Archive: News

Lansing Fire District Treasurer George Gesslein started a discussion on the 2015 budget Tuesday by recommending a drop in taxes.  Although the tax rate has been on a downward slope in the past handful of years, reserve funds have been growing.  Gesslein noted that the tax base has gone down by a quarter of a percent, but his calculations still show there will be plenty of money for planned future projects.

"Because our reserves are building up to a pretty good size I am suggesting we drop the tax rate to 90 cents," said District Treasurer George Gesslein.  "That is sustainable, at least for the near future.  We have been habitually putting two or three hundred thousand dollars into reserves.  So let's knock it off the tax base."

Sheriff Lansing reported that on 08/26/2014 at about 11:20 PM, deputies responded to Lockerby Hill Road in the Town of Lansing for a second reported armed robbery that day.  Victims alleged that two black males with handguns forced entry into their residence and stole an unknown amount of money.

Victims describe the suspects as wearing black jeans, black sweatshirts, black gloves and black ski masks and that both of them had handguns.  One of the males is described as being approximately 6' 4" tall, stocky build and the other male is described as being 5' 6" tall and skinny.   One of the victims did have minor injuries.

Insomniacs and early risers found themselves without Internet Wednesday as Time Warner Cable scrambled to fix a problem that was triggered by workers during routine maintenance.  Starting around 3am EDT reports began streaming in to the company complaining of outages.  At around 7am the number of reports peaked at nearly 10,000, according to the monitoring site downdetector.com.  In Lansing service was restored around 7:30am.

"At 4:30am ET this morning during our routine network maintenance, an issue with our Internet backbone created disruption with our Internet and On Demand services," a statement from the company said. "As of 6:00am ET services were largely restored as updates continue to bring all customers back online."

Lansing and Dryden residents came to the Freeville Fire Station Tuesday to learn about a proposed gas pipeline that would bring natural gas to customers from Freeville, along West Dryden and Farrell Roads to the Warren Road area of Lansing.  The pipe would span seven miles, mostly in Dryden, to enhance the gas delivery system that is near capacity for the Ithaca area.  New York State Electric & Gas (NYSEG) Public Affairs Manager Clayton Ellis says that the pipe will connect specific customers and enhance an existing system.

"It's to serve customers along the route where the new pipeline will be," he says.  "It's to serve some of the proposed development, and some of the development is already happening in Lansing.  It will also help reinforce our entire Ithaca area gas system."

The Legislature's Government Operations Committee is recommending that the County Legislature take a firm stand on the Net Neutrality issue, urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to "establish a strong set of rules that provide for a neutral Internet."

The FCC is currently taking public comment on proposed rules that could create exclusive Internet 'fast lanes' that would allow for a tiered Internet and provide telecommunication companies the ability to control the market for Internet bandwidth.

State agencies spent more than $316 million on overtime in the first six months of 2014, a jump of $22 million over the same period in 2013, New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli announced today.  State employees worked more than 7.8 million overtime hours, up 7.6 percent over the same period in 2013.

“This troubling trend could again result in a record-breaking year of overtime hours and overtime pay,” DiNapoli said. “Our state agencies need to examine their practices, get to the root of what is driving high overtime and better manage these costs.”

Martha Robertson received the endorsement of Senior Votes Count Monday in her campaign to unseat Congressman Tom Reed in New York's 23rd Congressional District. The endorsement was presented by Sha Na Na's Jon Bauman, aka 'Bowzer.'

"I am proud to receive this endorsement from Senior Votes Count. They understand that current and future retirees need an independent leader in Washington who will fight for Social Security and Medicare. These are earned benefits that seniors have paid into their entire working lives – and I can guarantee that if you send me to Washington, I will oppose any efforts to cut benefits or raise the Social Security retirement age."

Tom Reed met with student-athletes from Keuka College Thursday to have a conversation about something very close to Reed: preventing sexual assault. Keuka College President Jorge Diaz-Herrera, Ph.D. and Reed watched Keuka’s fall sports teams practice on the campus’ Jephson Community Athletic Complex before about 100 student-athletes, Resident Assistants and student mentors gathered with Reed for a discussion of sexual assault awareness and prevention.

“Advocating against sexual assault needs to be everyone’s priority, it’s all of our job to stand up for what’s right,” Reed said. “On college campuses, where one in five women will be assaulted, we can’t underestimate the influence students have on the campus culture. The more students who use their voice to increase awareness and talk about sexual assault prevention, the safer all campuses will be.”

Deborah Griffith Palermo Appointed County Personnel Commissioner
Deborah Griffith Palermo, SPHR, has been appointed Tompkins County Commissioner of Personnel, following a national search.  County Administrator Joe Mareane’s appointment of Ms. Palermo was confirmed by the Tompkins County Legislature by unanimous vote (Legislature Kathy Luz Herrera was excused).  The appointment is for an initial six-year term, as required under the provisions of New York State law.

Ms. Palermo brings to this key County leadership position 28 years of high-level professional experience in Human Resources administration in both public and private sectors.  She most recently served as Vice President of Human Resources at Monro Muffler Brake, Inc., headquartered in Rochester, NY— an $800 million publicly traded chain of 937 auto care stores with over 5,000 employees throughout the United States, where she was responsible for all aspects of human resources and employee relations.

After months of consideration the Watkins Glen Village Board voted 3-0 Monday in opposition to a gas storage facility proposed by Texas-based Crestwood Midstream near Seneca Lake. Board members expressed concerns about negative economic impacts the facility would have on tourism and increased truck traffic.  In the wake of major protests against the project, including one only a few hours earlier the Board concluded that the community is opposed to the project.

"We applaud the Watkins Glen Village Board for courageously taking a stand against Crestwood's dangerous and reckless proposal to turn our precious homes and Finger Lakes economy into an unsafe heavy industrial zone," said Gas Free Seneca co-founder Yvonne Taylor. "Residents, winery owners, other local businesses, health experts and many towns including Geneva and now Watkins Glen have overwhelmingly united in telling Crestwood that they are not welcome here."

After a storm that left 3,508 Town of Lansing and 626 Village of Lansing NYSEG customers in the dark last month,  Highway Superintendent Jack French told the Town Board that Lansing was not prepared for disasters, and was lucky that the absence of a disaster preparedness plan did not result in more property damage, or in injuries or death.  French said that a power outage at the Highway Department meant that gasoline for emergency vehicles including fire and EMT vehicles could not be pumped, electric doors could not be operated, Highway Department radios were ineffective for eight to ten hours.  Wednesday the Board approved the purchase of a generator and four hand-held emergency radios Wednesday.

"The generator will kick on automatically as soon as the electric service goes out," French says.  "The natural gas will kick the generator on automatically within ten seconds of the electric going out.  It allows us to keep pumping gas and to get our doors open."

You would think that fixing chronically flooding areas would be simple: hire an engineer to come up with a plan and implement it.  But Highway Department officials met resistance from residents this week, even to the extreme of Deputy Sheriffs appearing at Lansing Highway Superintendent Jack French's and Deputy Superintendent Charlie Purcell's homes to arrest them for trespassing on a property in the Autumn Ridge neighborhood.  Email sent to French by homeowners revealed a contentious neighborhood, half of whom want flood mitigation, and the other half opposing it.

"They don't have water in their basement and they don't care about their neighbors," French told the Board.  "One complained his trees wouldn't get water in his back yard.  He sent legal notice by UPS that if his trees die and one falls on his house he will sue the Town.  Another woman sent the Sheriff to my house and my deputy's house to have us and everybody else who was there that night arrested for walking on her property."