Archive: News

Before the Legislature’s Public Safety Committee, Tompkins County Sheriff Ken Lansing and Undersheriff Brian Robison presented the detailed After-Action Report on the Barricading Incident at 127 Hornbrook Road in Danby—a two-and-a-half-day standoff that began the evening of December 30, when Sheriff’s officers attempted to serve a warrant on David Cady and ended the morning of January 2, when officers entered the home after Mr. Cady died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
 
The report, the Undersheriff said, attempts to describe the incident and the response by law enforcement, answer questions that have been raised, and consider how elements of response to the incident can inform strategies and tactics in future situations.

The Town of Lansing enacted a new law Wednesday that will require owners of new homes and older homes that have had work done requiring a building permit to display a label warning emergency responders that the structure has wooden trusses.  The law was passed to conform to a new state law that requires new homes and homes with new additions to be labeled.  

Code/Fire Enforcement Officer & Building Inspector Lynn Day says the law will require that the stickers are properly placed before a Certificate of Occupancy is issued.  In a Town Board working meeting he recommended that the Town provide the stickers to homeowners as part of their building permit.  Day has procures a small supply of the stickers, but says he is waiting until the state determines whether four inch square stickers may be used instead of the currently required six inch stickers.

An unexpected discussion about funding equipment for Lansing's Highway and Parks and Recreation Departments earlier this month has resulted in $240,000 of equipment being funded.  The Lansing Town Board agreed 4-0 Wednesday to authorize spending the money for a large ten-wheeler truck, used for plowing snow, and lawn mowing equipment.  The vote was in response to a flap over the town's non-existant fund balance policy and urgent requests by the two departments.  Supervisor Kathy Miller says a fund balance policy will assign money to department reserves every year and make equipment replacement simpler and automatic.

"We have the money now to do that," Miller says.  "We can say this is what we want to leave in there and whatever is in excess of that amount we can put into reserve funds.  That makes total sense.  This will make the departments happy because we won't have this 'wait and see' attitude.  If they have the money they will know what they can spend."

The recent flap over whether new equipment would be funded to replace a damaged highway department truck and lawn mowing equipment has escalated the issue of whether or not Lansing should have a fund balance policy in place.  What to do with Lansing's fund balance is only the latest of a string of issues that has split the board along political lines for the past six years.

Democrats want a fund balance policy that maintains the unassigned fund balance at levels recommended by consultants and Albany, then puts any left over money into assigned reserve funds to be used later to purchase equipment like snow plows, trucks, park maintenance equipment and so on.  Republicans want to keep the money unassigned so they can be more flexible in addressing needs as they come up and mitigate tax rises by supplimenting the budget and thus reducing the levy on taxpayers.

More than a dozen worried and angry residents of the Autumn Ridge development in the southwest part of the Town of Lansing came to Wednesday's Town Board meeting to find out what the Town has planned to prevent severe flooding that plagued the neighborhood in the past year's extreme weather.  Some demanded that the Town fix the problem, but town officials, while wanting to help to some extent, questioned whether it is legal to spend all taxpayers' money to fix a problem on private property.

"If you had permission to enter property you could enter property," said Town Attorney Guy Krogh.  "That's the right of legal access.  I haven't discussed the extent to which it's legal to utilize everybody's money to benefit a limited part of the population.  With flooding and flood control and flood prevention you do have a lot of authority, but at what point are you leaving something that's a public problem and going to something that's a private problem and using public money on it?"

408,841 New York consumers selected or were automatically re-enrolled in quality, affordable health insurance coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace as of Feb. 22, according to a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  Of the consumers with a Marketplace plan selection, 74 percent (300,498 people) qualified for financial assistance to help with the cost of monthly premiums.

In New York, 130,829 consumers under the age of 35 are signed up for Marketplace coverage (32 percent of all plan selections).  And 120,199 consumers 18 to 34 years of age (29 percent of all plan selections) are signed up for Marketplace coverage.

The Cayuga Lake Watershed Intermunicipal Organization (IO) is teaming up with the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network (Network) and other collaborators to update the Cayuga Lake Watershed Restoration and Protection Plan (RPP).

Hilary Lambert, Steward of the Network, is coordinating the 16-month update process with funding from the New York Department of State and support by the Town of Ithaca. Currently, Lambert and IO members are developing a public participation plan for the watershed’s municipalities, counties and residents. The organization is seeking qualified members for committees to update the watershed plan’s vision and goals, outcomes, and to review and update the RPP sections about the state of the lake.

Governor Andrew Cuomo reached out to New Yorkers with an email two weeks ago to justify his plan to fix the state's 178 failing schools.  If implemented schools defined as 'failing' for three consecutive years would be taken over either by a non-profit, another school district, or a turnaround expert would be put in charge of the school.  The question is, would this initiative, like others that educators view as an onslaught by Albany on New York schools, harm school districts like Lansing's that are not failing?  Cuomo doesn't address the impact on successful schools, but notes that more than 9 out of 10 students statewide in failing schools are minority or poor.

"This is the real scandal in Albany—the alarming fact that state government has stood by and done nothing as generation after generation of students have passed through failing schools. While the education bureaucracy demands more and more money, the reality is school districts with failing schools have statewide seen an average 13.8% increase in funding over the past three years, and New York today spends more per pupil than any other state in the nation—$19,552—nearly double the national average of $10,608 per pupil."

When Business Administrator Mary June King reported on the state of the 2015-16 budget a few weeks ago she included what she characterized as instructional program growth of $290,000 value for net cost increase of $50,000.  After years of cuts Lansing school administrators are advocating that modest program increases be approved.

"The projected budget with these additions is $50,000 more," she said.  "It's really an instructional program growth of $290,000 value that we can get for less than $50,000 because of the reductions, some related to retirement breakage.  That is something we expect to see in the next few years, some retirement breakage planning."

The state's efforts to limit Medicaid spending are showing measurable progress with annual growth at less than 2 percent. Still, state spending on Medicaid is projected to rise by nearly $700 million a year over the next four years and improving the quality of care for Medicaid patients remains a challenge after more than two decades of reform, according to a report released today by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli.

"New York's Medicaid program is undergoing major changes, with ambitious plans ahead that also carry risk," DiNapoli said. "A federal waiver may bring as much as $8 billion in additional aid as an incentive to drive further reforms. However, failure to meet key benchmarks would result in a loss of significant potential federal funding. That could force the state to increase its own spending on the program or rein in Medicaid costs in ways that have been largely avoided in recent years."

Senator Mike Nozzolio, along with members of the Senate Republican Conference today unveiled the new "Grown in New York" multi-part plan to help meet consumers' demands for locally-grown food, support local farmers in their efforts to provide quality, fresh food, and strengthen rural communities.

"From the vineyards around our lakes, to the wheat fields awaiting harvest, to the potato fields in our region's rich muck soil, to our dairy farms and fruit and apple orchards, agriculture is unquestionably the backbone of our economy," said Nozzolio. "Virtually every business, family and individual in our region, directly or indirectly, depends on agriculture, the single largest job producing enterprise in New York State."

Legislature Adopts 2015 Comprehensive Plan
The Tompkins County Legislature adopted the 2015 Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan, representing the first full update of the Plan since it was first adopted by the Legislature eleven years ago.
 
The Plan was adopted by an 8-2 vote, with Legislators Mike Sigler and Dave McKenna voting no, and Legislators Glenn Morey, Leslyn McBean-Clairborne, Kathy Luz Herrera, and Jim Dennis excused.
 
The Plan, as described to Legislators by Planning Commissioner Ed Marx last month, presents a vision for the future of the community based on a set of principles that reflect community values as expressed by the County Legislature.