Lansing Post Office box holders may only have one more week to wait before they can pick up their mail at the East Shore Drive Lansing Plaza post office. Ithaca Postmaster William Hrynko now estimates the Lansing branch will be ready to reopen around next Friday (January 9th).
Lansing certainly went through many changes in 2008. New Town Supervisor Scott Pinney immediately set out to keep promises he made during his campaign. New School Superintendent Stephen Grimm also made his mark, getting a difficult budget passed even though it meant painful cuts, plus crafting two capital projects that will not cost taxpayers even an additional dollar. And the library got its charter.
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Lansing saw a number of 'firsts' in 2008. In his first year Town Supervisor Scott Pinney immediately set out to keep promises he made during his campaign. New School Superintendent Stephen Grimm also made his mark in his first year, getting a difficult budget passed even though it meant painful cuts, plus crafting two capital projects that will not cost taxpayers even an additional dollar. And this was the first year Lansing had an official public library.
New sewer in Lansing had its ups and downs. The one active sewer project on Warren Road was going great guns until it got to the State Comptroller's office, where it got mired in some bureaucrat's in-box. This was largely because of the high cost to businesses in the new sewer district, despite the fact that everyone in the district wanted the sewer, is willing to pay the cost, the project has County support, and some in the new district had begged the Town to expedite the project.
Editor's Note: Amahl And The night Visitors will be performed this
Sunday. Although this is a retrospective issue, the timing of
the production means that this is the one bit of new news this week!
Opera in Lansing? To some that might be as miraculous as the marvelous events in the play. But Musical Director Doreen Alsen says it was simply a matter of finding the right child to play Amahl, the crippled boy whose story 'Amahl and the Night Visitor' tells.
"It's always been in the back of my mind that we have the talent here in Lansing to do opera," she says. "We've been held back by the fact that we couldn't find a young person musical and mature enough to play the part of Amahl, the crippled boy. Mr. Menotti's will is quite explicit that he does not want a small grownup to play Amahl. We have a young girl, Catherine Miller, who is doing a fabulous job with it. It's because we found Catherine that we were finally able to say this is the year."
January 2, 2008 was Scott Pinney's second day in office as Lansing Town Supervisor. In what is typically an organizational meeting that day he brought an agenda of items he hoped would shake up the Town. Like James Bond and his martinis, Pinney likes his town shaken, not stirred. But Lansing has been both this year, and Pinney says his conservative fiscal approach and drive to make Lansing more business friendly will make town government better.
As Lansing residents get their property tax bills one thing will be obviously better. In response to an inexplicable explosion in county assessments, the Town tightened it's already snug belt this year. Instead of the typical 3% or so rise in the tax rate, Pinney and the Town Board brought the 2009 tax rate in at minus 2%.
After years of tumult, it finally looked as if the Lansing Central School District might get its act together. With budget problems worse than anyone imagined, buildings falling apart, and a constituency that had lost its trust in the district's fiscal handling, Stephen Grimm had a lot on his plate from his first day as Lansing School Superintendent in his dingy little district office last January.
A year later, Grimm has some impressive achievements under his belt. His efforts to get the community involved in the tough decisions that had to be made bore fruit as he got his first budget passed, despite more than a million dollars of cuts that could well turn out to be only the first round. He found money to build a new district office on a shoestring budget, moving from a dingy, unhealthy, ramshackle old restaurant building to professional looking, spacious offices in the elementary school.
The Village of Lansing seems to chug along, getting the job done at low cost to its taxpayers. This year taxes were lower now that the Triphammer Road project is finished. Trustees and the Planning Board have been working on smaller projects, including one on Dart Drive that is in the planning phase.
With a diverse population, many of whom are renters, the Village has struggled with the best way to communicate. Village officials have embraced the Internet, switching from a paper newsletter to an electronic one, using an e-mailing list, and a month and a half ago they launched the Village of Lansing Facebook page.
If you missed the reopening of the Rogues Harbor Inn ballroom in December or the CDC Auction and Dance in October you missed the Lansing 'It' parties of the season. One celebrated Lansing's past, and the other Lansing's future.
The Corporate Development Committee had just purchased $60,000 of technology equipment for the Lansing schools when it turned around and hosted its 12th annual auction. They raised another $24,000.
Lansing Post Office box holders may only have one more week to wait before they can pick up their mail at the East Shore Drive Lansing Plaza post office. Ithaca Postmaster William Hrynko now estimates the Lansing branch will be ready to reopen around next Friday (January 9th).
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