Archive: News

At a brief special meeting, the Legislature took the final step to authorize extension of the County’s additional one percent sales tax.  With the Legislature’s action, the one percent tax, in effect since December 1, 1992, is extended through November 30, 2015.

The vote was unanimous, with Legislators Dooley Kiefer, Carol Chock, and Brian Robison excused.

The additional one percent tax represents more than $10 million in County sales tax revenue, affecting the County and its municipalities.

Legislature Approves Human Services Building Expansion
The Legislature approved a modest expansion of the County’s Human Services Building to house the Community Justice Center’s Day Reporting Program, a relocation that will enable the County to vacate the Old Library.  The vote was 13-2, with Legislators Frank Proto and Dave McKenna voting no.

The project will add a 1,600 square-foot one-story bump-out on the southeast corner of the building and reconfigure interior space to accommodate Day Reporting, while also maintaining current functions of the Department of Social Services and preserving a mid-size conference room in the building—the current Livesay Conference Room will be reduced by about 40%..  Cost at this preliminary concept stage is estimated at just over $1.5 million.  As well as amending the County’s five-year capital program to include the project, the Legislature also authorizes contracting with LaBella Associates for architectural and design services, at an expected cost of $186,000.

	New York State is requiring all who receive the  to re-register.  Click Here to go to the online STAR Re-registration Web page.  Or call 1-518-457-2036  The deadline to apply for re-registration is November 30, 2013.

New York State is requiring Basic STAR exemption recipients to re-register this year.  Tompkins County Assessment Director Jay Franklin says that if everyone re-registers, the exemption will save Lansing households approximately $1,300,000 in school taxes in 2014.  He adds that he wants every qualified property owner in Tompkins County to receive their exemption.

"Once I get a list of those people who have yet to apply from the state, they will be contacted numerous times by my office to ensure that everyone who is eligible re-registers with the state," Franklin says.  "I do not want someone to miss out on this savings."

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On Thursday August 8, 2013, Racine-Johnson Aquatic Ecologists’ survey crew found new areas of hydrilla growth in Fall Creek while conducting rake-toss surveys for hydrilla and other aquatic plants. Hydrilla was first found at the entrance to the Stewart Park Pond from Fall Creek (northeast side of Fall Creek), then within the Pond itself.  A short time later, and over the next several days, hydrilla was found growing in other protected areas of the Fall Creek Inlet (near the municipal golf course backwater on the northwest side of Fall Creek). Currently, hydrilla growth in the Fall Creek area is sparse in density, much less than the growth that was observed in early August of 2011 in the Cayuga Inlet.

New Yorkers Against Fracking announced Tuesday that Buffalo, Syracuse and Binghamton residents will welcome President Obama in his visit to those cities with protests to reject his embrace of the gas industry and fracking as a false solution to climate change.  In a June speech, President Obama indicated the country would take 'bold action' to address climate change, but he included the use of natural gas when the science shows that methane leaks undermine its benefits, actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions and exacerbating climate change.

“In the wake of hurricanes Sandy, Irene and Lee causing New York to experience the harshest effects of climate change and costing our state tens of billions of dollars in damage, we need real leadership from President Obama and Governor Cuomo on climate change,” said Alex Beauchamp of Food and Water Watch and New Yorkers Against Fracking.

New York state was able to recover $46 million in overpayments to nursing homes after an audit by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli found the Department of Health’s (DOH) computer system failed to deduct payments some nursing home residents are required to pay for their care, according to a follow-up report issued today by DiNapoli. The new report, however, notes that deficiencies in the computer system still exist.

“Over and over again, my auditors are finding poor oversight of payments and other big problems that have led to tens of millions of dollars of waste in the Medicaid program each year,” DiNapoli said. “While DOH worked with the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General to recover these overpayments, there is much more that needs to happen to prevent the payments from occurring in the first place. Until DOH fully implements my recommendations and puts new controls in place, there is significant risk that overpayments to nursing homes will continue.”

U.S. Congressman Tom Reed was at Cornell Saturday to meet with constituents and hear what they had to say.  Questions were written down beforehand, then sorted.  The four top issues Tompkins County constituents at the meeting were immigration, health care, containing student loan costs, and issues to do with natural gas.  The most questions were directed at immigration reform and a Senate bill that New York's Senator Charles Schumer introduced.  The bill, among other things, would provide a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

"The reality of D.C. and the reality of split government is that we're not going to take the Senate bill and get to the finish line because there are a lot of people, myself included, who think that the legal path to citizenship is something that goes too far and is not right," Reed said.  "What is the solution to the problem?  You have 11 million folks here illegally.  There are a lot of people that are opposed to any type of amnesty, so I think that has to be recognized."

Outraged by neighboring municipalities' renouncing of Lansing in the debate about repowering the Cayuga Power Plant, the Lansing Town Board Wednesday rescinded a pledge of $6,000 that would have helped the Town of Caroline pay for poles needed to provide wireless broadband service to that community.  The board unanimously passed a resolution revoking the pledge after Former Lansing Councilwoman Connie Wilcox urged withdrawing from the Tompkins County Council of Governments and taking back the pledge.

"The fact that the towns of Ithaca, Ulysses, Dryden and Caroline denounced repowering Cayuga publicly was a real stab in the back," Wilcox said.  "The fact that the Tompkins County Legislature also did not try to pass a resolution in favor of repowering shows it's 'all for one and one for all' but not for Lansing."

Although Lansing Town Supervisor Kathy Miller stated last month that the municipal sewer project is dead, residents spoke out at Wednesday's town board meeting exhorting board members to insure it is finished.  A $1.8 million town-wide sewer project was rejected by the board last month.

"To all intents and purposes the sewer initiative is over with," Miller said Wednesday.  "12-A and 12-C are no longer on the table.  Those are the two things that would affect the town.  If some developer comes in here and says they are going to build a sewer at their cost then we have to consider that and we should hear them out.  But as far as a town-wide sewer, that's over with."

We kindly ask you help in recognizing two Lansing heroes that saved a family from drowning this weekend.  On Saturday, our family of five attended the Lansing Harbor Festival activities. Having a foot injury, my fiance stayed behind, while I and our three young children rented a canoe out of Myers Park at about 2:45 pm.

The current however was strong, and the swells were white capping over four feet tall. Before long we were swept away by the wind and the water current and ended up in the middle of the lake, well past the power plant and quite distant from any other boats.  As we drifted, the canoe kept taking in more and more water, finally the boat sank and the four of us were floating, screaming, and blowing our whistles for help.

Dryden resident Joe Wilson showing pages of redacted information in the proposal to repower the Cayuga Power Plant with natural gasThe Tompkins County Environmental Management Council’s Energy Committee sponsored a press conference Monday to protest what they characterized as massive redactions in NYS Public Service Commission (PSC) documents that describe Cayuga Operating Plant repowering proposals.  Elected officials, environmental leaders and community members charged the PSC with blanking out so much information that the public can not possibly understand the impact of plant repowering or transmission line upgrades in order to comment effectively.  Speakers demanded copies of the documents without redactions and an extension to the time allotted for public comment to allow community members to digest the materials before providing opinions.

"I am frustrated and angry by the way the information about gasification of the Cayuga Power Plant and NYSEG's proposed transmission line upgrade has been kept from me and the rest of the public," said Dryden resident Joe Wilson.  "I have looked at the documents submitted by Cayuga Operating Company to the Public Service Commission and found that all of the financial information has been redacted; same for the NYSEG plan - all costs are hidden from public view."

The Legislature’s Public Safety Committee today indicated its support for a proposed capital project to modify the County Public Safety Building to increase jail capacity—a project that could be expected to decrease the County’s inmate board-out costs.

The recommended project, first presented to the Capital Plan Review Committee, would construct a secure covered outdoor year-round recreation area at the jail, then would renovate a little-used existing interior recreation space as dormitory housing to provide seven additional jail beds.  A later optional phase of the project could add seven more beds by converting the existing library into dormitory space.  That phase, however, could not be undertaken unless the Sheriff’s Road Patrol and Civil Division were relocated, something not immediately contemplated.  The $900,000 preliminary cost estimate would include construction of the outdoor rec. area and the initial seven-bed dormitory space, and design of all three phases—simultaneous design of the immediate and potential future renovation plans seen as the most cost-effective way to approach the design process.