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An $82,000 grant for a county study of water and sewer infrastructure may have been thwarted Wednesday when Lansing's Town board failed to vote to support it. With four of five Town Board members saying that the study is a duplication of past efforts by individual municipalities in the county, and a waste of money, the motion to approve of the grant was not even seconded. 

Town and Village officials say that one dissenting municipality will prevent the money from being released by the State.  And it is not all clear that the Village will get onto the bandwagon.

The issue is that some Town and Village of Lansing officials think it is a duplication of work the local municipalities have already done, and therefore a waste of taxpayer dollars.  "I just think it's another 82,245.24 in a grant that's going to take three times that amount of money to (fulfill the purpose)," said Deputy Town Supervisor Connie Wilcox at Wednesday's Town board meeting.

With only Councilman Bud Shattuck supporting the grant, the motion to support it was not seconded at Wednesday's meeting. 

Meanwhile, at Monday's Village Board meeting Trustees decided to postpone their vote.  Mayor Donald Hartill was out of town, but Clerk/Treasurer Jodi Dake read an email he had sent.  "I guess we should go ahead and pass it," Hartill wrote.  "Otherwise we'll be considered bad because we'll have prevented them from getting the grant.  It is still not the best use of the money."


Village Planning Board member Ned Hickey noted that the Village has done a study.  "We did this in the Village," he said.  "If we expanded the sewer system, including Sundowns Farm and the potential (for infrastructure there) -- that was done years ago."

"If we supported it and they got the money, but we didn't believe in it because it's duplication, then it's just $82,000 that's going to useless things during an economic downturn," said Deputy Mayor Larry Fresinski.  "Then where does that put us politically with the other municipalities?"

That seemed to be the question in both board meetings.  With lukewarm support from most officials, many were concerned with being the 'bad guys' in the eyes of the other municipalities in Tompkins County.  But with strong opposition by Village Trustee John O'Neill others preferred to defer the vote until the next meeting when Hartill returns.  "I'm going to say no, O'Neill said.  "You can say yes.  I am dissenting."


Duplication of past work and wasteful spending were issues for both boards.  Even though the grant does not come from Village, Town, or County tax money, some officials took issue with the idea that it isn't tax money.  Town Supervisor Scott Pinney noted that we all pay state taxes and should be concerned with how that money is spent.

"All the municipalities have data, but they're not sharing it," Dake said Monday.  "If that is the purpose of this to get the different programs together and bring all the information to one central spot, then that makes sense.  But if they're trying to recreate the wheel and do what each municipality has already done, then that's a waste of money."

Shattuck urged the Town Board to take a larger view of the overall community.  "They're going to look at all the water and sewer systems, where they are and what their capacity is," he said.  "(They will) try to make good decisions as to the best places to support where new water and sewer systems ought to be.  It's an integral part of the whole.  We can't be just Lansing all the time.  Part of the time we have to look at what goes on within the whole county."

Shattuck, who chairs the Town Sewer Committee that tired to bring Sewer to Lansing two years ago, said that the Chamber of Commerce and Tompkins County Area Development (TCAD) have been supportive of Lansing in as it has tried to bring infrastructure to the Town.  But Wilcox said that approving of this grant just to be supportive without believing in its value to the community is wrong.

"How much money did we as a town spend trying to get sewer into Lansing?" she said.  "Did we get any help from anybody?  No."

Sewer is a sore point in the Town of Lansing.  When it signed onto the 'Group of Six' (City and Town of Ithaca, the Town of Dryden, Cayuga Heights and the Village and Town of Lansing) municipalities that were to share a sewer processing solution town officials expected to start putting in a sewer within a reasonable amount of time.  The Town had $4.2 million of state bond act money for the project, but as some municipalities stalled on the agreement, and more years went by as Lansing tried to get an acceptable plan together, prices went up and up.  And up.

At the same time the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has refused the Town permission to build its own sewage treatment plant, an option that would bring sewer into the affordable range.  As recently as last December the DEC refused a plan for a standalone plant again, also declining to reimburse the Town for money spent developing the now failed plan that required a costly trunk line to bring town effluent through the Village of Lansing to the shared Cayuga Heights treatment plant.

Town and Village officials both say that if all the municipalities don't sign on the grant money will not be released.  That puts pressure on officials to vote yes, even if they don't think it is a good use of the money.  With the Town of Lansing's opposition the grant may now be moot.

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