This morning's Journal includes Gary Stewart's report on Cornell's modifications to the gas line it will be building to connect its power plant to the pipeline that runs through Ellis Hollow. It sounds like it will be narrower and generally less intrusive, and I'm curious to see what this looks like:
A proposal has been developed to directionally drill under Turkey Hill, Dodge, Game Farm and Pine Tree roads to minimize impact to the pavement at these crossings.
The Monitor lists a DWI on West Dryden Road.
Looking beyond Dryden, the Journal's editorial continues to worry about the lack of competition in local elections. I wish they'd spend some time actually talking with rank and file political committee members to get a sense of how these things run (or don't), but I can believe that County Republican Chair Mike Sigler called a huge list of people and found no takers. As much as I emphasize local politics here, it's hard not to see that most people don't find it interesting or useful. The Journal's reporting, or lack of it, plays a role in that apathy, though so do a lot of factors. (I'm working on some proposals around ballot access that might help, but still depend on people wanting to run.)
The print edition reports that while 5% of Upstate New York residents are immigrants, including a third of doctors, 10.3% of Tompkins County residents are immigrants.
Posted by simon at November 27, 2007 8:53 AM in Cornell , Ellis Hollow , Ithaca Journal , demographics , energy , politics (local)
"I can believe that County Republican Chair Mike Sigler called a huge list of people and found no takers."
That's probably it. In either the City or the Town (forget which), the Republican party chair said he'd called *every registered Republican and independent* and found nobody willing to run, according to an article in some local newspaper.
The Republican Party is persona non grata at the moment in Ithaca. Probably thanks to being utterly evil on the national level, represented by the mega-corrupt Joe Bruno on the state level (and the State Senate gerrymandered to carve Ithaca in three), and on the local level, the most recent Republican mayor of Ithaca having been a self-dealer who gave construction contracts to his buddies while using eminent domain to force out local business. Even judges are losing just because they're running on the Republican line (and party line doesn't usually say much about judicial philosophy for local judges).
If the Ithaca Journal wants competitive elections (a good idea in theory), it should encourage the Working Familes Party or the Green Party to run candidates (perhaps on a more-transit fewer-garages platform?); they might actually have a chance at winning. Here in Cayuga Heights, we had a competitive election back in the 1980s -- but both parties were *local* parties, not Democrats or Republicans.
On the other hand, maybe the reason the elections weren't contested is that pretty much everyone is relatively happy with the current government. Mayor Peterson's been fabulous in some ways: specifically, she's the first mayor in my *lifetime* who takes infrastructure and public works seriously. She's been slowly trying to clean up all kinds of other stupid messes in the management of the city government. A competent technocrat, imagine that!