Archive: News

With chants of 'we're gonna beat back that frack attack' about 65 protesters marched on the Cayuga Power Plant Saturday, objecting to a proposed plan to convert the plant from coal to natural gas.  Protesters claimed the coal powered plant is polluting Cayuga Lake, and objected to the conversion plan they said would use gas mined by hydrofracking.

"When we fight to permanently retire this facility and shut it down we fight for our friends and families and neighbors in Pennsylvania who spend each day in fear with their water poisoned, their children sick, and their farms scarred with frack wells," said Finger Lakes Action Network's Kat Stevens.

In the wake of Albany's failure last week to permit the Town of Lansing to hold an early sewer vote, Lansing Supervisor Kathy Miller is trying to find a legal way to hold some kind of straw poll before spending more money on the project.  While the board has voted to hire an engineering firm to conduct environmental review of the project, it failed to set a public hearing required to go forward with that process.

"If we voted on the SEQR (State Environmental Quality Review) in the next meeting I think it would be two for, two against, and one I'm not sure," Miller said.  "So I don't know what would happen."

Rep. Tom Reed this week joined colleagues on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources to begin exploring federal welfare programs and ways to improve efficiency with the purpose of helping move the working poor from poverty to self sufficiency.

“There are over eighty federal programs spread across more than a dozen federal agencies dealing with low-income populations,” Rep. Reed said. “Many of them do not provide participants with skills they need to find employment, support a family and gain self sufficiency.”

Some welfare programs, for example, provide assistance for indefinite periods of time, without a review process for individuals to evaluate a basis for ongoing help.

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli Thursday announced support from officials from across the state for his new Fiscal Stress Monitoring System. Last Tuesday, DiNapoli announced fiscal stress scores for more than 1,000 local communities, based on 23 fiscal and environmental indicators. Two dozen communities, including eight counties, three cities and 13 towns, were designated as fiscally stressed under his system.

“Local communities are facing a new fiscal reality that is forcing some to walk a fine line to stay in the black,” DiNapoli said. “By presenting a realistic picture of the economic and budgetary challenges facing our local communities, corrective actions on the local or state level can be taken to avoid a fiscal crisis. My system also provides the public an objective analysis they can use to participate in local financial decision-making.

Hanshaw Road Reconstruction Contract Awarded
The Legislature awarded the construction contract for the long-planned Hanshaw Road reconstruction project in the Town of Ithaca.  The Legislature awarded the contract to Suit-Kote Corporation of Cortland for its base bid of just under $3.5 million, pending approval by the New York State Department of Transportation.  Suit-Kote’s bid, the lowest of nine bids submitted, is about $1.2 million less than the project budget.  The project, first approved by the Legislature in 2005, will reconstruct 1.5 miles of Hanshaw Road, between Pleasant Grove Road and Sapsucker Woods Road.  The project includes new drainage facilities and a paved walkway on the north side of the road that will connect to sidewalks at Community Corners.

The final vote was unanimous (Legislator Leslyn McBean-Clairborne was excused), but considerable discussion preceded that vote concerning the matter of how the issue of colored shoulders would be handled as part of the project.  Inclusion of colored shoulders had been separated out as an alternate, but bids for that work came in at over $1 million because of State specifications, greatly exceeding the engineer’s estimate of about $156,000, and award of the alternate was not recommended by the Highway Division.  Language added by the Facilities and Infrastructure Committee would have directed the Highway Director and staff to work with the low bidder to investigate whether colored asphalt shoulders could be achieved at a more reasonable cost.  After much debate, an amendment, advanced by Legislator Jim Dennis, to strike that language was approved by an 8-6 margin, with Legislators Dennis, Frank Proto, Brian Robison, Nate Shinagawa, Mike Lane, Pat Pryor, Dave McKenna, and F&I Chair Peter Stein voting to remove the language.

Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton (D/WF-125) announced that her bill to aid hospice facilities across the state passed in the Assembly Tuesday and will go to the Governor for signature.

“This bill,” Lifton said, “will codify the successful hospice residence pilot program the state has been running for ten years. With a decade’s worth of data, we know this program works, and this bill permanently allows hospice facilities to have up to sixteen beds with 25% allocated for dual-certification as both resident and inpatient hospice beds. With a burgeoning aging population in New York State, giving hospice institutions greater flexibility is of the utmost importance to expand the quality and variety of care available to those in great need.”

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Two dozen communities in New York have been designated as fiscally stressed under State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli’s new Fiscal Stress Monitoring System. The list includes eight counties, three cities and 13 towns.

“The challenges facing local governments have reached a critical point and these fiscal stress scores should serve as a wakeup call,” said DiNapoli. “Taxpayers, local officials and state policymakers need an objective analysis to help them understand the economic and budgetary challenges facing our communities. My office’s monitoring system was designed to do just that. We have identified local governments from every region of this state that are facing some level of fiscal stress and presented them with a realistic picture of their financial condition.

Rep. Tom Reed is leading a bipartisan letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calling on the Senate to act to avoid the July 1st student loan interest rate hike. Without action from the Senate, millions of students can expect their loan interest rate to double to 6.8 percent. More than 50 Members of Congress are joining Reed in pressing the Senate to act immediately.

“Our letter is a call to action for the Senate to pass legislation to lower student loan interest rates long term and avoid the July 1st interest rate spike,” Reed said. “The House being the only body to pass a bipartisan proposal, Republican and Democrat Members in the House are asking the Senate to move to pass legislation immediately so that we can work together to prevent the July 1st rate spike. Now is the time to take care of our students and lower their loan rates. Now is the time for the Senate to act.”

Village officials broke ground for a $1,079,644 Village hall Monday.  The 2,662 square foot office building will include offices for the Village Clerk, Code Enforcement, and DPW, and will include a public meeting room and an office for the Mayor and Planning Board Chairman.  Officials say about a quarter of the cost is for moving existing utilities.

"Today is a great day," said mayor Donald Hartill.  "We actually put a shovel in the ground to start the construction of a new Village office.  We've been trying to do this for a long time.  We started the process close to three years ago."

A special Lansing Town Board meeting, called on Friday, was held Saturday to decide whether to ask the New York State Legislature whether the town may hold an early vote on sewer.  An official early vote does not actually create a sewer district, but Supervisor Kathy Miller said an official vote would allow property owners to decide whether or not they want sewer, and would enable specific institutions and businesses to plan how to replace failing septic systems and package plants.  Councilman Robert Cree said that holding a last-minute meeting would anger townspeople, especially those who do not favor the $10.8 million sewer project.

"This project has become quite divisive," Cree said.  "We've heard from many people coming to these meetings saying it feels like you're shoving this down our throats.  I suspect people will say the Town's trying to pull a fast one because this meeting was called yesterday.  I don't disagree with what we're trying to do here.  I'm concerned with the timing."

Over the past three or four weeks it has become evident that there is a major split among Lansing Town Board members on sewer.  As Councilman Robert Cree has said, the board was in agreement conceptually when the Sewer Committee was considering a 12A district in which only the people who receive sewer pay for it.  But when that proved too expensive and the committee turned to a 12C approach in which the whole town becomes a district with a smaller benefit area contained within it, some board members' minds changed.  The split seems to be along party lines with Republicans Ed LaVigne and Robert Cree opposing the current project, Democrats Kathy Miller and Katrina Binkewicz favoring it, with Democrat Ruth Hopkins a swing vote.

The $10.8 million project includes a stand-alone treatment plant on Portland point and an initial benefit area that spans from the Lansing schools (with a spur down Myers Road to Ladoga Park), across the 'town center' area to the juvenile detention facilities on Auburn Road.  Those who are in the initial benefit area (Tier 1) would pay 60% of the capital debt incurred to construct the system, plus an Operations & Maintenance fee and a fee based upon usage.  Residents within the town-wide district (Tier 2), which only excludes the Village of Lansing which has its own sewer, would pay an ad velorum tax of $23 per 100,000 worth of property valuation.

At Wednesday's board meeting Lansing resident Roger Hagin, who opposes the project on the grounds that Tier 2 taxpayers would get no benefit and the plan would give too much power over private property to the Town and Planning boards, asked each board member to state their position on sewer.  Here is what each had to say:

Wednesday's board meeting was contentious and nasty at times.  But the thing most people agreed on is that there should be a town-wide sewer vote.  The Town was waiting Wednesday to hear whether State legislators would allow an early sewer vote, the only legal way a vote can be held before the process of environmental studies and State approvals is completed.  Supervisor Kathy Miller vowed there would be some kind of vote or straw poll even if the State doesn't approve an official September vote.  She said that residents who want sewer want a vote, and it was clear Wednesday that those who oppose it agree there should be a town-wide vote.

"It's precisely because I believe the proposal will fail that I think everybody who is eligible to vote should vote on the proposal," said Marcy Rosenkrantz.  "I've lived here in Lansing for 19 years.  Every once in a while the idea of the sewer comes back to haunt us.  If we vote this down now we will have all the more reason never to have to see this thing again.  But let's vote.  I don't want five people to make this decision for me."