I was on the radio this morning at crazy:15* talking with WHCU's Dave Vieser. He called me at the end of his workday yesterday (2pm EST) inquiring about doing the interview. I accepted. When I was last on the radio, I had the 6:15am time slot, the crazy:15* was much better!
We touched on 3 subjects in the six minutes we talked. Quick re-cap now, longer re-cap later (perhaps):
1. iPhone & AT&T tower and cell service at TC3, featuring prior town board member Marty Christofferson. TC3 is going to work with AT&T to put up a cell phone tower to improve communication with their students, faculty and staff. The primary services are emergency, security, and academic/educational. This all started just 2 weeks ago (the talks with AT&T), but the technology of messaging has been an award winning program at TC3 for years. Class cancelled? Snow emergency? Security incident? - all will be communicated via text messaging, for instant information delivery. Also GPS! Because of the location - - we can hope for much increased cell phone coverage (AT&T initially) for the village of Dryden, Lee Road, and parts of the Town of Dryden.
2. Trail from TC3 to the village of Dryden (Neptune Drive - near Dunkin' Donuts). Initial talks to put in a nature trail to connect students (and their money?) to the businesses of Dryden Village (Clarke's grocery, Dryden Community Center Cafe, Todi's, Dryden Hotel, Dunkin' Donuts, and more!) and to connect village residents to TC3 (classes, athletic facility, special events) to bridge the town and village to the college. It looks to be a great trail project that may also lead to a spur to the Town Hall. Encouraging the TC3 students to spend money in the village helps local businesses, county sales tax revenue, and walking lowers the number of cars on Rt. 13 which helps with traffic, polution, and use of non-renewable energy resources. Making a better connection to TC3 from the town hall and village can make better use of the asset that is TC3. Perhaps with the trail Dean Marty Christofferson could walk across the street to the town hall from his house and then use trails to walk to his job at the TC3 campus.
3. Brief discussion on SPCA. The ad hoc SPCA committee (Town Supervisor Sumner, Town Clerk Hollenbeck) discussed the Tompkins County Council of Governments (TCCOG) request for proposal (RFP) for countywide dog control services. The SPCA contract for the town of Dryden for 2007 was about $18,000. The projected cost for 2009 is between $45,000 and $65,000. While it is important for the SPCA to be stable and balance their books, a 100% to 200% increase in any contract has to be looked at closely. We are required by state mandate to have "dog control" and then are limited by the state for how much we can charge for a dog license (fees would only cover about 50% or $20K). We like the SPCA and are happy to have them in Dryden, but we would be doing the tax payers a disservice if we didn't seek out other solutions to see if the cost is reasonable and to protect ourselves from future 100% to 200% increases. The SPCA topic came up last year and we had guests from the SPCA, volunteers, and staff come before the town board. We are very supportive of the job they do, but if we allowed every part of the budget to increase at their rate - we would be out of business as a municipality very quickly.
As I said, I hope to recap both the entire meeting in full, as well as the key points that if I had more than 6 minutes I would have told the radio audience about.
*crazy:15 = 7:15am - which isn't too bad for most people, but last night's town board meeting ended at 11:25pm, I talked to Supervisor Sumner for a few minutes and arrived back at my house around 12:10am, and then talked with Arjan for about 25 minutes doing a recap of the day and the meeting. So I slept from about 12:45 to 6:30 or so, then recapped the meeting in my head, on paper in my office, and then quickly on the phone with Dave Vieser . Dave V. gets up at "insane o'clock", which I believe is 3am, 5 days a week (ouch!).
