1/3/07 City wants longer look at health center

(As published by Cortland Standard, Corey Preston reporting)

Residents expressed concern about the proposed south Main facility at Tuesday’s Common Council meeting.

Objections to a proposed $5 million county health building on south Main Street has prompted the Common Council to call for a more thorough review of the project. Several residents expressed their concern over the proposal and its impact on the neighborhood at the council’s meeting Tuesday. Five residents spoke during the public comment period, and almost 15 others were in attendance while the matter was discussed.
Council members voted unanimously to draft a letter to the county Legislature, asking it wait until those concerns are better addressed before it closes on six properties needed for the project.
Aldermen Tom Michales (R-8th Ward) and Dan Quail (R-5th Ward) said they would be holding a joint meeting at the end of this month or the beginning of February, but Church Street homeowner Kathie Wilcox pointed out that the county intended to close on the properties before that.
Mayor Tom Gallagher also urged the residents to contact their legislators, because “they’re the ones who are going to be helping you through this whole program better than we are — we’re kind of in the middle of this whole thing here.”
The county unveiled the project Dec. 20. It calls for a 30,000-square-foot building to be constructed on 2.46 acres of land that would include a 170-space parking lot. The county’s mental health and health departments would be housed in the building.
The county has a tentative $894,000 purchase agreement for six properties, including the former Moose Lodge.
The project would radically change the neighborhood, said Church Street resident Barry Batzing. The neighborhood is a route for many children walking to Randall School who now will be confronted by heavy traffic, he said.
Batzing criticized the county, saying it gave the public scant notice of the proposal. “The precedent set by the county administrator and the county Legislature to secretly acquire residential property and commence with a massive project without any public participation is frightening,” he said.
A timeline, provided by Wilcox to the council, showed that on May 9, County Administrator Scott Schrader told the Legislature’s Buildings and Grounds Committee he would draw up specifications for a new location for the Mental Health Department, the local offices of the Department of Motor Vehicles and a new county jail facility. “Now the jail is like, off the table and we’re dealing with this health building that no one was even aware of,” Wilcox said.
Schrader said on Dec. 20 that he was pleased with the final price for the properties, which he attributed in part to the anonymity the county maintained during property negotiations. In the minutes of an executive session for the Budget and Finance Committee meeting on Dec. 14, Wilcox pointed out that Schrader had talked with Gallagher, who agreed with the nature of the property acquisition and the removal of these properties from the tax rolls, which would result in a $10,000 annual property tax loss to the city. That loss on the city’s $6 million annual tax levy is about 0.06 percent of the total, said city Director of Administration and Finance Andy Damiano. However, Wilcox said, she calculated the total loss of city, county and school taxes would come to $33,710.