12/05/07 - Committee picks top site for new DMV

(As published by Cortland Standard, Evan Geibel reporting)

A potential city site for the county Department of Motor Vehicles office next to the BOCES plaza at Port Watson and River streets received the overwhelming support of the county ad hoc space needs committee at a Tuesday morning meeting.

That site will be reviewed during a legislative work session Thursday night and will likely be the one taken before the Legislature at its Dec. 20 meeting for a final decision.

The prices for the two final sites, located in the city, were discussed in executive session and not released afterward, but committee member John Daniels (D-Cortlandville) did say the price of the BOCES plaza site was $115,000 more than the less-favored location between Cleveland and River streets across from Hampton Inn.

The committee directed the county administrator to try to negotiate lower prices for the two sites.

Although county officials had given a potential price of $400,000 for the Cleveland Street site, real estate broker Steve Terwilliger, who is handling the transaction, said last week he was unaware of any preliminary price estimate having been settled upon.

The decision whether to lease or buy the properties would be left to the full Legislature, the committee decided.

In an informal poll, the committee members — as well as other members of the Legislature who sat in on the meeting — all voiced their support of the BOCES plaza site, noting the attractiveness of the Cleveland Street site for future commercial development.

A potential location at Route 13 and Lime Hollow Road in South Cortland, which had been discarded by the committee before the sites under consideration had even been released to the public, was again discussed at Tuesday’s meeting. In the end, the committee stuck by the decision it made two weeks ago — that site will not receive further consideration.

However, the discussion of the Lime Hollow Road site did spur consideration of the city’s faltering finances and the fact that a property purchase by the county in the city would further deplete the city’s tax base.

This was apparently taken into consideration during the executive session because the meeting room door reopened on legislators who were all in favor of the commercially less-desirable BOCES plaza location.

“It’s best for the city if we go with BOCES,” Legislator Danny Ross (R-Cortlandville) said.
Ad hoc committee Chair Carol Tytler (D-3rd Ward) said the taxes on the Cleveland Street site amount to about $2,300, and that the BOCES plaza location would be even less, around $2,000.