The 1940 census data is available online. You can find an intriguing 1937 map of Dryden "prepared by the technical staff of the Tompkins County Development Association", and lots of data on Dryden individuals as well in the census schedules....
Yes, I've been kind of focused on this coming Tuesday, but not everyone is. The Tompkins County Independent Redistricting Commission had built sixteen maps of possible new districts for 2013, but they've narrowed it down to four. One has 15...
Thanks to the 2010 census, it's time to re-examine our county legislature districts. I'm happy that the county created an independent commission instead of New York State's grotesque approach of letting legislators draw their own districts. Want to take a...
It may seem like an obscure issue, but the lines drawn for the County Legislature districts may well have a dramatic effect on how county government works for you. The county appointed an Independent Redistricting Commission to come up with...
It's not clear to me that the brine referenced in this article is hazardous or coming from hydrofracking operations, but there is clearly some use of gas wastewater being spread on roads throughout the Southern Tier. I tracked through the...
I'd missed this letter from Marie McRae of Dryden about gas drilling and mortgages: [Mortgage resale] standards now require a minimum 200-foot distance (setback) between your house/garage/barn/water well and any surface or subsurface development by a gas company. This includes...
This morning's Ithaca Journal reports on yesterday's arrest of a suspect in an armed robbery on East Main Street last week. The Town of Dryden grew 7% over the last ten years, moving from 13,532 to 14,435. The villages of...
This morning's Ithaca Journal examines prospects for a moratorium on development in Varna while the Master Plan is underway. Yesterday, I reported a bit on the residents' petition. What's new here is some perspective from Dryden Planning Director Dan Kwasnowski:...
Well, hopefully in spring it'll be to enjoy the flowers I planted last fall, if they can actually see them while driving. New York State counts 7383 vehicles going by my house daily, and at least some of those are...
We just got a note about our coming census form, which reminds me of a message Mike Lane passed on from the county about help for filling out census forms. The key bits close to Dryden include: When people fill...
Update: The more I've learned about this grant, the more it seems clear that it's a grant to Clarity Connect for expanding service in the Town of Dryden, not a grant to the Town exactly. This morning's Ithaca Journal reports...
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...
I last looked at Dryden voter registration back in January, after the Board of Elections had expunged a lot of voters who hadn't voted in too long a time. That expunging had cost the Democrats 37 more voters than the...
There was lots of news about the county and region over the holiday weekend. Neighboring Cortland County lost 51.7% of its manufacturing jobs between 1990 and 2005. Tompkins only lost 9%, but we had a lot less to start with....
NYCO has, yet again, found a conversation on upstate's prospects that raises questions, not least about the people hawking solutions. (Update: NYCO actually found it through CNY Underground.) I've heard Richard Florida's "Creative Class" theories posed repeatedly as a way,...
The Sunday New York Times had an editorial about the 'unsettling' of upstate New York (registration required): During the last decade the population of upstate New York grew more slowly than that of any state except North Dakota and West...
This morning's New York Times (registration required) has an article on the graying of upstate, noting that: Upstate New York is staggering from an accelerating exodus of young adults, new census results show. The migration is turning many communities grayer,...
My scanning of the 1968 General Plan for Dryden hit a barrier with the Population section, which combined lots of graphs with tables of census data that weren't quite as exciting as the maps of land use in the Town....
An excellent article in this morning's Ithaca Journal about sewer systems (or their lack) around the county includes this bit of news I hadn't heard: The Claritas numbers indicate the towns of Enfield, Dryden, Caroline and Lansing are each expected...
Freeville resident David Branagan writes that "I have tried and I have tried and I have tried, but I can't get over the commentary of Assemblywoman (Barbara) Lifton in The Journal of Feb. 28," and concludes that: It is inconceivable...
In this morning's Ithaca Journal, Briefly in Tompkins and a second Briefly in Tompkins list some positions open to applications from residents of Dryden: The Dryden Youth Commission, a joint commission between the Town of Dryden, Village of Dryden, and...
Continuing into the body of the 1968 Dryden General Plan, I've scanned the first two sections, an Introduction and Historical and Regional Context. For completeness, I'm including pictures and maps in separate files, as they tend to be enormous: Introduction...
I was just looking at 'Top 10' lists over at ePodunk (itself based in Trumansburg), and found this list of New York State county growth rates from the 2000 census to 2003. Tompkins is listed as the 3rd fastest-growing county,...
The Monitor reports on two cocaine busts in Dryden, one tied to an arrest earlier this week, and one marijuana arrest. The Journal has an article on the fatal fire in Slaterville this past week, exploring safety measures needed to...
I suspect I'd be irate if I had to go to Albany because my credit for buying nails here was no good, and Albany is far easier to get to today than it was in 1816. In this installment, George...
Today's Ithaca Journal has lots of Dryden news, including the weekly Our Towns section. Last night's Dryden school budget hearing and candidates forum gets an article, examining reaction to the increases and listening to the four candidates for three seats...
The articles in this week's Our Towns on Dryden and Groton are all about Groton. (Last week was largely Dryden.) There is a sidebar in the print edition with some statistics on families living on incomes below poverty level in...
After the Greater Varna calculations, I thought I'd take a look at Ellis Hollow, Bethel Grove, and Snyder Hill. Unfortunately, the U.S. Census Bureau uses Snyder Hill Road as a dividing line between blocks that front Ellis Hollow Road and...
In an earlier entry, I calculated how many people lived in the Varna hamlet as defined by the Draft Comprehensive Plan. I was curious about how many people a larger picture of Varna might include, and so I came up...
The Ithaca Journal reports that Census Bureau estimates find Tompkins county grew 1.6% last year, well above the state's overall growth of 0.3%. Orange County grew 2.1%, and the other counties with major growth were all in the Hudson Valley....
Yesterday I looked at the populations of the Dryden portion of McLean and the hamlet area north of the Village of Dryden. The Draft Comprehensive Plan proposes an average density for these hamlet areas of eight units per acre, like...
The Draft Comprehensive Plan actually defines four hamlets within the town, though Etna and Varna are the two most frequently discussed. The other two hamlets are fragments, one being the Dryden side of McLean, which is largely in the Town...
Yesterday's article explored the population of Varna and Etna, but even though it's interesting to know that downtown Varna's population is larger than Freeville's (679 to 505), the numbers needed to evaluate the statements about density in the Draft Comprehensive...
This week's sort-of Planning Board meeting on the Draft Comprehensive Plan's impact on Etna and Varna left me wondering about how many people actually live in the hamlets and what we data was available about them. In particular, the rental/owner-occupied...
The ICSD will hear a report tonight on enrollment projections for the next three to five years, as well as examine how efficiently buildings are being used. The Ithaca Journal reports that: Because only some students from outlying towns --...
In reading the Town of Dryden Draft Comprehensive Plan, I'm growing more and more concerned about things that I'm not seeing discussed, in particular the balance between rental units and owner-occupied housing. The plan notes on page 40 that: In...
I decided to look around the US Census Bureau's 2000 data for more information on the Town of Dryden. I found information on people and housing. It's pretty general information, but there's some interesting inforrmation about things like the age...