This week's Dryden Courier leads with a look at the prospects for a new Town Hall, which Town Supervisor Steve Trumbull says will probably cost around $2 million, up from estimates long long ago when they started saving of $300,000. (Fortunately, reserves have kept up.) The old Town Hall's offices are crammed, and it has only one meeting space, creating conflicts with the court's schedule.
Trumbull talks more about recreation possibilities on the site next to the old Town Hall:
He also said all the adjacent land is going to eventually give the town the opportunity to create more recreational space: more fields for both kids and adults to use.
"You know, we don't actually have a lot of land for use for children and adults," he said. "We've got ball fields over at the high school but everybody wants to use them. I'd like to see more soccer fields, maybe a lacrosse field, and there's room for that right on this new property."
The Courier also looks at the Dryden town budget, shouting in the headline that the tax rate is falling 2.8 percent while noting in the text that the levy is increasing about 5 percent. The article notes $25,000 in spending on community centers:
"We had all this money and it was just sitting there," Trumbull said. "At some point you've got to something with it. It's just been sitting there because everyone was doing business as usual, and never took a chance. I think once in a while you've got to take a chance."
The editorial picks up on the cover stories and gives the Town Board a "pat on the back" for their budget and Town Hall work, which I guess means they didn't read the letter of mine they published two weeks ago. (At least they're in better touch with fiscal reality than their sister paper the Ithaca Times, which demonstrated their need for fact-checkers by publishing a cover story claiming that the county has a 0% tax rate increase but still an increase in the levy, while the county has a 0% tax levy increase and a decrease in the rate. Ouch.)
Elsewhere in the paper, they explore the added costs that No Child Left Behind will leave behind with area school districts, and note that Dryden National Junior Honor Society students will be going to a national conference in Washington, DC in June.
In sports, columnist Paul Gangorossa notes that Dryden High School hosted a lacrosse tournament despite not having a lacrosse program, and thinks it would be a good addition. There's also a mysterious entry on the Dryden Purple Lions falling to Corning East (where I went to high school) in the Class B finals 25-11, 22-25, 25-1. It just doesn't specify which sport, though it's clearly girls playing.
Posted by simon at November 14, 2005 6:15 PM in Dryden Courier , public finance , recreation , schools (Dryden)