After years spend developing costly projects that were either voted down or killed before coming to a vote district officials are looking at a different approach. "We've got to start working backwards to say how much we need in a capital reserve, and how much do we have?" said Superintendent Stephen Grimm at a recent school board meeting. "How are we going to build that into our financial planning, instead of spending reactively?"
Over the past two months Grimm and Lansing's Board of Education has been finalizing plans for two capital projects that will address the district's most pressing infrastructure needs with little or no cost to the taxpayers. "We need to build trust with our taxpayers," Grimm said. "They need to know what they're getting. The first thing we want to do is get what we can without any cost. That's going to be the combination of the Excel project ($1.1 million) and the energy performance contract (over $4 million). The idea is to combine these two on a December 8th referendum."
About 30 people turned out to the Tompkins County Public Library Thursday for the library's first local presidential debate. County Democratic Chair Irene Stein and County Republican Chair Mike Sigler faced off for an hour and a half, finishing just an hour before the Vice Presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joseph Biden was to begin.
The debate was moderated by Assistant Director of Government and Community Relations at Cornell Gary Stewart, and Elissa Cogan, President of the board of the Tompkins County Public Library Foundation acted as time keeper. Larry Roberts, Program Director of Finger Lakes Independence was on hand to register voters.
Lansing's Varsity Girls Soccer team is having a great season. "They know it's not going to be easy," says coach LaMarr Peters. "They are gifted in their minds as well as in their bodies. Overall I think they are fantastic spirit beings, and they're open to being taught. That's a unique group. There is something about Lansing that has allowed this group to be."
It is certainly paying off for the girls, who are 12-0, undefeated with only three games left in the regular season. A significant element of a team's success is the coach, and Lansing's team has a unique and driven one. Peters is a professional soccer trainer who came to Lansing after a successful college and pro soccer career. Locally he is known for teaching WAZA FLO, which expands soccer training to include philosophical and spiritual training, a concept borrowed from martial arts.
Teamwork clicked for Lansing varsity volleyball in Monday's 3-2 IAC match against Watkins Glen. Desi Burke's tough serves and nimble assists helped the Bobcats win the first game 25-18, setting up her match total of eleven assists and three service aces. After a sluggish Lansing start in game 2, the lead vacillated in two tightly battled games. The home team was buoyed by a tribe of vociferous Seneca braves, and Watkins edged out Lansing 26-24, 26-24.
Tompkins County is divided into nine towns, six villages, a number of hamlets and one alternative world. That world is located in the town of Enfield one weekend per month, and is inhabited by a collection of knights, healers, dwarves, elves, monsters... all the usual characters you might find in a game of Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, you might consider it the next level up from the popular board game -- this version is played on a field, in costume, in character. It is called Live Action Role Play (LARP), and the enfield game is called Finger Lakes Adventure Gaming (FLAG).
"It is a mental reset," says Monroe Payne, who, with his wife Janet, hosts the game on their farm. "Whenever you can leave the cares of your life behind and completely forget about them it allows your subconscious to work on problems you have in the real world so that when you come out of our fantasy realm you can think clearly."
When Image Masters owner Les Jinks and his new wife Pat first moved to the United States from England years ago he couldn't possibly have envisioned that he would be creating steaming media Web sites. That is certain, because it would be years before personal computers were introduced, and the Internet wasn't yet on line. But television was quite popular, and the first step toward his journey to Internet work started there.
Jinks came upon a fatal car accident on Aurora Street he happened to have his movie camera with him. "I called Channel 12 in Binghamton," he recalls. "They jumped at it. I spoke to the news director. The format was eight millimeter, so they wouldn't be able to use it. But he said, 'Would you be interested in working for us on a part time basis?' I said "sure,' so he gave me a 16 mm camera, loaded me up with black and white film, told me what to look for and to buy myself a police scanner."