This morning's Ithaca Journal has a brief notice that Dryden Middle School principal Roger Fedele resigned last night, after being on the job since last spring.
Dryden Mutual Insurance is sponsoring a broad campaign to raise funds for the American Red Cross, as 19 groups try to raise $25,000.
Tompkins Community Action will be sponsoring the Child and Adult Care Food program at Dryden Head Start and Dryden Union Street Head Start.
A Freeville resident was arrested for DWI in Ithaca.
In the Ithaca schools, the Journal asks all the school board candidates about the recent elementary school redistricting.
At the county level, TCAT workers gave their bargaining team authorization to call a strike if negotiations in progress fail.
The Journal's editorial looks at New York State's recently strengthed Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), and makes a few suggestions for further improvements. All of them strike me as good ideas, but I especially like this one:
Executive sessions -- Right now, lawmaking bodies can go into closed-door "executive sessions" for a small set of reasons. The problem is, there's no way to know if they stick to the narrow discussion once they're behind closed doors. There's also no way to find out what was said if the reason is later found to be bogus. Changing the law to require that executive sessions be recorded would solve both problems. If challenged in court, a judge can listen to the session in chambers. All those parts of the closed-door session not covered under the law can then be released by the judge for public review.
As state law currently stands, there's no way to determine whether an executive session was used appropriately. Party caucuses, which the Journal also raises, are another tough problem, especially at the state legislature. And penalties for violations would certainly make it seem like the law was meant to be taken seriously.
Posted by simonstl at May 10, 2005 07:55 AM