This morning's Journal follows up yesterday's articles on reasons to buy land for a new Town Hall with a report that the Town Board voted last night to approve it. I'll have more detail on the conversation about this issue over the weekend (I talked too much!), but at least some of the conversation about possible recreation uses took place outside of executive session for the first time at a Town Board meeting.
County Legislator Martha Robertson is quoted in an article on the county's new prescription discount card. Robertson, the chair of the county Health and Human Services committee, was handing out cards and information at the Town Board meeting last night. The card is aimed at people who don't have prescription drug coverage, but the card may also be of use to a broader group:
"Medicare recipients should bring both the drug discount card and their Medicare card to the pharmacy and ask which discount is greater for the drugs they need to purchase," said Robertson.
The Caremark cards do not include the name of the card holder on them and are not specific to a certain individual, so cards can be shared between family members, friends or groups of people to purchase discount medications. They can also be used out of the Tompkins County area and even outside of New York state....
It is expected that Tompkins County consumers using the discount card in local pharmacies will save an average of 20 percent on drugs and those using the card with mail-order medications will receive an average discount of 50 percent on a three-month supply of drugs.
There's a profile of Red Cross volunteer Sis Johnson. They don't mention it in the article, but Sis also does a lot of volunteer work at the Varna Community Center.
The Journal follows up its articles (1 2 3 4) on Ithaca City School District special education with an editorial suggesting that "The district should continue to act decisively in its approach to this difficult process of special education reform by instituting the recommendations contained in the Hehir report in a timely manner."
There's also a letter from Caroline resident Milton Taam with a suggestion that could have benefits for Dryden, if it's possible:
In my part of rural Tompkins County, broadband Internet access is not available. As a solution, I am now considering a private radio link between us and a repeater on Connecticut Hill, a distance of 20 miles. Because of the considerable distance, this will involve a 100-foot antenna tower on my property.
A better solution would be for Tompkins County to allow its new emergency radio towers to be used for Internet access.
I don't know enough about the configuration of the emergency radio network to know if this is possible, but it's an interesting suggestion, especially since the county towers are being placed for maximum coverage rather than cell phone companies' target of maximum usage.
Posted by simon at January 14, 2005 4:08 AM in Ithaca Journal , health , politics (local) , recreation , schools (Ithaca) , tech , volunteers