April 02, 2005
Dryden opinions, ICSD levy
Most of the Dryden-related information in today's Journal is on the opinion page.
Art Berkey (listed as Ithaca, but I know he lives in Dryden) leads Darts & Laurels with a thank you to the public library for postponing a referendum on a tax in the Ithaca and Lansing school districts, and thanks the Tompkins County Highway Department for new signage at the Turkey Hill/Quarry Road/Ellis Hollow intersection. I've been meaning to report on the latter for a while, so here are a few pictures of that dramatically improved intersection.
Stop ahead and speed limit signs on Turkey Hill Road
Stop signs, including flashing red
From the Quarry Road side: left-hand stop sign, solar panel, back of flashing stop sign, school speed limit sign, back of stop sign with pedestrian sign.
You can see (at least in this season) the blinking red lights on the stop sign from Turkey Hill Road well before Stevenson Road, which should be plenty of warning for drivers. The school speed limit signs are for Stone Circle School.
Next up on the opinion page is Henry Kramer, with a set of prescriptions for lowering the cost of government. I find it strange that Kramer seems to exempt the federal government in the first sentence and never mentions town government, which in Dryden violated his Prescription 4 last year. He seems consistently upset with the fact that the public sector is different from the private sector, though I can't say the private sector organizations in which I've worked have lived up to his expectations either. I heartily agree with him that there's more government can do to reduce its costs, but I'd replace his nine prescriptions with one:
Involve more people more deeply in their government, making certain that information about finances is both available and understandable.
More transparency will make it easier for people to tell when their government is spending money needlessly, while more involvement is also an opportunity for people to say when projects are important enough that they actually want to spend more money. Dryden's creation of a Recreation Department and recent discussion of purchasing development rights from farms both strike me as examples of the latter.
(I do try to report opinions fairly blandly here, but Henry Kramer's screeds somehow drive me to respond.)
A letter from Lindsay Welsh of Freeville discusses responsible hunting in reply to a letter from Susan Weiner of Alpine about misbehaving hunters and poachers.
In news, the Journal looks at the revenue demands of the coming Ithaca school budget and their impact on taxes.
Posted by simonstl at April 2, 2005 09:22 AMNote on photos