Living in Dryden

Alternative energy law introduced

This morning's Journal sort of suggests that the Town Board passed an alternative energy law last night, though it was only introduced:

Residents of the Town of Dryden moved one step closer to generating their own sustainable energy Thursday night, when the Dryden Town Board agreed on the county's first zoning provisions for household wind and solar energy systems.

The Board agreed to move ahead with the law, taking it to a public hearing, but there wasn't much discussion indicating that the board members agreed with all of its provisions. There were objections that the law was too restrictive - a major shift from concerns expressed early on that it shouldn't be too open - but I expect a much larger conversation at the public hearing, scheduled for October 3rd.

Tompkins County is once again a big winner in the New York State borrowed pork sweepstakes, getting the fifth-most dollars of any county in member items from the Assembly Speaker's discretionary funds despite our small population. Common Cause/NY has more details, including a spreadsheet. (None of the listed items went to zip codes 13053 or 13068; 14850 got $2,367,000.)

(And no, I don't consider that money coming in a good thing - the source is so tainted by New York State inside politics and creative finance that the whole system needs to be shut down and member items forced to go through public approval processes with on-budget money. Tompkins should be able to hold its own in a fair process.)

Update: Looking at the spreadsheet in detail, it looks like $2.2 million of that went to Prisoner's Legal Aid, which has an Ithaca regional office, but the spreadsheet uses a 212 area code phone number. The legislature's PDF listing says the same - I'm not sure what's up with that, but I doubt the money actually came here. Weird.

Karel "Ricky" Westerling, sentenced earlier this month to 12 years in prison for rape and kidnapping, is now charged with assault for a July 5th incident in Lansing, along with a Sunset Circle resident and two McLean residents.

Finally, on the opinion page, Katrina Blair of Dryden encourages donating to "those organizations that need it and do good." There's also a guest column by Michael Koplinka-Loehr on the state of the county budget process and what's at risk.