Flakes Community Forum

In the aftermath of covering eight high school commencement ceremonies it is somewhat stunning to realize that all of them struck such similar themes. Three of valedictorians (or salutatorians) even quoted the same book: Dr. Suess’s “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” (one of them apparently reading it in its entirety from the podium).

Eerily, at “Suite101.com,” a Web site for writers, in the “psychology” section this book is touted as “a popular graduation gift for students. ‘Oh! The Places You’ll Go’ works whether students are graduating from high school or college or adults are embarking on a new stage of life! It’s about challenges and change.” The page goes on to explain in some detail what the protagonist deals with in the book, which is 48 pages long.

In 1957 Ted Geisel (a.k.a. Dr. Suess) wrote the “The Cat in the Hat” as a unruly remedy to the insipid primers featuring squeaky clean children called Dick and Jane; the books were boring kids so badly that they were dissuading them from reading. Thirty-three years later, instead of needing waking up, Geisel apparently believed that kids needed some assurance. The larger world, once portrayed in the media as stultifyingly conformist and predictable, had, after three decades of counter-cultural tumult, become bafflingly heterogeneous and daunting.

In the four decades since Geisel wrote “The Cat in the Hat” a generation of children have grown up and themselves had children, who are now graduating from high school (and have been doing so for years now). The Boomer kids who took the Cat in the Hat as a role model and had fun with their lives, wreaking havoc in various ways with their parents’ notions of propriety, inherited a society that they, in their vast numbers and consumerist frenzy, had helped to create.

After living through an adolescence and young adulthood during which their mantra was “take chances,” the Boomers have developed a culture, the primary guiding principle of which seems to be “promote safety.”

People moved from cities and suburbs to “ex-urbs,” stating unself-consciously that they were doing so “in order to raise their children in a safe environment.” These small towns probably are safer than the cities. There are drugs in small towns, but not, you know, as many and as hard … most of the time … we think. There aren’t any gangs in small towns; the bullies operate solo or in smaller groups, generally without firearms. There isn’t any violent crime in small towns … except among people who know each other and decide to get even for some reason.

When our staff wades into the bound volumes of these community newspapers (some of which have been around since the 19th century) to do our occasional “This Month in History” features, they often find that the headlines from 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago are alarmingly similar to the ones we put on top of stories the week before. There has been crime, bad behavior (including violence), drugs (especially if you count alcohol) and other hazards in these towns for as long as they have been here.

In fact, it seems obvious that their perceived safety is a function of the slow decline of their economies and the departure of young people for (figuratively) green pastures. Stories from the 1860s not uncommonly had the entire village of Trumansburg (for example) erupting in a post-election riot that was prompted by political ill will lubricated by consumption of hard liquor. By the 1960s that sort of thing just didn’t happen in Finger Lakes small towns. They are safe and sound.

Not a single salutatorian or valedictorian stood behind the podium and quoted the Clash classic:

“This indecision’s bugging me / If you don’t want me, set me free / Exactly whom I’m supposed to be / Don’t you know which clothes even fit me? / Come on and let me know / Should I cool it or should I blow?

“Should I stay or should I go now? / If I go there will be trouble / And if I stay it will be double / So you gotta let me know / Should I stay or should I go?”

This weekend high school seniors will be ceremonially collecting their diplomas, finishing 12 years of primary and secondary school and, for the most part, leaving town. For decades this exodus from one’s hometown has been the usual pattern, so that after decades of this, it has become enshrined in our cultural canon. From Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio” to “That Girl” small-town young folks have been launching themselves into the wider world, leaving behind where they have grown up.

Many parents seem to expect or even take for granted that their children move on. In fact children that go to college and then return to live in their own bedrooms have even been given a derogatory classification: “boomerang babies.” The boomerang phenomenon is a sort of dysfunctional sequel to the earlier pattern of the child going off to college, getting an education, experiencing some of cosmopolitan life and then returning enriched to take over the family business or start their own.

As the percentage of adults in small towns who actually work in the town where live decreases, there are necessarily fewer local businesses for their children to step into. Instead, parents – whether they have lived in a town for generations or only moved there because of the school system and the quiet – increasingly view their place of residence as a sort of cocoon in which to raise their children. Much of their involvement with the community is through participation in their children’s activities at school, mostly sports and theatre.

It seems extraordinary that the residents of towns are perfectly happy to pay $20 to $23 per $1000 of assessed value on their properties to educate their children in the local public school and then essentially send that investment away to be an asset to some other community. On the other hand, the small towns in this region are not losing population; they are becoming home to the children of other school systems who have moved here to pursue their careers. In a certain sense the panoply of public school systems across the country has become a sort of exchange program for each other’s graduates.

This cross-pollination of towns brings new ideas to small communities, which has its up and down side. On the up side, it keeps a community from getting stale, blinkered and entropic. On the down side, if the newcomers are uninterested in the history of their new community, they may simply try to make it more like the community they came from, thus diluting the fairly delightful regional diversity of folkways on this continent. It’s a balancing act that can only keep its footing if the participants are mindful of the phenomenon.

So when you watch those graduates cross the stage, think of them as future emissaries of your way of life, whether they are bringing their store of received ideas somewhere else or plowing them back into the proverbial soil right here at home.

Zoning is on the horizon in several towns in the region that do not have ordinances. Visitors to the region from more densely populated areas, even visiting professional planners, are surprised to find out that there are towns – many of them – in central New York without appreciable land-use regulations. The state motto of New Hampshire is famously “Live Free, or Die,” and yet nearly all towns in that state have zoning. Those that do not have a zoning board, have planning boards.

Zoning is a good thing. It puts down on paper an agreement that sets out the details of what can be done with land and where. The only difference between having zoning and not having zoning, is that without the agreement written down, the agreement is simply a tacit one that exists among people who have a shared history and are (nearly) of one mind about what one should do with one’s property. This kind of shared history is an increasingly rare thing in a community.

Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall,” includes the famous line: “Good fences make good neighbors.” The narrator laments that each spring his neighbor insists on rebuilding the wall between their properties; he doesn’t understand his neighbor’s attachment to the wall, “He moves in darkness as it seems to me.” Frost was born in San Francisco, and grew up there and in the city of Lawrence, Mass., He lived in Beaconsfield, England until moving to Franconia, N.H. in 1915 at age 41.

Zoning ordinances are the documents that explain the purpose of walls. They outline the rules for the height of the walls, for their maintenance, and the materials of which they may be built. Why? Otherwise every wall might lead to an argument between neighbors because they have brought different ideas about walls to the reality of the wall between their parcels.
Developers prefer to build in towns that have zoning for this very reason: they want to know what the rules are. It is a headache for them to guess what the neighbors think is appropriate, build what they think is going to be acceptable, and then get it wrong and have everyone mad at them.

Zoning ordinances are ordinarily put together by committees, often, but not always by planning boards. The personnel of a planning board is stipulated by the state; it must include at least one member of the agriculture community. There are other state regulations regarding zoning; local people cannot simply make up whatever they like. There must be public hearings where the citizenry may weigh in on drafts of the ordinance. And the ordinance must be ratified by the elected town (or village) board in order for it to go into effect.

All of this is state law. But it is all useless if the residents do not pay any attention to the process. You may very well get a zoning ordinance that does not conform to your idea of proper land use if you take no part in the process of making that ordinance. There are legal notices posted in the newspapers and at the town or village offices.

If the town or village government goes the extra yard and sends a press release to the newspaper, then it will be posted near the editorial page. If the town or village government is technological savvy, then they will post information about meetings and hearings it at their Web site. Sadly, the last is a big ‘if’ because while an increasingly large percentage of the public gets their information (about everything) online, small-town governments are lagging behind in using their Web sites as electronic bulletin boards. Some local towns and villages entirely lack Web sites, which is, frankly, inexcusable.

Our rural towns do not need to be over-run by tract housing and strip malls to be negatively affected by development. It doesn’t take much unplanned and ill considered building to break up farmland into something less productive. Zoning will prevent a lot of community strife, if only the community members would get involved.

Late last year the Trumansburg village board approached the Trumansburg Fire Company about instituting third-party billing for ambulance and EMS services. The Trumansburg Fire Company formed the ambulance service over 30 years ago and now provides the volunteers to staff the ambulance from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. seven days a week. A paid ambulance staff provides coverage from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and is funded through taxes. Presently, if you need an ambulance for treatment and transport to the hospital you do not get billed. The introduction of third-party billing will mean that you will. As an active paramedic in the ambulance corps and a resident of the village I have concerns.
I think it is important the community understands that the most active volunteers in our EMS service are dead set against this. Unless you’ve done it, it is hard to explain what drives volunteer EMS people to make the huge commitment we have to serve the community. Suffice it to say that the idea of knowing that the people we serve will now receive a bill for our good will and charity tears away the spirit of why we do it. Will the elderly person that just needs an assist to get back into bed get a bill? Will the family who just lost a loved one that we confirmed dead get a bill? Will the school that we serve as stand-by at sporting events get a bill? Will the person having chest pain or an asthma attack try to ride it out instead of calling the ambulance because they either have no insurance or a high-deductible insurance policy?
As a resident, I have multiple concerns. I understand the point of view that providing this service is becoming increasingly expensive and tapping into insurance policies can help subsidize this. What will most likely happen is that the EMS budget will double within a couple of years after this is implemented, if not sooner. In my opinion, third party billing will be the death knell for the volunteer EMS service. With decreasing numbers of active volunteers this was likely to occur at some point in time, but third-party billing will end it for sure. When this happens, where will the local governments find the funds to support paid 24/7 coverage when the projected income from billing will not even cover the current budget? Increased taxes, that’s where.
I am concerned over the liability my government is exposing itself to. It has become public knowledge and is in the public record that the village will not aggressively pursue the uninsured or underinsured for payment. Will that be the case if the income stream falls short of their projections? I also wonder if the insurance companies are paying attention to this policy. Anyone know what fraud is? As a taxpayer who will have to bail our government out for their mistakes, I am concerned.
My greatest concern is that I don’t think the village has looked at all options. One option would be to operate as they do in Lansing, Newfield, Danby and Enfield where first responders respond to the call in rescue vehicles and treat the patient until Bangs Ambulance arrives to transport. This option would eliminate our entire EMS budget, saving taxpayers hundreds of thousands of tax dollars. If this were only about saving taxes, this would be the most cost effective way to go. There are numerous other options that could be considered as well, including 100 percent tax-supported.
The village approached the fire company as a potential partner in this endeavor. By their own admission the volunteers are needed for this to work. The idea of third-party billing would have been more palatable to the volunteers if it were the public we serve that made the decision on how to fund EMS services. That is why the recommendation from the task force on billing, on which I served, recommended that we seek public approval for this billing, preferably through a referendum.
Recently, we were informed by the village that a referendum on an issue like this is illegal. Therefore, on Wednesday night June 18 at 7 p.m. at the Trumansburg Elementary School there will be a public hearing on the proposed billing. This will be the only opportunity for the citizens in the Village of Trumansburg, the Town of Ulysses, and the portions of the Towns of Covert and Hector that we cover to speak for or against this important proposition.

Norman Hummel
Village of Trumansburg
EMT-Paramedic

By Jamie Saine
With the current housing market Thor Oechsner expected development around Newfield to slow down, but he’s still losing his farmland to new projects.

This year Oechsner, an organic farmer in Newfield, anticipates losing more than 50 acres. Oechsner, who is a full-time farmer and leases his land, said he needs at least 400 acres of farmable land to survivor.

“I would love to buy farmland here,” Oechsner said. “But I also can’t pay the same per acre as someone who’s going to put a house on it. And I have no way to compete with them, because the land for me has to generate enough income to pay its own way.”

Newfield is one of three towns in Tompkins County without zoning laws, said Scott Doyle, a senior planner for Tompkins County. No zoning laws mean there is no municipal regulation as to how land is used. Newfield does, however, have a planning board.

Land leased by farmers in the area is increasingly being sold at higher prices for development projects. While development in areas surrounding the city of Ithaca often means housing, it can includes many things other than agricultural use. Oechsner recently lost a parcel of land to the Town of Newfield, but says the property is going to be used for a community park.

“They outbid me on that one by quite a bit,” he said. “It didn’t feel great, but if they make a park and everyone uses it, how am I going to argue with that one.”

The county planning department rarely looks at development in individual towns accept for large projects and to assess potential health issues, Doyle said.

Oechsner said the important thing is for the Town of Newfield to decide whether it wants to keep with its historical farming history or became a “bedroom” community to Ithaca.

“I think [farms] give the place character,” Oechsner said. “I get compliments on the way the fields look and I think people like to see agriculture going on around them.”

Oechsner, who rents property from 14 different landlords, is losing so much land that he is thinking about applying to a conservation easement program. Conservation easements secure agricultural land and create contracts that would protect the land from development in perpetuity.

“I have more [land] on the chopping block that I know is going to be sold unless I can somehow figure out a way to buy it,” he said.

Occasionally, the selling of land doesn’t work out too poorly for leasing farmers. A piece of Oechsner ’s land was sold to Randy Brown, who built a house on the corner of the field and let Oechsner continue to farm the rest.

“I think that Randy Brown is an excellent model of where some housing development and agriculture can co-exist,” Oechsner said.

But more often than not, the land Oechsner leases is sold to developers for houses or other non-agricultural work. He plans on building a flourmill to make his remaining acres more profitable, but may have to leave Newfield if he loses too much more land.

“There’s nothing more crushing to me than to put all this time, all this heart and soul into a piece of land and then have it get sold,” Oechsner said. “It’s completely demoralizing.”

In most, if not all, of the small towns of the Finger Lakes region, there are fewer businesses than there were 50 years ago. Given the escalating price of fuel it seems more important than ever to change this.

A major factor leading to the decline of small town businesses has been the decrease in the price of fuel and increase in the quality of roads over the last century.

Except for a reversal between 1973 and 1981, the inflation-adjusted price of gasoline decreased steadily between 1935 ($3 per gallon) and 1999 (~$1.40 per gallon). Local highways have become wider and more reliably passable over a similar period, especially since the early 1960s, when New York State increased the size of many state routes, changing the face of many small towns.

In many cases trees were removed from the roadside in order to make room for standardized shoulders and wider lanes. Residences and businesses that formerly had small front yards found their doorways opening directly onto a paved two-lane highway.

Entire buildings were removed as roads were re-routed to go around steep slopes. In Trumansburg a large hotel between Main and Hector streets was razed and the remaining Morse Chain buildings were torn down as Route 96 went around McLallen Hill instead of over it. In Dryden the village is flanked by strip mall development as Route 13 enters and leaves the old commercial hub. In Newfield Route 13 now entirely bypasses the hamlet, leaving it with a convenience store, a hair salon and a bank (which has a drive-through).

Small towns suffered on the production and the consumption end as a consequence of centralization of both industry and retail. Local manufacture of value-added items made from agricultural products went away. Everything was put on a truck (replacing the trains) and hauled to a distance location where the economy of scale depended in part on the inexpensive nature of getting the goods there.

The same thing happened on the consumer end. The stores at the hubs, in our case, Ithaca – first the central city and then Lansing and finally what used to be the Tompkins County fairgrounds along Route 13 – were bigger and over the years less and less likely to be locally owned. Their size and integration with the national economy insured that items would be more diverse and generally less expensive. And they all had loading docks in the back, where the tractor-trailers disgorged their palleted contents over level surfaces onto concrete slabs.

And now gasoline is suddenly more expensive than it has been since 1935 and a large part of the rationale for all this centralization has (rather) suddenly been eliminated. And it doesn’t look like it will be resurrected. What should the response of small towns be?

Start businesses that make products that you need. It’s time to re-develop mills, creameries and slaughterhouses. It’s time to make furniture and (non-art) pottery on a small scale. Fill the downtowns of our villages and hamlets with retail outlets for these products.

Is this sustainable in and of itself? Probably not. How can it be supplemented? Through information technology. The vast majority of the graduates of our local central schools do not stay in their hometowns after they graduate. It has likely been decades since even a simple majority were retained locally, but now even if someone wants to stay there is almost nothing for them to do except take a place in the family business … if one exists and is viable … or start their own business, a daunting idea and often impracticable given the amount of debt accumulated in the course of getting a college education.

We need to remind our local legislators of the importance of getting high-speed Internet service into as much of each county as can be managed. This is important not only to build overtly technology-based businesses like software design, graphic design and business services, but is also quite helpful to ‘old fashioned’ undertakings like creameries and pickle-makers, who need to be able to monitor market information and advertise their wares to a non-local market.

Long-distance transport of goods will not disappear, but we should shift away from an economy primarily based on it and revive the commercial sectors of our small towns.

By a margin of 401 to 295 (57.6 percent approving) voters in the Trumansburg Central school district passed a $22,458,139 budget for 2008-2009. This represents a 4.5 percent budget-to-budget increase over the current year and will raise the tax levy by 5.5 percent.

Voters also approved three other propositions on the ballot. Proposition two passed by 429 to 266 (61 percent approving) giving the district permission to purchase three new school busses.

Proposition three passed by 413 to 256 (61.7 percent approving) and gave the district administration permission to move funds from the vehicle and equipment reserve fund in to the general fund to purchase new computers.

By state law the library must request public funds through the school district. Voters an increase from $70,000 to $82,000 by a margin of 433 to 237 (64.6 percent approving).

Finally, three school board candidates running unopposed were duly elected. Incumbent John White was returned to office with 413 votes. Frank Rossi and Jeff Williams were given seats with 434 and 380 votes, respectively. Art Goodell is leaving the board and Mary Newhart resigned last year. Board of education trustees serve three year terms.

South Seneca Central school district voters have passed a $19,231,360 budget by a margin of 274 to 173. The budget number represents an increase of 2.45 percent to the tax levy and an estimated 1.2 percent increase to the tax rate.

Incumbents Brenda Eastman and Mark Sinkiewicz kept their places on the board of education with 318 and 316 votes, respectively. Village of Ovid Mayor David Terry, Jr defeated Paul Engineri, 316 to 194, for the seat left vacant by the retirement of long-time board member John Nihill.

by Matt Cooper

Lansing voters approved a $22.83 million budget for the 2008-2009 school year at last Tuesday’s election. The district’s budget passed with 613 voting yes and 357 voting no. A proposition to purchase new school buses and vans for the district also passed with 595 voting yes and 338 voting no.

Candidates Glenn Swanson, Glenn Cobb and Richard Thaler were also elected to the school board. All three ran unopposed. Swanson will return to his seat as incumbent while Cobb and Thaler will take Bonita Lindberg and current board president Thomas Keane’s places on the board.

The budget, which comes in at a 3.37 percent increase over last year’s and a 4.74 increase in the tax levy, is a “rollover budget.” It does not include any increases or new items compared to last year’s budget where they could not be avoided.

However, because of a more than $200,000 shortfall in last year’s budget, school officials had to cut more than $1 million from next year’s proposed budget, some of which came from programming and staffing.

The district will lose its director of instruction, technology integration specialist, two receptionists, five teaching aides and one teaching assistant. In addition to the loss of personnel, the athletic department will have to suspend junior varsity football, JV football cheerleading, JV girls soccer and modified cheerleading.

The cuts were necessary to keep the tax levy increase from soaring to around 12 percent.

The budget was prepared by Superintendent Stephen Grimm and the district’s former interim business administrator, David Klem. Klem’s grim budget forecast earlier in the year challenged administrators and staff throughout the entire district to take a hard look at their spending and consider cuts.

Many of the positions that were eliminated had already been vacated by staff. The director of instruction, Deborah Pinchette, left the district at around the same time as former Superintendent Mark Lewis and former Business Administrator Larry Lawrence. Others were simply retiring teachers that were not replaced.

The district has also begun examining some cost-saving measures through a possible energy management contract through Johnson Controls. The contract is a tax-exempt municipal lease that would allow improvements to be made to the school that could be funded through the resultant energy savings. The project would not need to go to public referendum and would pay for itself through the resulting energy savings. If it did not at the end of a 15-year period, Johnson Controls would be required by law to pay for the remainder.

The teacher’s union at Lansing, which normally receives about $24,000 from the district due to contractual obligations, pledged to return that money. Board President Thomas Keane said that money would be used to continue the 5 p.m. bus runs on Monday through Thursday, summer school activities at the middle school and regular field trips for the middle school, high school and elementary school. Late bus runs, summer school activities and field trips were all slated to be cut as cost-saving measures.

In addition to that donation, the Lansing Community Council gave $500 to the principal of each school, telling them they could spend it on whatever they wanted.

by Matt Cooper

Dryden Central School’s proposed 2008-2009 budget passed with 708 voting yes and 339 voting no. Also approved were resolutions for the purchase of new school buses, repairs for the roof of Dryden Elementary and an EXCEL aid project totaling $356,000.

There were four board positions open. Chris Gibbons, Karin LaMotte and newcomer Jennifer Davis were elected to the three-year seats while incumbent Kathy Zahler was elected to the one-year term. The short term is former board member Jeff Bradley’s seat, who resigned earlier this spring.

The $32.05 million budget had a tax levy increase of 0.059 percent despite a budget-to-budget increase of 6.28 percent.