Finding Ulysses

… and I mean aftershock in a good way. The truth is that music in Trumansburg is a year round thing - witness yesterday’s CD release for Toivo. Still, when people think of Trumansburg and music, they think of Grassroots.

It’s maybe a good bit of marketing, then, for the Trumansburg Fair’s Music Night, on August 21, to be described as a post-Festival event. That’s fine, really, given that a lot of the same people who run Grassroots also organize the Music Night at the fair.

Here’s just some of the lineup: “Jeb Puryear, Tara Nevins, Sim Redmond, Hank Roberts, Crow Greenspun, Richie Stearns, Johnny Dowd, Kevin Kinsella, Mary Lorson, J-San, Trevor MacDonald, Rising Sun and E-Rich…”

Those of you who don’t need to put kids to bed before dark let me know how it goes.

I got my hands on a copy of Toivo’s new CD, Laughing Shoe, the other day and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it since. So have my kids. Whenever I play the CD, all three get up and started stomping and tapping in orbits around each other on the floor.

My children’s decision to dance isn’t a reflection of a deep understanding of music theory, but it is nonetheless a good sign of music that’s constructed well. They won’t dance to the wandering classical music that plays most of the time on WSKG, and even the hypersurrealist immature electronica of Yo Gabba Gabba fails to inspire them.

Toivo, on the other hand, combines solid folk traditions that have withstood the cultural selection of audiences for hundreds of years. It’s not trendy. It just works. The Laughing Shoe also celebrates our local landscape, with songs like Swamp College Schottische, the Podunk Two-Step and Waterburg Swing.

Tomorrow evening, at Felicia’s Atomic Lounge, there will be a CD Release Party for Laughing Shoe. Another CD release will be held on the 21st at the Pourhouse at 7:00 PM.

Liz Thomas works hard to keep people informed of what’s going on with the Ulysses Town government. Here are some tips from her about events that are coming up soon:

Black diamond trail
At the June 10th Town Board meeting, the house was packed with Black Diamond Trail supporters. Jan Zeserson and Marvin Pritts encouraged the Town to participate in building the Black Diamond Trail (BDT) when it is finally underway. Comments included anticipation of the trail to use as a safe bike route for traveling to work or school, as a new recreational offering within the town, and as a asset to attract visitors to the area. People who spoke included citizens from the Village as well as Town residents with property near and adjoining the BDT. Unofficially the Town promised to install culverts and signage on the roads the BDT crosses. A pre-thanks to the hard-working highway crew.

Water survey
No, it hasn’t been sent yet, but soon! Thanks to the Water Needs Committee who put in hours and hours on this project.

Takin’ care of Trumansburg
Ever wonder why the Village of Trumansburg is looking so good? Join the volunteers who are Takin’ Care of T-burg anytime between 8 and 11am on the following Saturdays: July 12, August 2, August 23, September 13, October 4, October 25, and November 15. Meet at the children’s village. For more information contact Karen Powers at kpower01@icsd.k12.ny.us.

Next Meeting Times and Dates:
7:30pm Tuesday, July 8th – Regular Town Board meeting. 7:00 Thursday, June 26 – second Town Board meeting.

Thanks to our Liz Thomas, member of the Ulysses Town Board, who continues to make an extra effort to keep the residents of Ulysses informed about what’s going on. Her June newsletter advises us of the following public meetings:

Byrne Dairy Zoning Board of Appeals Hearing – this hearing is in response to a request to interpret the Village of T-burg zoning ordinance with respect to the zoning officer’s construction of the term “gas station”.
7:00 Mon, June 23rd at the Village hall.

Highway Posting Law Public Hearing – Due to problems with GrassRoots festival goers lining up in advance of the festival on Rabbit Run Road, the Town of Ulysses has proposed a new local law giving the Highway Superintendent discretion to post no parking signs on any town road for up to 30 days. The unofficial understanding is that those who want to secure a GrassRoots camping spot within the festival grounds will be allowed to park on Rabbit Run beginning either late Wednesday or early Thursday morning prior to the festival.
7:00 Thurs, June 26 at the Town Hall

Public Hearing for Dog Licensing Fee Increase - The fee for dog licensing has not increased since 1996 but everything else has! A hearing will be held to amend the local law of 1979 to increase these fees. Basically it boils down to an increase of $2.00 for a neutered or spayed dog resulting in a total cost to the owner of $12.50 annually per dog. For unsprayed or unneutered dogs, the increase will be $4.00 bringing the grand total to $22.50 annually per dog.
7:15pm Thurs, June 26 at the Town Hall.

Planning Board – Special meeting on Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) – Scott Doyle from the Tompkins County Planning will give a presentation on ways towns can preserve certain desirable lands from development. This meeting was set for June 26th but has been moved to Thurs, July 24th at 7:30 at the Town Hall.

Trumansburg’s new community service group, Takin’ Care of Tburg, will meet tomorrow morning for a work session from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM. The meeting will take place at the Kids’ Village across from Gimme Coffee.

There will be refreshments. All are welcome.

Nobody will be searched or need to show a photo ID. There will be no surveillance cameras.

What with school being unexpectedly closed today, there’s been a lot of rushing around in the Village of Trumansburg today, with parents trying to reschedule the day on the fly, and a lot of kids enjoying yet another unseasonably warm sunny day without any studying outside.

Tonight at 7:00 PM, there will be a public meeting at the elementary school auditorium about the bomb threats and the enhanced firecracker that was found. I won’t be there. I appreciate everything that the police and schools are doing to keep our kids safe, but there are some other serious and more ongoing threats to Trumansburg…

…such as the pollution of our creeks. Trumansburg and Taughannock Creeks define our community, but most of the time we turn our backs on them, and don’t even give a thought to what our presence adds to their waters.

At 7:00 PM tonight in the Trumansburg Fire Hall, Dr. Stephen Penningroth will be giving a presentation of what we know about the water quality of these creeks. The meeting is sponsored by Back to Democracy, which explains that Penningroth’s organization, Community Science Institute…

“…partners with local Stream Watch volunteers to monitor water quality in Taughannock Creek and Trumansburg (Frontenac) Creek, including effluent from the Village of Trumansburg’s aging sewage treatment plant. Preliminary data on samples collected from the headwaters to the mouths of both Trumansburg and Taughannock Creek suggest water quality impacts in some places, including E. coli bacteria and phosphorus and nitrogen nutrients. Stream Watch and CSI have requested funds from local municipal governments to increase the frequency of monitoring in both streams in order to get accurate baseline data and to characterize stormwater impacts on water quality throughout their lengths. Repeated sampling of the effluent from the sewage treatment plant over a two-year period from 2006 to 2008 has shown that the effluent is contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria above the permitted level approximately 90% of the time. However, because of dilution, the fecal bacteria counts at Camp Barton, located about a mile downstream at the mouth of Trumansburg Creek, are found to be elevated only under stormwater conditions.”

This week is the first that really feels as we imagine all springtime to be - warm, sunny and green. We may still have frost in the morning, but I’m seeing a nice collection of flowers around town, with a lot of spring bulbs, but a few flowering shrubs and understory wildflowers as well. The bloodroot in back of my house has just started blooming, and the may apples and rhubarb are thrusting their thick shoots out of the ground.

Honeysuckle, an intrusive non-native I feel I should dislike, is putting out its leaves, and I can’t say that I’ll be upset when they blossom. The buckeye sapling that we’re allowing to grow around the back of the house is also unfolding its leaves, and the friendly deer seem not to care to nip the buds, though they look quite hearty to me.

All this growth brings to mind tomorrow’s lecture at the library. At 7:30 PM, David Weinstein will speak on the topic Project Budbreak: How Climate Change Affects Native Plants.

“Project Budbreak” is, I believe, Project Budburst, a citizen science project of the sort pioneered by the people up on the hill over at Cornell. The idea is that people across the United States will volunteer to report when the buds on different plants around them open up, so that scientists can look at the data and see whether there are any shifts in plant cycles along with climate change. It’s kind of like a feeder watch, but horticultural.

This Sunday, there will be an event at the Ulysses Philomathic Library that you’ll want to be sure not to miss. John Gurche, a Trumansburg resident, will be speaking on the subject of his work bringing art and paleontology together in order to depict animals that have long been extinct. His work has brought him in contact with fascinating people and remarkable objects.

The following is the information given about the talk by the library:

Next in its 2008 Sunday afternoon speaker series, the Ulysses Philomathic Library welcomes John Gurche to speak on “A Walk in Jurassic Park: Tales from the Set” March 30 at 2:00 p.m. at the Ulysses Historical Society. Gurche is a renowned paleoartist and is currently artist in residence at the Museum of the Earth.

Gurche, has created reconstructions of early humans and their relatives for popular and scientific publications, television documentaries, popular films, museum exhibitions, even postage stamps. Among his works are illustrations for National Geographic Magazine and Scientific American, displays for The Field Museum of Natural History, and a National Geographic Television special. He also created the pre-production art for Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park.” Gurche has been a major influence on the way the public visualizes early hominids and dinosaurs.

This is a presentation that will engage children as well as adults, and we encourage parents to bring their children.

Tomorrow, there will be two meetings about the brand new plans for a Water District 5. One meeting will be at 8:30 AM - yes, 8:30 in the morning - at the Ulysses Town Hall. There is no actual official agenda for this meeting, but the common understanding I’m hearing is that the meeting will in fact deal with the new Water District 5 plans. There will be another public meeting on the Water District 5 plans tomorrow night, at 7:00, in the Fire Hall.

This morning, I received the following statement from Liz Thomas, one of our representatives on the Ulysses Town Board:

Recently the New York State Department of Health notified the Town of Ulysses of the potential for the proposed Water District 5 to move ahead with 0% interest loan funding despite the removal of Auble’s Mobile Home Park from the plan. However, in order for this to happen, the town needs to find an equivalent number of new water users to meet the annual target cost per user of $613. Going above this number would disqualify the project for 0% interest funding. To meet this goal, Eric Pond from the engineering firm of Barton and Loguidice, proposed a reconfiguration of the system (see map below). The only alternative provided that fits the $613 target cost encompasses large areas of land zoned for the lowest residential density and also includes Route 89 from Taughannock Park to Glenwood Road resulting in a full 25 miles of pipelines and escalating the project cost to somewhere near $10 million, up from the original $4.6 million. These costs would be paid for by those within the water district whether they hook up to the water system or not.

The Village of Trumansburg is under a restriction from the Tompkins County Department of Health preventing extension of their water mains until they have a back-up source of water, in spite of the enormous water capacity of their well and their redundant pumping system. Due to this restriction, local residents and municipal officials are working to develop a back-up source to the Village.

Based on speaking with residents and municipal officials, there is also support for Taughannock Park’s desire to connect to the municipal water. Where controversy arises is in the placement of pipelines through areas of the town that are not zoned for high residential densities; in fact much of the northwestern area of the town where the pipes will be installed is zoned for the lowest possible densities. Zoning is intended to encourage growth in certain areas and discourage growth in others. While the newly proposed (on 2/21/08) Water District 5 design runs through land currently being used for agriculture, it skips land near Ithaca with the highest density zoning. Why? Based on Tompkins County Department of Health information, since 1985, seven wells have a documented problem within the area of proposed Water District 5. However, wells outside the proposed water district also have documented troubles. An accurate town-wide survey of well water quality and quantity has never been completed, but a water committee is now formed to do just that. Once completed, a water plan can be designed to meet the actual needs of the most residents.

On February 20, 2008, a report from Environmental Advocates of New York was released highlighting the negative impacts of sprawl on rural communities resulting from misuse of the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (DWSRF is the funding source for Water District 5) managed by the Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC) and the New York State Department of Health. The article is available on line at http://www.eany.org/reports/Wasted%20Green_02202008.pdf (beginning at the bottom of page 9) and states in part, “the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, created with the best of intentions, may be working at cross-purposes to efforts to fight sprawl.” The article goes on to say, “The Department of Health reviews proposals to ensure they are technically sound. However, there is no evidence of a mechanism in place to ensure that the project is the most appropriate remedy to a public health or environmental problem. And the EFC simply looks at the applicant’s finances to determine if the municipality has the fiscal capacity to repay the loan.”

The scoring used by EFC gives 40 “points” to projects that address well contamination, whether there is one contaminated well or 100. To date the Tompkins County Department of Health has provided data on well contamination in only 7 wells in the project area over 22 years to determine the severity of the need. While water contamination is a serious issue, many homeowners already manage many water problems through home treatment and filtering systems. These methods may be inconvenient for homeowners, but in most cases are less expensive in the long run than a municipal water system in an area of low residential density.

Finally, the Town of Ulysses is in the process of updating its Comprehensive Plan. Based on the recent Comprehensive Plan survey, over 90% of residents of Ulysses rate the following three qualities as important or extremely important: open space, rural character, and Taughannock Park. Historically, where water flows, so does development. Should we proceed with a water district that encourages growth in rural and open space? Should we rush to pass this project before the Comprehensive Plan is being updated? Do we want to encourage development along the highly erodable steep slopes along Route 89? Infrastructure, such as water lines, should be preceded by thoughful planning, and be built according to those plans. Working together, let’s identify the water needs more clearly, and build a system that addresses the real needs while preserving the rural character of Ulysses that we all hold so dear. The deadline for making a decision on this plan is NOW, so if you have an opinion, please let it be heard.

The following email has been sent out by Martha Ullberg, asking Trumansburg residents to come to a meeting of the zoning board tomorrow night, 7:00 in the meeting room in the Village office building.

I’m not seeing any version of the plans online - though the new Trumansburg Village web site is a bit counter-intuitive in its design. There’s no information on the activities of the Zoning Board on the Zoning Board’s page. You’ll only find notice of the Byrne Dairy’s request for special exemptions if you go to the Main Office Page, and then to the calendar, and then click on the particular item.

I’m not seeing any information about how the gas station plans to deal with runoff into our creeks and lakes, and I am concerned about the light pollution from a big 24 hour gas station sign, which can easily affect the entire village’s view of the night sky. A yellow orange sky above Trumansburg is not something to look forward to.

Sarah Adams [She and Vicki Romanoff have recently bought a house on Falls Street–across Main Street from this proposed project.] knocked on our door today after visiting the Village Office and getting copies of the proposed Byrne Dairy project next to the Falls Tavern–which will include a building and four gas pumps (which will have at least twice that many filling hoses). >She is trying to ask as many people as she can think of if this is what we want to see at the entrance to our Village. Several distressing things have to do with the fact that Byrne proposes to be open 24/7, will be asking for a zoning variance in order to have a larger-than-allowed, lighted sign (plus a zoning variance for putting in a gas storage tank) and aren’t planning any landscaping at all (at least they aren’t shown on the plan).

Sarah and John were chatting about the fact that even if they put the building next to the road and the gas tanks and parking to the side, it would be a little better than their current plan, which has the pumps and parking front and center. Oh, their “community-friendly” lighting is atop 18-foot poles. This seems like a standard “suburban” or “rural” design scheme, but we don’t think it fits with our Village. Sarah is hoping that people will make themselves aware of the project and weigh in on the plans before it is too late (as happened with the Dollar/Video stores near Save-a-lot). And John and I are helping to spread the word.

Two meetings: This Thursday, February 21, at 7:00 p.m., the Planning Board will hear the proposal from the Byrne Dairy folks; next Monday, February 25, at 7:00 p.m., there will be a public meeting of the Zoning Board, at which the sign size and gas storage tank variances will be discussed. Both of these will be in the Village Meeting Room. Should the Village be handing out variances of this sort right on the heels of passing the new Comprehensive Plan?