- By Dan Veaner
- News
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Tom Reynolds spent 29 years as an executive in the areas of business, health care, social services, and education. He lives in Newfield, and has three grown daughters. He worked for Ithaca College for nine years, and lived for three years in Albany. Reynolds has been conducting an aggressive campaign for the Assembly seat currently held by Barbara Lifton, stressing issues that have primarily to do with the budget deficit and jobs. He stopped by the Lansing Star Tuesday to talk about his campaign.
Lansing Star: Why are you running for State Assembly?
Tom Reynolds: Someone's got to do it! I've moaned and groaned about politicians in Albany for years. When they approached me with the chance to run for Assembly my first reaction was, 'I don't need Assemblyman on my tombstone.' This is nothing that I particularly need, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life complaining about the politicians and the bureaucrats. My history is that I don't complain about it -- I do something. So I wanted to get involved.
Lansing Central School District Business Administrator Mary June King delivered some welcome good news to the Board of Education Monday when she reported that state aid will come to about a half million dollars more than planned for when the board developed the $24,377,906 2010-2011 budget last Spring. Budgeting for the schools is something of a guessing game, especially in an environment when the New York State budgets are regularly passed months after the deadline.
At a special session conducted in conjunction with an expanded budget committee review meeting, Legislators by unanimous vote authorized acceptance of a $100,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grant to conduct a wildlife hazard assessment at Ithaca Tompkins Regional Airport. (Legislators Pam Mackesey and Nathan Shinagawa were excused.)
Legislators, acting as an Expanded Budget Committee, tonight heard five program presentations in a second night of 2011 County Budget review. The County Administrator’s tentative budget recommends $74.4 million in local dollar spending, which holds spending nearly steady from 2010 in spite of substantial mandated increases, and uses spending reductions and revenue increases to close a $4.7 million budget gap and meet the Legislature’s 5% tax levy increase goal.
A TCAT bus became a temporary home Thursday morning after emergency officials were forced to evacuate an apartment building at the 300 block of Seneca Street due to a police incident.
Peter Meskill defeated challenger Ken Lansing for Tompkins County Sheriff Democratic primary election Tuesday. The unofficial results (write-ins not included) with all districts reportingwere Meskill 2422, Lansing 2077.
Congressman Michael Arcuri was in Caroline Tuesday to receive an endorsement from the local Sierra Club. The Sierra Club's Iroquois Group Political Chair Dr. Rhea Jezer announced the endorsement to a group of local Democrats and well-wishers on a portion of the Finger Lakes Trail near the Tompkins and Tioga County line.
After someone complained about a fireworks display at a wedding held at Lansing's John Joseph Inn this summer, the town was visited by the New York State Department of Labor. A new state law that came into effect at the beginning of this year requires municipalities that allow fireworks within their borders are now required to issue permits when a qualified application is submitted. 
Fire commissioners approved a tentative $1,290,070 budget for 2011 Tuesday at their regular meeting. Despite a tax base that went down from $1,350,941,973 last year to $1,316,397,592 this year, officials say the tax rate will not change, remaining at 98 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value.