Archive: News

Francis "Bud" Shattuck has lived in Lansing for 11 years and has been involved in Town government for much of that time. He is the only incumbent running for the two open Town Board seats this year. He has a knack for tracking all the details while still seeing the "big picture."  Currently he is a serving Board Member as well as Deputy Supervisor.

Click here to view a comparison chart of all Town Board candidates.

We caught up with him this week renovating a Drake Road shop that will become Anticipation Antiques, soon to become an avocation for the Workforce New york Development Specialist.

Bud Shattuck: This will be my fourth election, and I don't believe I've ever said that I was the best candidate. As a matter of fact from my very first election on, I've stated that there are hundreds of people who would do a great job in this service. The difference may be that I'm willing to serve and willing to put the time in. And this is a really time-intensive position.

LS: How many terms have you served?

BS: This will be my second complete term. I ran and finished third when there were two seats, but one of the seats was also our incumbent Supervisor's, which left that open and I was appointed to that position. The next year, because I was filling someone else's seat, I had to run again, because it was the last year of a two year term.

Then I ran again the next year for a full four year term, which was the last time, and I think if you look up the records there were two seats open and four people running. I think I was the only one who got over 50% of the vote, I think I got 70-some percent.

So it makes me run a lot, it gets my name recognized, it forces me to recognize that I'm at the will of the voters, and I don't have a problem with that.

LS: Which committees have you been serving on?

FrancisBS: From day one I've been liaison to the planning board, which, again, is part of where that time-intensive part comes from. The Planning Board meets every other week, twice a month, and really looks at all the regulations in the town. We've redone zoning twice in the six years I've been on it. We're just getting ready to finish the comprehensive plan. We've redone the subdivision regulations. As liaison I give them an idea of what the Board is looking at and how the Board would like to move forward, but I certainly don't make any decisions for them. I just give them the guidance of the Board when they ask for it.

On top of that I chair the Sewer committee, which is an integral part of where we have to go, here in the Town, both for economic and ecological reasons. I've been on a number of other committees, Agriculture and Economic Development, pieces that I still keep a hand in, but aren't as active right now.

LS: What are the top two or three issues facing the town over the next four years and how will you address them?

BS: Well, one of them, of course, is the sewer. As Chair I in a weekly address of that. It will still come down to is it economically feasible when the whole plan is in place. We're in negotiations with the Village and we're hoping that something will come out of that that makes it so we can go forward. None of our finances can come together until we've said "this is what the project is." We don't know what the project is until we know where that route is through the Village.

Once that comes together we can go out and look for other monies to supplement the monies we have, the money from the State and possibly the money that Watchtower said they would give us as part of this project. Though that might be up in the air now, as Watchtower has said they are no longer in need of a sewer system.

But we can go out and get more money and that's the number one financial project, something that will actually have an impact on the voters of that benefit district. I plan on putting a lot more time into the ecological part of it, looking at the water resources as well as the sewer. We just hired a part time environmental planner, Darby Kiley. We'll look at all the environmental issues. We have beautiful gorges, we've got 14 miles of lake front, which is the most of any town on Cayuga Lake, which is the longest of the Finger Lakes. So we have a lot of reasons, not to think it's pristine any more, but to keep it as well as we can.

And we have issues with septics embedded all along the lake front that will have to be addressed, probably by the County Health Department, but we'll be a lead agency at some point.

LS: What are some of the other issues?

BS: A lot of the issues that we have are related to providing services. As a town we don't have the same regulatory statutes that say we have to provide services. So the services that we provide are keeping the roads clear. And we've got the best highway department there is, both in the Summer and in the Winter, upgrading our roads and equipment. We've got a great parks system and a recreation program that we really take pride in from the Town point of view, and we know that the residents take pride in it.

Beyond that the services are infrastructure. We're talking about not just roads, but water and sewer and where they go. Our role as a town is to look and say "what works best and what makes the most sense?" We have a sort of a line of demarcation on 34, 34B to the South. We're looking to, along with the County Comprehensive Plan and our Comprehensive Plan, to have an in-fill in the South part of the Town.

To provide benefits outside of that there has to be a real need. I think in some cases that need has been proven, both with bad water and in cases like this summer and a couple of summers ago -- no water at all. When you have no water, at some point you have to say "what's the best means of doing that and is it financially possible?"

Another thing that we always look at that gets very little play is, what is the best way to take care of our family farms? The farms that are out there and even new farmers who want to come in. Providing them with the right to farm in this community while at the same time realizing that there is some development that's happening. As people want to move into areas and maybe have a misunderstanding about farming being 24 hours instead of being just a dusk to dawn business. Trying to make those things meld together.

We also look at our hamlets. Lansingville and North Lansing and Myers and some of the other small groups of family enclaves. How do we help protect them and make sure they have the things that should be right in terms of what the Town should provide.

LS: How should growth in the town be controlled?

BS: It's not the Town's position to control growth. But we'll only provide infrastructure in certain areas. And I think that where we want to put water and sewer in the South end makes it a good place to continue growth. We want to bring in a lot more moderate housing, and maybe have a couple of areas that are set aside specifically for low to moderate income housing.

When you go North of those lines into the ag land areas... you know that when you buy a place it can be "buyer beware." The Health Department is going to say, "yes you have sufficient water," but the Health Department is not going to tell you your water may be full of iron or sulfur.

And I think that's something that's always a hard thing. If you have e coli in your water that's something completely different. If it's a whole aquifer that's ruined like some areas are on the lake front, then we do need to look at that differently. But wherever we supply water we also need to be able to pump out the sewage that follows it. So when you have that other flow the effluent flow has to come out. My big concern is that if we provide water more and more on the lake, we're going to need to figure out how to have a pump station as many of our other surrounding counties do, where they pump everything back out instead of into a septic system that eventually goes on top of the bedrock back into the lake.

LS: Ideally how should water and sewer be implemented? Realistically how would you implement them?

BS: The sewer district is formed, and that decision was made as part of the group of six. So our sewer district has a boundary that is preset by the group of six, the six municipalities: the City, the Town of Ithaca, the Town of Dryden, Cayuga Heights and the Village and Town of Lansing. When we signed that our border was set for where the sewer can be.

Certainly we won't sewer that area right away, and some of the pieces may never get sewered, certainly not in the next five to ten to twenty years. Water, on the other hand, is on an as needed basis. I would guess that you wouldn't see water out 34B had not NYSEG paid to take it out to Milliken Station, which is now AES.

Once that happened then water became available to a lot more places. The water out there is hard, the aquifers are small, and it makes sense to say that if it's out there and potable water is one of the key ingredients that people need, that we hook up to that.

If you go off of that the problem with providing water is that it provides more growth, which creates more infrastructure, whether that be upkeep of the roads, widening roads or at some point again, the pump-out of the effluent.

North of this area, to try not to say we want that to happen... I think we'll provide it in areas where it is determined it needs to be provided. If it's affordable the Town will do what needs to be done for that. It could be in any direction.

But sewer has a boundary to it and we know where that's going to be. It won't take an act of Congress to change it, but it would take a vote of all five other municipalities along with ours. That is much harder to do, because that would mean that we're growing and in some cases it may mean that it's taking away from some of the business or economic viability of some of the other communities. They may not be as willing to do that.

LS: That effectively protects our farmland in North Lansing, doesn't it?

BS: It does as far as sewer is concerned. And in most cases if you follow the 34/Van Ostrand U, everything inside of that is what we're looking to say really needs to be the same vibrant farmland it is. We provide the largest percentage of any town of agriculture dollars into the County.

LS: I had a chance to fly over North Lansing recently, and I hadn't really realized how big that is.

BS: It's magnificent. And it's great ag land and a beautiful area.

LS: What can or should the town do about services the County provides? For example, road patrol. Is it adequate? If the County were to drop it what approach should the town take?

BS: State law allows the County to drop road patrol completely. State law only says that they have to maintain a jail. Our county, by charter, has elected to have road patrol. The depth of that road patrol is determined by the amount of money they put into the budget. I don't believe they'll ever drop it. I don't know if it will ever get lower than what it is now.

If we grow exponentially, which I don't foresee, then we would do as other communities would do. We would ask for more services and if they said they couldn't afford them my guess is that we would pool our resources with them. Right now we have the second busiest court in the County, right behind the Town of Ithaca.

I don't believe that we're under-served. Crime isn't rampant out here. Young people are respectful in most cases. We have the same amount of mischief from young and old that they do anywhere else. We have a constable. The presence of our constable in Myers Park and around the lake and up around the Town hall and the ball fields has curtailed (crime). The fact that he's out there in whatever hours he wants, he's not on a rotational schedule, really changes how people do things around here, and most of them are aware.

The other part that may be a big plus is that we're about to enter into a contract negotiation with the DEC on Salt Point. As we do that it will be a fenced off area. It will be open during the daytime hours for use, and it will be locked up at night. So there won't be any more vagrant traffic through there. The partying and the people who go there and dump garbage and may be in there for nefarious reasons will stop. I think that's maybe the last big area in the town that we have to worry about.

LS: What changes would you hope to see in the town 10 years ahead, or 20 years ahead?

BS: You're asking for a wish list, because I can't see ten or twenty years ahead. But I would think that part of the in-fill will happen here in the business district, which was defined in the last zoning changes by the Planning Board.

LS: This is the area around the Town Hall?

BS: And all the way down to here. It encompasses the Drake Road section and the Town Hall section, all the way up past the edge of Triphammer, and goes South to Asbury. I think as that area begins to fill with both business and with residential and possibly apartments, my hope is that we'll end up with a design that includes streets and sidewalks, maybe some native species trees. Those are the things I'd like to see.

Growth follows patterns of economy and that's something we don't have a say over.

Though sewer may drive some of that. It may give us enough impetus to make people look at that more.

LS: What would you like to say about your candidacy that I haven't asked about?

BS: I'm always thankful whenever someone votes for me. Most people do not know me personally. They'll either know me by word of mouth or by something they read in the paper, so I'm always thankful that people see the legitimacy of my candidacy and what I do and the work that I do.

I would guess that most of the words out there are reasonable at least. I haven't had anybody calling me in the middle of the night or burning anything into my lawn (smiling). I know I work hard and I try to be as fair as I can and as open as I can. I give more information than I need to and certainly more then they will get in most places.

But mostly I am thankful for the votes that I get and the support that I and the Town Board get.

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