Archive: Opinions

It's exciting to see dreams come true.  Monday's presentation of a possible town center that could start construction in less than two years was something like watching the goddess Athena being born full-blown from the forehead of Zeus.  As inspiring as that can be, the part that people don't see is the hard work that is done by citizens and town officials to make even the possibility of a town center a reality.

This project is far from assured.  The huge question is whether sufficient funding can be obtained to make a sewer affordable.  You can't have development in the kind of density that is envisioned without a sewer.

The last sewer failed because it was too expensive.  Lansing had something like $4.2 million of a state grant for that project.  But it remained too expensive because the DEC insisted that the town share a sewage treatment plant with other municipalities, which would have entailed building an expensive trunk line through the Village of Lansing to get to the Cayuga Heights treatment plant.

This time around, DEC changed it's mind, saying that the town can build its own treatment plant.  At the same time the agency took away the grant money.  The town is on its own to fund the new project.  If the state had allowed the town to build it this way in the first place, a sewer would be in the ground today.

President Obama has been a proponent of WPA-style infrastructure projects, and some federal money has gone to such efforts.  Lansing's town center is a poster child for such projects.  It will create an attractive town center that focuses density of development in a way that would protect agricultural areas, increase the tax base, attract business and jobs to Lansing and the surrounding areas.  I can't imagine a more winning scenario.

The sewer needs a certain number of residential units served to be eligable for better interest rates on loans.  The residential units can't be built without the sewer.  Any of thousands of details could derail the momentum the dream has taken on.  This week I observed the Planning Board, Sewer Committee, and Economic Development Committee in action.  Supervisor Kathy Miller and Councilman Ed LaVigne, and Andy Sciarabba, who serves on both committees, were at all three meetings.

Making the dream happen is like putting together a puzzle.  There is a little leap of faith when you start that all the pieces are in the box so the puzzle will be complete when all the pieces are used.  Lansing doesn't know for sure that those pieces are in the box, but the amount of time, energy, and effort that is going into putting them together is truly impressive.

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