Archive: News

Now that the dramatic Presidential election has drawn to a historic close Lansing voters are likely relieved to not have to worry about voting again for some time.  But that relief is short-lived as the Lansing School and Fire Districts each plan a vote next Monday and Tuesday.  Lansing's school district will ask voters to approve two capital projects Monday and the fire district will be holding its regular annual December election Tuesday.

On Monday voters will be faced with two propositions.  If passed the first will grant permission for the district to spend $410,509 of New York State EXCEL funding alloted to Lansing to purchase a new roof for the elementary school.  That project will actually cost $1,568,000, but with additional state aid and $180,000 of capital reserve fund money the roof will be installed with no additional tax money.

Legislature Comments on Marcellus Shale Drilling Environmental Issues
The Legislature, by unanimous vote of those present, approved comments that will be sent to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), voicing concerns it thinks should be addressed regarding natural gas production from the Marcellus Shale natural gas reserve.  (Legislator Kathy Luz Herrera was absent.) 

The comments come in response to a call for public comment on a preliminary DEC scooping document for a draft environmental impact statement on the horizontal drilling and high volume hydraulic fracturing technique, which uses pressurized injection of water containing chemicals to extract the natural gas from the underground shale. 

Albany – Continuing their efforts to enact State law that would implementthe collection of sales taxes from Native-American owned businesses, State Senator Michael Nozzolio, Assemblyman Gary Finch and Assemblyman Brian Kolb today called on State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to immediately sendSenate bill 8146 to the Governor so the legislation can be signed into law.

Senate bill 8146, which was sponsored by Senator Nozzolio in the State Senate, received overwhelming bi-partisan support when it was adopted by both houses of the State legislature this year.  However, State Assembly Speaker Silver has yet to send Senate bill 8146 to Governor Paterson forhis review and decision on whether to sign the measure into New York Statelaw.

In its second year the Village of Lansing's deer population management program is alive, but limping.  The effectiveness of the program is in jeopardy because acreage within the Village that meets the criterion for a hunt is limited.  Negotiations with Murray Estates, also known as Sundowns Farm, for a bow hunt there broke down for the second year in a row, leaving very few other eligible properties.

With Sundowns out of the picture again this year, the Village obtained only 10 Deer Management Assistance Program (DMAP) tags from the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).  "I don't think it's going to make any difference in the herd if we take out ten deer," says Village Trustee Lynn Leopold.  "I saw 35 on Sundowns.  That's probably a sixth of the total herd in the Village.  It's not less.  Taking out ten right here means that vacuum will be filled very quickly by other animals."

2009 Tompkins County Tax Rate -13.5%
The Tompkins County Legislature tonight adopted a 2009 Tompkins County Budget, concluding ten weeks of deliberations toward the 2009 spending plan.  The budget, nearly unchanged from the tentative budget endorsed earlier by the Legislature, increases the County tax levy by 2.99 percent, meeting  the Legislature’s 3 percent  levy goal, with the countywide average tax rate decreasing by 13.5 percent, to $5.93 per thousand. 

The budget passed by a vote of 11-4, with Legislators Dooley Kiefer, Mike Sigler, Will Burbank and Mike Hattery voting no.  Opponents expressed concern that the surplus fund balance, reduced by about $150,000 from the million-dollar level that retired County Administrator Steve Whicher had recommended, does not provide a sufficient cushion for the County to prepare for stormy economic times ahead.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Representative Michael A. Arcuri (D-Utica) announced today that his office will hold a lottery for tickets to the Inauguration Ceremonies of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president on January 20th, 2009.

“It is an honor to serve in the House of Representatives at this historic moment in our nation’s history and I look forward to sharing this monumental day with my constituents,” Arcuri said.

Why Voters Will Vote To Spend Zero On Two School Capital Projects

On December 8th the Lansing School District is going to ask taxpayers to vote on whether to spend no money.  Two propositions will ask for approval for two distinct capital projects at zero additional cost.  "We have to rebuild trust with the community," says Superintendent Stephen Grimm.  "One of the ways to do that is to build a project that is not going to be an additional tax burden.  The next piece of that is to try to implement a financial plan that maps out our  long term educational and infrastructure needs."

Grimm began working in the district shortly after the failure of a $20 million capital project in 2007.  He decided to take a different approach to addressing failing equipment and infrastructure needs.  The first project is an energy performance contract that will upgrade a variety of equipment and pay for itself with a combination of energy savings and state aid.  The second project uses $410,509 of EXCEL (Expanding Our Children's Education and Learning) funding that was previously reserved for Lansing along with other state aid plus money from an existing capital reserve fund to replace the roof on the elementary school.

Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit, Inc. (TCAT, Inc) announces that starting January 5, 2009 it will provide two trips in the morning and two trips in the afternoon to and from Schuyler County.

The fare structure for the new TCAT Schuyler County service is as follows: Cash Fare - $3.00, 10-Ride Pass - $30.00, Monthly Pass - $90.00.  These fares will also be the same for the other out-of-county service TCAT currently provides to Tioga County.

Residents of Ladoga Park asked the Town Board to go to bat for them Wednesday, to try to get the north railroad crossing to their neighborhood reopened.  The crossing was closed by Norfolk Southern railroad last April, leaving one official entry to the neighborhood, and one access owned by the railroad.  Last month a letter from Fire Chief Scott Purcell surprised residents when it said that the closed crossing does not constitute a hazard.  He went further to suggest obstacles on private properties that make it harder to get emergency equipment in and out.

"We all are very disappointed in the fire department's response," said resident Noel Desch.  "When you have a direct ingress for fire equipment, that's a straight shot.  You don't have to deal with track coming in and out of the park.  You don't have to deal with the salt trains when they block the new signal crossing.  And you don't have to deal with the safety record, which apparently neither Norfolk Southern nor the fire department took into account with respect to the crossing."

The Lansing Post Office doesn't typically offer drive through service, but an elderly driver in an SUV didn't get that memo.  Around 3pm Thursday a Ford F150 plowed through the front window wall, narrowly missing customers lined up at the counter.  Post Office Clerk Steve Funcell says he was waiting on a customer when he heard a loud crash as the SUV flung window panels from the front of the store to the counter, stopping about a yard from where customers were standing.

"I was waiting on a customer," Funcell says.  "I had two customers in line and I was looking down at the keyboard.  All of a sudden there was a loud crash.  I looked up and there was a big Ford F150 4x4 parked in the Post Office lobby."

	Special Update... Ithaca, NY Monday November 24 - Ithaca Postmaster William C. Hrynko says that while the U.S. Postal Service intends to reopen the Lansing Post Office as soon as possible, there is still no word on how long it will take.  "Unfortunately we don't know," he says.   "Mr. Rubenstein had his adjusters and insurance people out there as well as his contractors.  It could be a while." Hrynko said that the intention was to leave the box section open, but with questions about structural integrity of the storefront it was not deemed feasible.  All operations have been moved to the Warren Road Post Office.  "They go to either the info booth or stand in line and we retrieve their mail," he says.  "We have a makeshift box section in the back."

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When the Lansing Town sewer project was killed on July 6, 2007 the word was that the project was dead for good, not just tabled.  Town officials said that they still believed that sewer would be important in Lansing's future, but unless it were affordable it would never happen.  What killed the project was the  New York State of Environmental Conservation (DEC) 's insistance that Lansing and five other municipalities share two sewage treatment plants in Cayuga Heights and the Town of Ithaca.  Getting the Town's effluent to the Cayuga Heights plant forced an expensive and unpopular solution of running a trunk line through the Village of Lansing to join the Town with the plant.

Since then the Town has been sounding out the DEC to see if they would be willing to change the rules of the game.  "The initial reaction was that they would favor a standalone plant," says Lansing Supervisor Scott Pinney.  "To go beyond that the Town has met with the DEC in the last few months to try to get some money back that we spent on the large sewer project"

The County’s Industrial Development Agency (IDA) today gave final approval to a 20-year Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement with Lansing’s AES-Cayuga power generating facility.  The approved agreement culminates five months of negotiation and discussion and backs up the IDA’s initial endorsement two months ago, prior to a public hearing on the proposal.  In two unanimous votes, the agency approved the agreement itself and determined that the financing arrangement would carry no adverse environmental impact.

The agreement, which calls for a valuation and a tax, not a tax abatement, spans the years 2009 to 2028 and is projected to nearly double the total property tax burden for the Lansing coal-fired generating facility during its first five years, from the current value of $3.7 million to an anticipated $6.6 million by 2013, covering county, school and town taxes.