Archive: News

In reading your recent article about the school board budget, I was surprised to see that the business administrator stated that "even if the budget remains at zero taxes will go up for most people, because assessments have continued to go up." That statement perpetuates the myth that assessments affect overall taxes. In fact,  the taxes that people pay in aggregate are determined solely by the taxing body (e.g., the BOE). The assessments affect the distribution of the tax payments, but not the total.

In fact, if the school tax levy stayed the same, all of our assessments could triple overnight, and our school taxes would not rise at all because our assessment values would remain proportionally the same.

The bottom line is that taxpayers need to keep in mind that the total school taxes in the district are determined solely by the BOE and the levy that results from the budget it proposes. If we have a problem with rising school taxes, we need to look at the BOE's decisions, rather than blaming assessment values.

Editor's reply: Larry Driscoll noted that if your tax assessment goes up that your individual taxes go up, not that the overall tax levy goes up. He wasn't trying to put the blame on the tax assessment. He did blame rising costs -- I listed the key ones that he mentioned in the article. You are quite right that if the tax levey remains the same, all things being equal taxes don't go up. Mia culpa - it was the way I worded "This will be a hit to most taxpayers..." not what Mr. Driscoll said. He said that if the levy remains zero for an individual and that individual's assessment goes up, that individual pays more. He was noting that assessments have been going up for most people recently. That's what I get for using "This" instead of "A 6% or higher tax rise..."

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Frank MooreFrank Moore is running for his fourth term as Village of Lansing Trustee.  He and his wife Nancy have lived in the Village for 9 years, and have been in the Ithaca area for more than 40.  They have six grown children.  Moore is a retired Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and still teaches a graduate course in fluid mechanic theory even though he retired from Cornell in 1993.  Soft spoken and deliberate, he has been a Village Trustee for six years, and is running uncontested for another term.  

When living in Ithaca he participated on the planning board, and chair it part of that time.  He was on the city board of zoning appeals for three years, and the Police Commission for three years.  At Cornell he did studies on environmental impact of power plants.  

04/03/2006 -- The controversial Lansing water district debate came to an end Monday night when the polls closed on the Algerine and Lansing Station Roads Water District Extension referendum.  Residents in the proposed district voted 60-20 to bring water from Route 34B down Algerine Road to Lansing Station Road.

The vote ended months of impassioned public debate with Algerine Road residents largely against the water project because their wells are good and they are less able to afford the $592 annual cost.  Lansing Station Road residents were as passionate because the quality of wells on the lakeshore road is uneven, with at least one well testing positive for crypto sporidia.

04/03/2006 - Monday's Lansing Board of Education (BOE) meeting was contentious as board members and administrators tried to come up with a 2006-2007 budget that clearly will not please anybody.  Charged by the BOE to come up with a budget that is only 6% higher than this year's budget Superintendent Mark Lewis and Interim Business Administrator Larry Driscoll presented a new draft to the BOE.

The first draft had cut three or four teaching positions, depending on how you count them.  One of those is that of a retiring Elementary school teacher that will not be refilled, because with a dwindling student population it is not needed to keep class size below 20.  The other three were reinstated in this newest draft, but other positions were slated for cuts.

When Therese Arsenault's science class received a letter from the Board of Education (BOE) asking them to study the Lansing Middle School environment and how the capital improvement project might affect it the class set to work to find out.  The BOE asked three questions:

• What is living in the Middle School woods?
• What kind of soil do you find there?
• What habitat should we preserve?

The Town Board would like to hear from residents interested in serving on the Assessment Review Committee for the scheduled May 9, 2006 session with Tompkins County Assessment. We are in need of 3 individuals who would be able to attend a training scheduled for Tuesday, May 2, 2006 between 9AM-Noon to prepare for their role on the committee. In addition individuals would need to be available on Tuesday, May 9, 2006 between 3-6PM to provide this service. I believe the training is held at the Assessment Department, and the Assessment Hearings are held in the Town Hall Board Room.

John O'NeillJohn O'Neill is running for his second term as Village Trustee.  Affable and approachable, he has lived here for four and a half years with his wife Germaine and their "fourth child," a poodle.  He has two human sons and a step-daughter, all grown.  O'Neill works from a home office for a consulting firm based in Virginia, specializing in arranging technology exchanges between US and foreign transportation engineers.

O'Neill invited the Star to interview him at his home in a neighborhood off of Craft Road.  We sat in a cozy kitchen as he talked about the challenges facing Village and the Trustees.

Last week Superintendent Mark Lewis and Interim Business Administrator Larry Driscoll presented a first draft of the school budget to the Lansing Board of Education (BOE).  The Board had charged them with keeping 2006-2007 budget to 6% above this year's budget.  "The board instructed us to reduce the budget-to-budget increase to 6 percent," says Lewis.  That meant cutting $922,000 from the original budget."

The cuts included two elementary school classroom teaching positions and one special education teaching position, several staff positions and 2 modified sports teams among them.  A fourth teaching position, being vacated by a retiring teacher, will not be filled.  School Board President says, "There was a lot of discussion on the budget but few final decisions."  The BOE sent them back to the drawing board to redraft the budget so it will not impact classroom teaching as directly.  "In preparation for the next meeting we asked Mark and Larry to develop a list of actual items that contribute to the budget to budget increase from '05 to '06," Lindbergh says.

Lansing's School District Starts From Scratch
to Build a New Capital Improvement Project

If all had gone well, voters would be approving the Lansing School District's Capital Project Phase II this Tuesday.  The original referendum would have been April 4th, but the Board of Education chose not to bring the proposal before the public because the chances of the $32-plus million dollar project passing were bleak.  The missing ingredient in the last go-around was the taxpayers, so the District is starting there as they go back to the drawing board.

Last Wednesday (03/29) the first meeting of a dual-committee, citizen-based group gathered at the High School Library to learn about the process that will be used to revive the project with the goal of bringing it before the taxpayers in December of this year.  Facilities and Community Awareness committees will meet and interact between now and mid-summer to bring a new proposal before the Board of Education (BOE) by July.

A few weeks ago (3/03), I wrote a letter here expressing concern and raising questions regarding the ongoing planning for a sewer system to serve parts of the Town. Today (3/22), I attended a meeting of the Sewer Committee at the Town Hall. In addition to the committee members, a representative from the Syracuse DEC office, Steve Eidt, was present. He was invited to clarify DEC policy regarding project funding under the 1996 Bond Act. He made it clear that it was essential for the project to move forward quickly (work contracts signed) or State funding would be jeopardized.

Unfortunately, none of the committee members asked the essential question: why is the DEC insisting on a "regional solution" which is fundamentally flawed? Not only is the current plan far more expensive than a plan which utilizes a Town owned wastewater plant near Portland Point, it also leaves many downhill lakefront areas unserved.

Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Regional Water Engineer Steve Eidt told Lansing Town and Village officials Wednesday that the DEC strongly supports their regional approach to sewer treatment.  Eidt was invited to Wednesday's Town Sewer Committee meeting to clarify the DEC's stand on Lansing sewer issues and Cayuga Lake conservation.  "We're 100% behind the project," he told the committee.  "We fought very hard to get the funding you received from the bond act.  We still strongly support the proposal for a regionalized approach."


As the Town of Lansing moves closer to building its sewer, residents and local officials have raised questions about the particular way it is being planned.  Questions have been raised about the wisdom of pumping effluent  through the Village to the Southern part of Cayuga Lake where the Cayuga Heights Treatment Plant is located.  Residents are concerned, because the current runs from south to north along the eastern shore that includes 14 miles of Lansing lakefront.  Some residents have called for another look at a stand-alone treatment plant in the Town, located as far north as possible.

The plan to build a sewer system in the Town that would pump waste water to the Cayuga Heights Treatment Plant was $4-$6 million more expensive in 1998 than building a stand-alone wastewater treament plant in the Town. The cost difference are almost certainly greater today. The Cayuga Heights Plant was built in about 1952 and has had several upgrades since then. Lansing voters should seek a referundum so that the voters can decide whether the current plan to build a costly sewer connector system connected to an old system is acceptable.