Living in Dryden

Varna II application bounces

Last we'd officially heard, there'd be news about Steve Lucente's proposed Varna II (or whatever he'll call it) project in "two to three weeks". That was about six weeks ago.

I hadn't seen anything new from Lucente, but apparently he submitted an application that didn't get far enough to be officially accepted. I wrote the Zoning department to ask what was up, and Kevin Ezell replied:

The application was rejected because there was no vehicle that the Town has to review it. This is according to Henry M. Slater. The application is not in the office and therefore is not available for review. The application would be part of the public record and you would be able to inspect it when we have accepted the application.

I doubt this is more than a bump in the road - presumably they'll modify the application so it can be accepted.

The "no vehicle...to review" makes me wonder if they structured it in some way that doesn't exist under current zoning, but I'm not really sure how to interpret that. I wonder if it may be something the new zoning will address, or if it's something they can work around under the current zoning that allows them more units.

I also wondered if they were still pushing for denser zoning than I suspect is legal, but the evaluation doesn't seem to have gone that far.

I'm sure they'll be back.

History of a Property

While cleaning out piles of paper that used to live in my office a few weeks ago, I found the abstract of title for my house. It's a history of transactions for the property, going back to 1900 with a brief stop in 1875. I won't repeat all of it here - lots of it is legalese and contracts - but there are interesting pieces throughout.

November 18, 1875

Mortgage to secure $1000, by Mary E. McKinney and J.M. McKinney, her husband, conveys "the farm and premises which Casper Miller died seized and upon which he resided at the time of his death supposed to contain about one hundred acres of land". Mortgage conveyed to S.B. Korts in 1889.

March 21, 1900

Referee Edward N. Jackson to Stephen B. Korts, $900 highest bid. Conveys "that part of the Casper Miller farm heretofore owned by Mary E. McKinney and Anna D. McDonald jointly.... bounded...on the north by the lands now or formerly owned by Ira Snyder, Jane Snyder, Peter Snyder, and by one Hallett; on the east by lands of the said Peter Snyder to Fall Creek; thence along the center of Fall Creek to the Mill property known as the Sherwood Mill property, later owned by John Perrigo; thence on the west by... Henry J. Freese... Also all that other tract or parcel of land bounded on the north by the Elmira, Cortland & Northern Railroad... Mott J. Robertson... Walter Snyder... Hiram E. Talmadge..."

You can find at least some of these names in this map from the Goodrich Centennial History of Dryden:

West of Varna, 1898. (Click to enlarge).

Mrs. J. McKinney is on the opposite side of Fall Creek, but M.J. Robertson is obvious, right next to the cemetery area. I'm guessing the S. Mill with millpond by the railroad near the creek is the Sherwood Mill. (Robertson's house is now the Plantation, I believe, and I'm a few doors west of there.)

April 8, 1903

Stephen B. Korts and Kate L. Korts, his wife, to Caroline Snyder. "Estimated to contain twenty acres of land more or less."

November 24, 1915

Caroline Snyder died intestate (no will) August 11, 1914, alleged will destroyed. One-third interest to her attorney, Charles H. Blood.

1915-1919

Five transactions between Blanche Snyder Lee and Charles H. Blood that eventually leave it with Charles H. Blood.

May 8, 1919

Charles H. Blood to John Edward Watkins, for $1.00 etc, though subject to prior lease and $1900 mortgage Charles H. Blood gave Watkins on May 7, 1919.

July 3, 1922

John Edward Watkins and Bertha Watkins take a $3000 mortgage from Jesse E. Whipple.

September 20, 1928

John Edward Watkins to John Edward Watkins and Bertha I. Watkins, husband and wife, as tenants by the entirety for $1.00 etc. - though "excepting and reserving from this conveyance the properties deeded prior to this deed and the rights of Ray Evans and Emery Baker under executory contracts for land heretofore sold to them by contract; the deeds to be given later."

August 13, 1929

The Watkins grant NYSEG a right-of-way along Dryden Road.

September 7, 1929

The Watkins give the deeds to Emery F. Baker and Hettie Baker. Contracted in 1923, for $1.00 etc.

June 27, 1929

Emery F. Baker and Hettie Baker grant NYSEG a 100-foot right of way further up the hill.

September 10, 1930

Emery F. Baker and Hettie Baker to Arthur Prince, subdivision of lots by the road. This is for the land just east of mine - 16 rods (16.5' in a rod) and 8.5' from Bridle Road to iron stake. "Party of second part agrees to build and maintain at his own cost and proper expense a fence to hold cattle along the southerly line of land herein conveyed to said second party and the parties of the first part reserve the right to removed the wire fencing along said highway."

September 10, 1930

Emery F. Baker and Hettie Baker to Lester Eugene Baker for $1.00 etc. - east from Prince lands, 8 rods frontage, 16 rods 8.5' deep. This is my parcel as it is today.

September 30, 1930

Lester Eugene Baker grants NYSEG a right-of-way along the highway.

May 13, 1932

Lester Eugene Baker adds Thelma Baker, his wife, to the title, "survivor to take the whole."

June 14, 1932

The Bakers take a mortgage for $1319 from Lester J. Lidell.

May 23, 1945

The Bakers sell to Lawrence J. Sickmon and Julia M. Sickmon for $4000.

June 15, 1945

The Sickmons take a mortgage for $2700 from Tompkins County Trust Company.

February 8, 1949

The Sickmons take a mortgage for $1120 for Tompkins County Trust Company.

June 4, 1968

Julia M. Sickmon sells to Ronald L. Volbrecht for $1.00 etc, but Volbrecht also takes a "purchase money mortgage" from Ithaca Savings Bank for $9,675.

March 16, 1976

Ronald L. Volbrecht sells to Marguerite Y. Williams for $1.00, and she takes a mortgage out for $19,600 from Citizens Savings Bank. This one has a map!

Along Dryden Road, 1976. (Click to enlarge).

The map looks like an edited version of an older 1959 map, since Route 13 had become Route 366 by then. It tells me, though, that the house number used to be 1178, and that Lloyd Bell, who I'd heard might have built this house, owned the very similar house at 1243 Dryden Road.

November 19, 1999

Tracey Cranston and I buy the house from Marguerite Y. Williams for $63,500. I become sole owner on November 16, 2005.

My understanding (and that of the Tompkins County Assessment Department) has been that the house was built in 1929. I wonder if 1930 is more likely, given the subdivision in September 1930, but maybe they built the house before the subdivision happened.

Most of the time, people think of history as stories of people. Every now and then it's nice to take a step back and look at how something passed through the hands of many people.

Bats in the bat house

I really hate mosquitos, and news that bats are in severe decline because of white-nose fungus worries me:

populations of little brown myotis in the 115 hibernation locations the study covered were falling at rates ranging from 33 percent to 99 percent per year, with an average decline for the Northeast of 73 percent each year.

Slightly more than 1 million bats have vanished in the past two years, the team estimates. The team calculates that out of an initial population of some 6.5 million bats, the little-brown-myotis population could fall as low as 65,000 by 2026.

... given the bats' rate of bug consumption, the casualties so far would have consumed about 694 tons of insects in one warm season.

For now, though, I have bats, as this mess indicates:

Bats living above.

The bathouse faces south, tucked under the roof of the house in a spot where there isn't a nearby window.

A house for bats.

The fungus disease seems to afflict bats when they hibernate in large groups in caves, so I doubt my bat house will make a big difference that way. For now, though, I'm just happy someone's there.

Counting traffic

I just posted on the New York State traffic count map, and then I looked down the road to see a traffic counter. There's not a whole lot to it, but this is how those numbers get created.

Waiting for a car.

Counting a car.

The brains (really memory) of the traffic-counting operation.

Senator Gillibrand to visit Dryden Thursday

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand will be kicking off her statewide agricultural listening tour this Thursday in Dryden, at 1:00pm at the Jerry Dell Farm, 276 Simms Hill Road.

Tonight, there's a forum for Sheriff candidates Peter Meskill and Ken Lansing, who will face each other in the Democratic primary September 14th and in November. There's also a piece on their thoughts on how better to control crime.

Most of Dryden's children who live in the Ithaca City School District go to Caroline Elementary School, which has a new principal this year.

New high school principal, hydrofracking forum rescheduled

Today's Journal has a report on Karen Rachetta, Dryden High School's new principal.

The EPA forum on hydrofracking that was cancelled in August is now rescheduled for September 13th and 15th in Binghamton. There are more speaker slots available to those who call in Friday.

County Budget Discussion Thursday night at Dryden Cafe

Tompkins County Legislators will be hosting a meeting Thursday night to discuss the upcoming 2011 budget at the Dryden Community Center Cafe:

Dryden Community Meeting on the 2011 County Budget - Thursday, September 2

The latest in a series of community meetings to discuss next year's County budget is coming up Thursday evening, September 2 in Dryden.

The meeting will be held at the Dryden Community Cafe, 1 West Main Street in the Village of Dryden, beginning at 7:00 p.m.

The session is sponsored by County Legislators Michael Lane (District 14), Martha Robertson (District 13), and Brian Robison (District 9). The session is free and open to the public, and everyone is encouraged to attend.

The session will provide citizens the opportunity to learn about the fiscal challenges the County faces as it prepares for 2011 and to advise regarding how the County should respond.

"We are in economic crisis," Legislator Lane states. "The effect of limited revenues and unfunded state mandates places Tompkins County between the rock and hard place of cutting programs or raising property taxes. We are bringing this budget presentation to the Town of Dryden to inform residents about the process and to seek their thoughtful comments. I want to hear from people in the Dryden and Freeville area about what actions I should take as their County Legislator."

"We have some really tough choices to make; there can be no 'sacred cows' this year," Legislator Robertson cautions. "Everything is on the table, so it's very important that taxpayers understand what the choices are and give us their feedback. I'm pleased that we can offer this session in Dryden, and I hope neighbors can find the time to join us on September 2."

This is the fourth in the series of legislator-sponsored community meetings on the budget. Similar sessions have already been held in the Towns of Lansing and Ithaca, and in the City of Ithaca's Fall Creek neighborhood.

For more information on the upcoming community meeting, contact Legislator Lane at 844-8313; Legislator Robertson at 274-5434 or 272-0584; Legislator Robison at 351-3601; or Tompkins County Public Information at 274-5555.

If that sounds familiar, it echoes this Ithaca Journal story. No, I didn't copy the Journal. The quote above is the press release the county issued, and the Journal's "staff report" is the press release edited slightly to fit their style.

It should be a good meeting, though, and an opportunity to see just what goes into these difficult conversations.

The curse of water and sewer

When I was buying my house, there was a small problem. The mortgage folks wanted a water test, and we hadn't done one. Why hadn't we done one? Because although the house has a well, it only goes to the garden faucets these days. It's on Bolton Point water, and connected to the sewer system as well. That got us through that hoop, though it also took a few years before I could convince my insurance company that there was a fire hydrant just down the way. Apparently water and sewer are largely invisible, even to the people who track infrastructure. I didn't think hard about it at the time, though maybe I should have.

You can, however, see it by searching for fire hydrants, pumping stations, and manholes, or by tracking down maps like the one in the 2005 Comprehensive Plan:

Infrastructure in Dryden (Click to enlarge and see the whole town).

There are only two large areas with both water and sewer in the Town. The first follows 366 from the Ithaca line out to some of the Route 13 area, and then goes east from there along 13, Lower Creek, and Hanshaw Roads. The other is the Village of Dryden and some of its customers. Some areas along Freese Road have water but not sewer, and there's a tiny area south of Snyder Hill Road which has both water and sewer.

When I first moved in, I was delighted to have tap water that tasted better than the sulfury garden water, and not to have to worry about a septic tank and leach field. Yes, the taxes are significant - no question! - but maintaining wells and septic systems isn't a free lunch either.

I was surprised by the rush to reject a water district in Ellis Hollow in 2006, though probably less surprised by the rejection than that it had come up at all. Development follows infrastructure, after all, and Ellis Hollow is also even more spread out than the expensive Turkey Hill water and sewer district area. It just wasn't going to happen.

The Comprehensive Plan and the Draft Zoning both push hard on concentrating development in areas that already have infrastructure. From a planning perspective this makes sense, as septic systems are hazardous in densely populated areas, infrastructure is expensive, concentration allows the creation of neighborhoods, and in some ways can reduce transportation costs.

From a resident's perspective, though, this is not much fun. Most residents have no plans to build even four units, much less ten units, on their property, yet pay lots of taxes for the privilege of letting someone build developments they might not even support. Many of these taxpayers have lots or frontage too small to let them take advantage of such possibilities, even if they see them as an opportunity.

The result is that living in an area with water and sewer districts - but no local village - is a risky proposition. Developers are steered to your neighborhood by default, and because that neighborhood contains only around a tenth of the residents in the town, you lack political clout to say no.

The two most common reasons I've heard for why people live in Dryden instead in denser areas are that they want to live in the country and it's cheaper. The infrastructure doesn't help on either count. (Community is another part, though generally folks have to live here a while to see that, and I don't think I can make a plausible case that this infrastructure helps much on that count.)

The existing western area covered by the water and sewer districts is pretty much stuck, unless it can find the wherewithal to form a village and take control of its own destiny, as the Village of Dryden certainly has. In the meantime, we'll be forced to keep a paranoid eye on the Town of Dryden - and I'm happy to report that lots of Varna residents have indeed been showing up to meetings.

The zoning also contains Optional Neighborhood District Overlay areas around Etna and south and east of the Village of Dryden. Perhaps recognizing that cranking up the allowed density to the levels permitted by the hamlet and commercial zoning (10 dwellings/acre) would ensure that those areas avoid ever getting water and sewer infrastructure, the maximum density there is set to six dwellings per acre.

My strong advice to those areas, though, would be to avoid water and sewer unless there's a catastrophic need or you can form or join a village and localize land use decisions. The current planning model may make sense on a macro scale, but it has the really nasty side effect of inducing paranoia about your neighbors once you've read what's allowed in areas with infrastructure, and "in-between densities" are worth worrying about.

Perhaps New York State's efforts to reduce the overall number of municipal governments might better be served by trying to consolidate the piles of water, sewer, and lighting districts into villages than by encouraging villages to dissolve.

Traffic count map

How many cars go by every day? Well, New York State seems to think about 7,383 pass my house each day. It could be worse - the 13/366 overlap has 18126, and Route 13 between there and the Village of Dryden shows 14,253.

The Department of Transportation has put together a searchable map of traffic counts. This shows the greater Dryden area:

State highway traffic counts (Click to enlarge).

It would be an even better map if it included counts for smaller roads, no doubt.

(Thanks to Andy Arthur for pointing this out.)

Another zoning boundary case

Near the end of the July meeting on the proposed zoning, builder Bruno Schickel asked why the tables in Sections 605 and 606 set a limit of four units per acre on individual single-family homes. Other approaches in those tables, which I thought allowed far too much density period, allowed up to ten units per acre.

While I understood (though disagreed with) most of Schickel's other points, that one left me wondering. The Fall Creek neighborhood in Ithaca is about 5 or 6 units per acre, and I'm pretty sure that Corning, where I grew up, stays below 8 units per acre when single family homes are the model. I understand that smaller (and taller) houses can work very well on smaller lots, but what might tempt us to experiment with such a thing? Dense housing developments in Dryden are generally - well, they're generally not especially attractive.

While looking around , though, I found a link to one of his more striking projects, Boicevillle Cottages in Caroline. It's a dense little neighborhood of distinctive houses surrounded by largely empty fields. As both Tompkins Weekly (page 2) and today's Ithaca Journal report, he's planning to build another 37 of those on 11 acres.

Boiceville Cottages.

That's only 3.3 units per acre, though judging by the comments on the Ithaca Journal article, it's too much for some people:

The tree huggers love that type of layout; clustered houses around a commons area, or in modern green terminology, "open space". Its the same stuff the Eco-Villagers do, and its a throwback to the Puritan days when you were expected to live around the commons area so your neighbors could keep an eye on your daily activities to ensure you weren't falling into godlessness. - BFranklinsGhost

Maybe those are the reasons Dryden zoning prohibits more than 4 single-family homes per acre?

Boiceville Cottages.

No, not really, especially as these are rental units anyway. It's worth considering a hypothetical, though. Saunders Greenhouse is for sale, just three doors up the road from me. The listing, citing current zoning, says that:

Zoning call for up to 135 units, but will be affected by grade issue.

Those are some serious grade issues, and the proposed zoning would limit it to more like 90 units, but could I imagine a development of these kinds of 800-1500-square-foot cottages there? Without wincing?

Boiceville Cottages.

Yes, I can - though maybe the paint colors on the houses visible to the road and the neighbors could be, maybe, just a little more muted?

The problem, though, is that most developers aren't Bruno Schickel. It's not just that they paint houses in duller colors or wrap them in vinyl siding, but that they set out to create ordinary dullness in ways that will net them maximum profit. Schickel's creations, at least the ones I've seen and heard about, seem to get a lot more thinking before they start building. It's not just architectural madness, funky trimmings and such, either - Boiceville Cottages definitely sets out to create a community, even if it's a community in an isolated location. (It doesn't attempt to be Ecovillage, either.)

To run the Saunders Greenhouse hypothetical another way, I don't have high hopes that most developers of large-scale apartment complexes would put anything on that land I'd regard as something other than blight. I get a headache just imagining a Varna II style layout there, maximum boxes made possible by massive retaining walls.

I suspect there are other people in Dryden who think I'm crazy for liking Schickel's cottages, and who'd like to make sure that even that can't happen. From my perspective, though, I could agree with Schickel's questioning the rules - if most developers created work like his.

Since they don't, however, I think even the rules Schickel finds too constraining to be too loose.

More quick hits from the Ithaca Journal

It was a pretty quiet week for Dryden in the Journal. Harvestation, though, may be one of the best applications of technology to come out of Dryden in a while:

Harvestation.com, a local online bulk buying marketplace which went live in June...

The site is an outgrowth of the need for a connection point where local homesteaders, canners and big families can buy local and organic produce in bulk, said Katie Quinn-Jacobs, a local preserving expert and founder of the site, along with her husband David and friend Allison Fromme.

The Finger Lakes Land Trust will be celebrating a 39-acre addition to their 120 acre Ellis Hollow Nature Preserve, Pearman Woods, on September 16th at the Ellis Hollow Community Center. (The Town's posted a hiking map of the older preserve. There is a parking lot there now.)

Dryden Town Talk focused on an amazing sunflower, and noted a Lions Athletic Club meeting and Dryden Youth Opportunity Fair coming up.

Dryden also got a shout-out in a piece about Cornell's Cascadilla Hall:

In 1862, Dr. Samantha Nivison, the founder of a water cure in Dryden, approached Ezra Cornell and other prominent Ithacans about establishing a similar institution in Ithaca and combining it with a medical program for female students. With their logistical and financial support, she believed such an institution could thrive. Water cures, or hydrotherapy, were popular in mid-19th century America. They involved people bathing and soaking in water for extended periods, often with wet cloths on their heads, and drinking large quantities of pure or mineral water. Most of the water cures in the United States were in the Northeast, especially upstate New York, including Elmira, Oswego and Dansville.

Unfortunately, despite Cornell's support, Cascadilla Place (as it was then called) struggled. By 1868, after years of difficulties, including construction delays and insufficient funding, the Cascadilla Place Corporation came under the control of the newly opened Cornell University. Renamed Cascadilla Hall, it eventually became a dormitory for students and new professors.

Finally, the Journal mentions the Town of Dryden and the Villages of Freeville and Dryden in a piece about municipal employee pay. Unfortunately, all they do is average employee pay and rank those averages. In a really broad sense, those averages tell you something sort of, but they also fail to reflect what kind of distribution of jobs given municipalities have (lots of highway staff, or a few making overtime?) and what kinds of work they have to do. I'm not especially surprised, given the size and complexity of the towns, that Caroline's average is $26,972 while Dryden's is $34,150 and the Town of Ithaca is $47,674 - but what makes that happen? And why is the Town of Groton's average higher at $35,911 than the Town of Dryden's?

Maybe publishing the averages will get people to ask questions, but this list provides very few answers.

What became of the Ellis Hollow Church?

While looking for something else, I stumbled on this set of videos showing the remodeled Ellis Hollow Church and its carriage house. They're advertising vacation rentals - 3000 square feet for the church, 1500 square feet for the carriage house. (Perfect Painters - Heritage Builders own the place and did the work.)

The church closed in 2004 and was remodeled in 2007.

Why would you want to ban the corner grocery?

The closer I look at Dryden zoning - both the existing zoning and the proposed zoning - the more I wonder about the value of zoning. I recognize that it's a compromise, meant to keep people with no interest in their neighbors from wrecking the place, but sometimes...

I've gone to Brookton's Market a few times lately in the morning with Sungiva. It's kind of out of my way (7 miles), but I needed to take pictures in the area, and any time I'm in Brooktondale and they're open, I stop.

Brookton's Market.

It's not your average convenience store - for one thing it has produce. It has a comfortable place to sit in the front, complete with child-size chairs that Sungiva loves and children's books she explores. They combine a small grocery store with a deli, desserts, and coffee shop, creating something very comfortable that I'd love to see in my neighborhood.

Seating at Brookton's Market, Brooktondale.

The main complaint I've heard about the place is that it's expensive. I suspect that's true compared to Wegmans or Aldi, but if I compare it with its typical gas station peers you get either more or better for your money. (Yes, I drink gas station coffee nearly every day.) It's strange how a space that invites you to stay awhile can have an effect, especially if that space isn't all formica or plastic, and the impact of seeing produce in a universe typically filled with processed food is huge.

Looking into Brookton's Market.

So great, this is a very nice model, and you certainly could build it where Dryden's convenience stores are now. We're not banning anything in Caroline with Dryden zoning, right? So what's the problem?

A place like this would be great in Ellis Hollow, maybe near the Ellis Hollow/Ellis Hollow Creek intersection, which has lots of subdivisions to its east. That intersection is 4 miles to the convenience store in Slaterville Springs, 4.3 miles to P&C in East Hill Plaza, 5.4 miles driving to Brookton's Market, and 5.5 miles to Ludgate Farms over on Hanshaw. The neighborhood certainly could support the slightly higher price of the food, and avoiding five mile trips is generally a good thing. When gas prices are high, a local source of food would be an even better thing.

Nope. Not allowed, period. From about Stevenson Road south and almost to Hollister Road east (except on German Cross), the southwest corner of Dryden is currently zoned R-B, the most restrictive zoning in the Town. It's slated to be zoned RR, Rural Residential, the most restrictive zoning available, or CV, conservation, which still doesn't allow retail. The list of allowed uses for R-B is short enough that I don't mind typing it:

Section 701. Allowed Uses.

1. One family, two-family dwellings

2. Farming, farm buildings, gardening, nurseries, greenhouses and the raising of livestock and poultry.

3. Existing farms; roadside stands for the sale and display of farm products provided that any such stand shall be at least 50 feet from the road center line. (See Section 1502.3).

4. Educational buildings, churches, community buildings, and other semi-public structures.

5. Private garages.

6. Home occupation of a professional or service nature when such activity is located entirely upon a residential lot and operated by the person living in said residence (see Section 1502.5)

That's all that's allowed - except that by special permit you may be able to have "not more than two employees" for a home occupation. "Professional or service nature" means that you're not selling objects. The new zoning is barring "Retail Business - Any establishment selling goods to the general public for personal and household consumption."

I understand that Ellis Hollow might not be seeking convenience stores, and that it's difficult to write zoning that allows certain kinds of stores while prohibiting others. Still, it seems odd at best that Ellis Hollow residents are forbidden short trips to buy food.

(Yes, it is possible to request a change in law when a specific project becomes a possibility, but it is much more involved than requesting a variance or even a special use permit.)

The only real bright side I can see is that maybe this would encourage someone to build such a thing in Varna, where it's likely to be allowed however the zoning turns out. That would be good for me, but not really the right answer.

VVFC honors former Chief Ted Szymanski

I've noticed for a few years that the flags on fire stations and at the State Police are sometimes at half staff when the rest of the flags in the area are flying normally. This week, I got to know about one of those half-staff flags, and had the honor of seeing it lowered to be given to the family.

VVFC explains half-staff flag.

Ted Szymanski was chief of the Varna Volunteer Fire Company in the early 1980s after years as a volunteer, captain, and deputy chief. He was a fire instructor as well, an adjunct instructor at the NYS Academy of Fire Science in Montour Falls and the National Fire Academy. By day, he was a math professor at TC3.

Ted Szymanski as Chief of the Varna Volunteer Fire Company.

Szymanski's wife Mary told some of Ted's stories. My favorite was the one where he was inside a burning building and a phone kept ringing. He finally picked it up, and explained that he was fighting a fire. The woman at the other end thought it was a strange joke the owner of the house was pulling to get out of finishing some work for her. He got back to fighting the fire, but half an hour later a car pulled up, the woman got out, and marveled that yes, there really was a fire there.

Turnout gear arranged in memory.

Mary and Sean Szymanski accept the flag from Duane Testut and Chief Roy Rizzo.

I've posted a much larger gallery of the family's visit and receiving the flag.

Wind farms and radar

I'd heard that the primary reason that Cornell abandoned its 2005 plans for a wind farm on Mount Pleasant was the Federal Aviation Administration. This had come up in Dryden meetings, and there was a poster at the East Hill Flying Club, but I didn't know how seriously to take it.

Apparently, this is a common issue near airports both civilian and military, and not just because of the towers' danger to flight paths:

Moving turbine blades can be indistinguishable from airplanes on many radar systems, and they can even cause blackout zones in which planes disappear from radar entirely. Clusters of wind turbines, which can reach as high as 400 feet, look very similar to storm activity on weather radar, making it harder for air traffic controllers to give accurate weather information to pilots...

Eliminating turbine clutter on radar is complicated. Part of the challenge is that many radar systems in use in the United States date back to the 1950s and have outdated processing capabilities - in some cases, less than those of a modern laptop computer. While there are technology fixes to ease interference on these aging systems, it can be tricky to filter out just the turbines.

On radar, "a wind turbine can look like a 747 on final approach," said Peter Drake, technical director at Raytheon, a major provider of radar systems. "We don't want to have the software eliminate a real 747."

The Energy Department is optimistic that all of these issues can be sorted out, but I'm guessing that in the short term this means that large scale wind farms in the immediate vicinity of Tompkins County Airport, especially near the flightpaths, is not likely to be a popular idea with a particular special interest that can actually stop things.

Varna Fire Company bunkhouse ready for use

The Varna Volunteer Fire Company has built a new bunkhouse, a building neatly hidden behind their station that lets them provide housing to up to eight fire personnel who will be ready to respond to calls quickly.

VVFC bunkhouse ready for work.

The VVFC has been talking about a bunker program for longer than I've been running this site. Cayuga Heights and Dryden both have bunker programs, which make it far easier to ensure that responders are ready to leap out the door whenever there's an emergency.

The rooms are small and spartan, but nice:

Room in the VVFC bunker.

I've posted a gallery of photos showing the construction of the bunkhouse over time and its current pristine interior. I'm sure it will be getting a lot of use in years to come.

(I joined the Varna Volunteer Fire Company as a supporting member back in January. No, I'm not leaping into burning buildings - I'm writing software that prints badges for the people who do that, and who do a whole lot more. I figured I'd be done by February or early March. At the meeting I attended, they were wrapping up the plans and financing for their new bunker program, but hadn't yet broken ground. They finished building the bunkhouse at just about the time I finished my badge project for them.)

Reflections on the Republican Governor primary

A Dryden resident suggested I post a link to this discussion of the Republican primary for Governor. Republicans seem to have a lot more primaries this year at the state level than Democrats, and I have to admit I've not been paying close attention.