Living in Dryden

Salamanders south of Dryden

They're slimy, and crawling along the roads, moving at night. They're on the section of Thomas Road in Caroline, not the Dryden portion, but apparently they're also in Dryden along Ringwood Road. IC Professor John Confer is working to make salamander migrations less hazardous, and the Journal also has a piece on the life cycle of these amphibians.

Also along the Caroline-Dryden border, there's a picture of Caroline resident and Dryden business-owner Michael Ludgate, noting that he leads mountain bike trips through the Hammond Hill State Forest.

Briefly in Dryden lists a number of events and opportunities:

• Dryden Seniors will be meeting next Monday, April 10th, at 11:30am at the Dryden Fire Hall (map). They'll have a meatloaf lunch at 12:15 ($5 for members, $6.50 for non-members), a talk on investment strategies for seniors, and a ladies hat parade.

• TC3 will be having an open house Friday, April 7th, from 11:00am to 2:00pm.

• The Dryden Central Schools are looking for candidates for school board. Three 3-year terms are up for election this year, with one of those terms starting May 17th. If you're interested, get a petition from the school offices and collect 32 or more signatures in time to return the petition by 5:00pm on April 17th. The list of qualifications is interesting:

  Candidates must be able to read and write; must be a citizen of the United States; must be at least 18 years of age; must have lived in the district for at least one year; may not have been removed from any school district office within the preceding year; may not reside with another member of the same school board as a member of the same family; may not be a current employee of the school board; may not simultaneously hold another incompatible public office.

• The Dryden Youth Commission is looking for a new member.

There's an article on budget concerns in the Ithaca School District, and an article on an affordable housing study done in Tompkins County that seems to be only in the print edition. It states that:

in 2004, just 43 percent of single-family home sales were affordable to households at or below 100 percent of the median family income for Tompkins County.

I think that means that only 43% of houses were affordable to 50% of Tompkins County residents, but I'm not completely sure. I'll need to get a copy of the report to figure that one out. Also, the article notes that site costs for the new emergency communications system have climbed from the $2.5 million authorized in 2005 to $4.5 million.

There's also an article on New York State's backdoor borrowing. It would be nice to draw a clear line between ordinary capital project borrowing and more creative borrowing, like the legislature and Governor do through the Dormitory Authority and Empire State Development Corporation. Making that work will likely require changing a lot of rules, but hopefully it'll happen in the next few years.