12/7/07 - Legislature will seek final offers on DMV site

Sale and lease options both considered

(As published by Cortland Standard, Evan Geibel reporting)

The county Legislature decided Thursday night to seek final offers for both the sale and lease of a River Street property that could be the site of a new Department of Motor Vehicles office.

The property is in the BOCES plaza on River and Port Watson streets in the city, and the decision to lease or buy it will likely be determined at the Legislature’s Dec. 20 meeting.

The Legislature went into executive session to discuss the negotiated sales price of the preferred property identified by the Legislature’s ad hoc space needs committee.

Legislators Kay Breed (R-Cortlandville), Newell Willcox (R-Homer) and Danny Ross (R-Cortlandville) voted against discussing the prices in executive session.

A price for a runner-up site on Cleveland Street in the city had also been negotiated, but the ad hoc committee chose to focus on the BOCES plaza site at a meeting Tuesday morning.

After Thursday’s meeting was reopened to the public, the legislators voted on whether to direct County Administrator Scott Schrader to negotiate a final sale price of the property or to have him find out the cost of leasing the site.

If a site is leased, the money would have to be paid for out of the county’s general fund budget. If the Legislature decides to purchase, the funding would come from the county’s share of tobacco lawsuit settlement money.

They first voted to ask for a price to purchase the property, with Legislators Breed, Willcox, and Tom Williams (R-Homer) voting against the measure. The legislators then voted on whether to ask for the cost of leasing the site, with Legislators Don Spaulding (D-6th Ward), Dan Tagliente (D-7th Ward), John Steger (R-Preble and Scott) and Legislature Chairman Marilyn Brown voting against the measure.

Legislators John Troy (D-1st Ward), Steve Dafoe (D-Homer) and Carol Tytler (D-3rd Ward) had originally voted against asking for a lease price, but they changed their vote after Breed asked “why there is opposition to considering both prices.”

Joe Armideo of Homer owns the BOCES plaza, and any purchase or lease of the existing empty lot on River Street would involve the purchase of an adjacent residential property.

The prices have not been released for the BOCES plaza site nor a site on Cleveland and River streets that had been one of the final two sites under consideration.

But it was disclosed that the Cleveland Street site costs $115,000 more than the BOCES site at a meeting of the ad hoc committee on Tuesday.

As this issue develops, I will be sure to look at the long term costs of leasing versus purchase. This does not appear to be clear cut, and each method has its advantages.

In addition, I hope to be able to post the Ad Hoc Committee's support information for public review and comment - it has not been posted on the County web site.

12/06/07 - County spending $30,000 on stronger fix for Daisy Hollow Road

Highway department will grind strip of road, then apply hot asphalt patch to stabilize it.

(As published by Cortland Standard, Evan Geibel reporting)

The county will try a $30,000 semi-permanent fix on Daisy Hollow Road in Harford to alleviate some of the concerns over the deteriorating road surface.

The road is in a near constant state of disrepair because of poor underlying soil.

County Highway Committee Chair Dan Tagliente (D-7th Ward) inspected the failing section of road with Highway Superintendent Don Chambers and the two decided to pursue more significant repairs to the road than those included in the annual maintenance of the road, estimated at about $4,000.

“As you come up the hill there, if you’re going a pretty good speed, it looks like it could cause some problems,” Tagliente said during a Highway Committee meeting Tuesday morning.

Chambers said his department would grind down some of the roadway and would then apply a hot asphalt patch to stabilize the road. The drainage along the road would also be cleaned out, Tagliente said.

“It’s not permanent by any means, but it will be a more effective patch,” Chambers said.

The $30,000 funding for the work would be diverted from funds budgeted for 2008 to repair McGraw-Marathon Road. Chambers said it would be a matter of “trimming something back,” and wouldn’t have a disproportionate impact on that project.

Residents near and along Daisy Hollow Road had petitioned the county in March, seeking to get the road fixed.

A $32,200 study by the engineering firm Barton & Loguidice estimated the cost of repairing an approximately 300-foot section of the road to be between $500,000 and $600,000, not including engineering and the acquisitions of rights of way. Chambers has estimated the total cost of a permanent repair at about $800,000.

About 285 cars travel the road daily.

12/05/07 - Conflict attorney cases heard in Supreme Court

(As published by Cortland Standard, Aimee Milks reporting)

Two of the four lawsuits regarding the county’s local law concerning the assigned counsel plan were heard Tuesday morning by state Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dowd.

Of the two lawsuits, Dowd is expected to make a decision on the local law or dismiss the suit entirely by the end of the year, said Frank Williams, one of the three attorneys who together filed a suit claiming the law illegal and invalid.

Williams and local attorney Edward Goehler, argued Tuesday that they need a decision as to which of three assigned counsel plans being used in the county’s courts is the right one to follow.

The three different assigned counsel plans in question within the county are the conflict attorney position created by the county’s local law of 2006, a standing decision from the County Court judges opposing the conflict attorney position and a Cortland County Bar Association plan that was used until the conflict attorney position was filled in August.

They added that they believe that the county’s Local Law No. 1 of 2006 — which is similar to plans in effect without opposition in at least 12 other counties — violates the state Constitution and state statutes.

Goehler said that before the law was passed the county had a functioning plan, which was the bar association plan approved by the state Office of Court Administration both in 1984 and again in revised form this year.

“We had a functioning plan; everything was working,” Goehler said. “To say everything is working now is not true. The law is an encroachment on state power. Cortland has no more right to pass this law than it has to lower the BAC (blood-alcohol content) levels or lower the age of consent.”

The Bar Association plan was implemented in the county in 1984 and used until attorney Tom Miller filled the conflict attorney position created by the county Legislature under Local Law No. 1 in 2006 in an attempt to cut the county’s expenses on assigned counsel for indigent defendants.

The position is called conflict attorney because it is the intent of the Legislature to have Miller represent clients the public defender cannot represent due to a conflict of interest. For example, when a husband and wife opposing each other in a custody case qualify for representation by the Public Defender’s Office, it would be a conflict of interest for the public defender to represent both of them. Under Local Law No. 1, the conflict attorney would be assigned to represent the husband or the wife.

The county, represented by Robert Bergan and Stacy Tamburrino from the Auburn law firm of Boyle & Anderson, argued Tuesday that the three local lawyers did not have standing for their case and asked for a dismissal.

Bergan said that for the lawyers to have standing to sue, they must show economic injury and show they are parties affected by the local law.

Williams responded by stating they are parties of interest because if they accept an assignment, they are violating the constitution and state statutes. Whereas, by not accepting an assignment, they are allowing other attorney’s to be in violation. This also affects indigent clients, he said.

12/05/07 - City and county discuss consolidation merger options

(As published by Cortland Standard, Evan Geibel reporting)

The city is hoping that a short-term solution to its depleted finances could be found in the county’s initial willingness to discuss funding the Cortland Free Library for 2008.

The possibility was discussed when city and county officials sat down in the county Legislature’s chambers Tuesday afternoon to talk about ways to help the city’s finances.

The issue will be discussed again at the next joint meeting at 1 p.m. Thursday, as well as at the Legislature’s special session that evening.

The officials from both municipalities discussed long-term and short-term solutions, ranging from a hypothetical countywide library system or a combined countywide assessor’s office, to mergers of individual departments such as the Youth Bureau or parks system.

Despite the county’s recent decision not to reopen sales tax negotiations to give the city a requested boost, the participants in the meeting were congenial and the tone was hopeful.

Legislator John Daniels (D-Cortlandville) voiced a plan of action: start with one or two projects that everybody can get on board with, things that can be implemented quickly, before a much larger next step is taken. This would build the relationships and trust that large-scale intergovernmental projects require. “It becomes much easier to take the next step,” Daniels said.

The “next step” is important, according to city Director of Administration and Finance Andy Damiano. Any short-term financial help for next year would help stamp down either a 9.8 percent or a 7.8 percent tax increase (the lower figure was announced at a Tuesday night Common Council meeting), but would not rebuild the city’s soon-to-be depleted fund balance. “We need to think about how we can rebuild it in the long term,” Damiano said.

The city is considering a number of multimillion-dollar capital projects — including larger fire and police stations and much needed repairs to City Hall — and those would require bonding.

“I cannot recommend to the (Common) Council that we go out for a bond issue with our finances in the state they are in now,” Damiano said at Tuesday’s joint meeting.

Hence the county’s concern; as noted by Legislator Sandy Price (D-Harford and Virgil), “a healthy city equals a healthy county and a healthy county equals a healthy city.”

But when discussing any possible mergers, Damiano stressed that the merger has to result in either the same or improved level of services, as well as cost savings, or else consolidation does not work.

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.