what I do they are welcome to do it.  But nobody has ever stepped forward.  So I'm willing to stay on and I like working with my colleagues.  It's a very congenial group.  We have Julie (Baker) on board now, and she is a really smart, bright, and dedicated worker.  And John is coming back.  That's part of what drives my interest in staying on the boards.  I like my village, and I like my colleagues, and why not?

----
v5i15