This morning's Ithaca Journal reports that the New York State Legislature has finally passed an education bill, so schools will know their aid levels before they send out tax bills. Dryden will be getting $12.85 million this coming year as opposed to $12.22 million last year, and Ithaca will be getting $19.71 million as opposed to $18.48 million last year. State aid is 52% of Dryden's budget, and 23% of Ithaca's. Unfortunately this article doesn't seem to have made it into the online version of the Journal.
The county budget situation is complicated by the prospective costs for a new jail, which the county administrator has left out of next year's budget forecast, saying that the county can't afford the project now.
Back in Dryden, there's a piece on the Dryden Summer Skies program taking kids out to Cayuga Lake on the "Floating Classroom". The program teaches both information about the lake and skills for collecting new information about the lake.
The Our Towns section today is mostly about Groton, though the Dryden Briefs include the continuing search for a new Conservation Board member and the upcoming 200th anniversary of the Etna Community Baptist Church on September 19th.
On the opinion page, Stanley Marcus of Freeville says that he is "somewhat disappointed in the lack of interest the media have shown in learning more about Sandy Berger's theft of top-secret documents from the national archives."
Finally, there's a piece on the front page of the Journal (but not apparently online) about Congressman Sherwood Boehlert becoming acting chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Boehlert, who chairs the Science Committee and sounds like he'd rather stay there long-term, will be taking over the Intelligence Committee after President Bush named the current chair, Porter Goss, to head the CIA.
Posted by simon at August 11, 2004 8:47 AM in Ithaca Journal , Tompkins County , politics (local) , politics (national) , politics (state) , public finance , recreation , schools (Dryden) , schools (Ithaca)