Archive: News

Last year the Tompkins County SPCA created a stir when they announced they would be doubling the dog control fee charged to municipalities.  After much hue and cry they backed off and only raised the fee by 50%, still the largest price rise in the known history of the contract.  This year they said they would be doubling the cost to bring it into line with their expenses for the service, and that has led Town of Lansing officials to look at alternatives for 2009.  "When something doubles in price it's hard to take," says Town Supervisor Scott Pinney.  "Everyone wants to see small increases so you're prepared for it and can budget for those things."

"We're seeing an increase starting in 2008 and hopefully we can get things stabilized in 2009 and move forward in a responsible manner," says TCSPCA Executive Director Abigail Smith.  "The truth of the matter is that the amount of money being paid for the contracted services that we provide a) isn't enough to actually deliver the services and b) have not been increased incrementally over the last decade and a half.  In the last ten to twelve years the Lansing contract increased a sum total of $1200.  Clearly costs have risen and the contracts haven't kept up with that."

Lansing residents began to speak up about the fate of the North log cabin at the Town Board meeting two weeks ago.  The cabin is thought to have been built in 1749 west of the intersection of Colon and Searles Roads in Lansing, well before the Revolutionary War.  "I've been doing research on log cabins since the last board meeting," said Claes Nyberg.  "The more I studied the North cabin history I became aware that the log cabin here in Lansing is one of the oldest in the United States.  I think you really have a national treasure on your hands.  I feel it is your responsibility to do the right thing with it."

Indeed the Hyde Log Cabin in Grand Isle, VT claims to be the oldest log cabin the the United States.  It was built in 1783, a good 34 years after the Lansing cabin is thought to have been built.  The Adsit Log Cabin was built in Willsboro Point near Lake Champlain in 1778.  While older than the Hyde cabin it is still not as old as the North cabin may be.  "That really make you think twice about what you're going to do with it, that's for sure," says Lansing Town Supervisor Scott Pinney.  "When you hear that it's one of the oldest ones that is definitely a factor."

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Representative Michael A. Arcuri (D-Utica) led legislation through the House of Representatives this week to significantly improve the safety of our nation’s highway bridges by strengthening bridge inspection requirements and standards and prioritizing the reconstruction of structurally deficient bridges.

“Local communities need the resources to ensure that our families and friends don’t have to worry about their safety during their morning commute to work, quick trip to the grocery store, or the drive to drop their children off at school,” said Arcuri, a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “We owe it to the American public to do everything possible to ensure the safety of our bridges and highways. This legislation will make the bridges on our national highway system safer.”

Even though Lansing's town sewer project was killed town officials have been trying to recoup some or all of the money spent, and to keep the $4.2 million of state bond act money available for future sewer projects.  But with New York State $6.4 billion in the hole, Lansing's ability to use the money allotted to the town may be in jeopardy.  A week ago last Tuesday Town Supervisor Scott Pinney received a letter from the NY Department of Environmental Concervation (DEC) that effectively said, 'Use it or lose it.'

Town Councilman Bud Shattuck, who chaired the town sewer committee and has been shepherding the Warren Road sewer project to fruition, wants the town to be reimbursed for the engineering and incidental costs garnered by the sewer project.  He alsowants to recoup the money the Village of Lansing spent on the Kline Road bypass.  " We're looking to recoup as much as we can," he says.  "This Warren Road project could not have happened without the Kline Road bypass.  We'll looking to get the money that was expended by the Village of Lansing to pay that off and to recoup some of our engineering costs for all of the work that we did before."

For some time Village of Lansing Trustees have been talking about expanding their campus by removing a 500,000 gallon water tank just above the Village Office, east of Oakcrest Road.  But removing the tank has been delayed by Southern Cayuga Lake (Bolton Point ) Intermunicipal Water Commission plans to paint a 1.5 welded steel tank on Horizon Drive just east of Burdick Hill Road.  Now the Village and Bolton Point are planning to build a new 900,000 gallon tank that may mean the Village Office tank will be removed by next summer.  "This tank will be replaced by a fraction of the new tank," says Mayor Donald Hartill.  "We already have in place most of the infrastructure that we need to be able to do that."

All the water for the Towns of Lansing, Ithaca (not including the city), and Dryden, and Villages of Lansing and Cayuga Heights is pumped from Cayuga Lake to the Burdick Hill tank.  That tank, in turn, feeds 21 other tanks that deliver water to customers throughout the five municipalities.  A pump station on the property pumps water to the Village Circle and Bean Hill tanks in the Town of Lansing, providing the town with its primary water supply.  A pump station attached to the Village Office pumps water from the Burdick Hill tank to the six base tanks and the three million gallon East Hill tank.  Currently the Oakcrest tank and another at the airport are located in the Village of Lansing.

Last month the Route 13 Triphammer Road overpass was hit by a truck, damaging I-beams that are part of the bridge's structure.  Village of Lansing Mayor Donald Hartill said at Monday's village trustee meeting that it may be a year or more before the state repairs it.  "I was in Chicago," Hartill said.  "I got an email the bridge had been hit.  It will be about a year before the state will get around to fixing it.  It will probably involve tearing up the sidewalk, replacing that I-beam, and refurbishing whatever needs to be refurbished."

Hartill says that the truck was piled high with pylons used to make windmills.  "They are off-loaded from ships onto these very elaborate trailers that can lower themselves down so that they just skim the road," Hartill explained.  "Normally they take them up over the ramps.  For some reason this turkey decided he could make it through.  He apparently didn't slow down that much.  The pilot car, which has a whip on it to monitor the height... apparently the whip wasn't tall enough or adjusted properly."

WASHINGTON, D.C. - With uncertainty in the housing market threatening homeowners and families across the country, U.S. Representative Michael A. Arcuri (D-Utica) voted yesterday for a comprehensive, bipartisan response to the mortgage crisis that will help families keep their homes, aid local communities hit by the foreclosure crisis and strengthen financial markets and the economy.

"The mortgage crisis impacts all of us, even if Upstate New York hasn't been hit as hard as other regions - financial uncertainty can spread from bank to bank and we must be diligent to stop this crisis before it affects any more local families," Arcuri said. "I want to praise the President for his work on this critical measure to help local families. The bill we passed yesterday will help homeowners keep their homes and get our economy back on track."

Tuesday was moving day in the first phase of relocating the Lansing Central School District Office from a ramshackle house that was once a bar to a new space in the elementary school.  Superintendent Stephen Grimm and secretary Jodie Rusaw relocated to the new space this week, to be followed by five business office employees in October.  For the past decade the plan was to include new offices in capital projects.  The offices were then cut from projects, or whole projects simply didn't pass.

Grimm says that he was able to succeed where other superintendents have failed because of the timing and the way the project has been budgeted.  Grimm says that dropping enrollment numbers freed up enough classroom space to make the move feasible, and he credits Building and Grounds Supervisor Glenn Fenner for being able to design it and then build it on a shoestring budget.  "It all made sense," Grimm says.  "It wasn't how can we do this -- it was more like how can we not do this?"

In January Lansing Town Supervisor Scott Pinney shocked many with a proposal that would redefine the town Zoning/Planning office.  He proposed to change the job descriptions of key positions there to refocus the department on being more friendly to residents and businesses wanting to build in Lansing, and to align the positions to what he saw as needs for the town.  A major change would be to redefine the Planner position as an Engineering/Planning/Coordinator job.  Last Monday Jeff Overstrom started in the new position.

"I suggested that we restructure that office in January when I started," Pinney says.  "I learned that Jeff had already applied to the town.  Around three of four months into the process we started talking and it seemed like a perfect match."

County to Lease Space for New Voting Machines
The County will lease the former ICS Press building, located on Hanshaw Road in the Town of Dryden, to house the County’s new electronic voting machines.  The Legislature, by unanimous vote, authorized the County to enter into a five-year lease agreement on behalf of the county Board of Elections. (Legislator Will Burbank was absent.)

As well as storage space for the machines, additional space will be available for training Election Commissioners on the new ballot marking devices.  The leased space satisfies the need for secure, dry space for the sensitive electronic devices, which cannot safely be stored in the former county library building, where the County’s old lever-style voting machines are housed.  Two other agencies also will sublease part of the building leased by the County.  The lease will run through January 15, 2013.

Lansing Community LibraryA proposal to allocate $5,000 in contingent funding for the Lansing Community Library failed by a vote of 5-9.  (Legislators Greg Stevenson, Jim Dennis, Mike Hattery, Kathy Luz Herrera, Dooley Kiefer, Pam Mackesey, Martha Robertson, Nathan Shinagawa, and Chair Mike Koplinka-Loehr voted no; Legislator Will Burbank was absent.)

Lansing Legislator Mike Sigler, who proposed the measure to cover unplanned start-up costs related to the library’s transition late last year from a provisional reading room to permanent rural library, called it “an equity issue,” noting that the county’s other four rural libraries had received similar start-up funding at the time that they joined the Finger Lakes Library System.