What is Tompkins County up to this year? Chairman Daniel Klein talks priorities

Daniel Klein was elected as chair of the Tompkins County Legislature Jan. 2, after representing Danby and Caroline for the last 10 years.

Shortly after his swearing-in, Klein thanked outgoing Chairwoman Shawna Black, D-Ithaca, for her service in the role over the past two years. Black will serve as vice chair in 2024 per a unanimous vote of the Legislature.

Klein's prior experiences and life outside of legislating

Over the past 10 years, Klein has asked all manner of municipal government officials about their successes in the field and said Tuesday that they all mentioned their successes came with solid communication.

“Maintain relationships with people, talk with everybody, those are all variations on the same idea,” he said. “It does not work to declare that's something's going to happen, you have to have a whole bunch of people on board and that, you know, it's a time-consuming process I guess.”

“It's very stimulating,” Klein continued, “There's so much going on so, you really need to just kind of pay attention to all these things at once. Boredom is is my lifelong worry, there's a lot of things that I don't want to be, but bored is right near the top of the list so it's never boring.”

In his free time, Klein likes to keep a green thumb and volunteers for the group known as “The Beautification Brigade,” which facilitates flower plantings throughout the city of Ithaca.

A change in location

Klein said Tuesday he doesn’t plan to make sweeping changes to how policies are handled by the legislature, but big changes are coming regardless, including a change in location to a set of buildings no longer in use on the Corner of N. Tioga and E. Buffalo Streets in Ithaca.

The county purchased the Ithaca Professional Building at 308 North Tioga St. and the KeyBank Building at 300 North Tioga St. in 2021, for a total of $2.8 million, according to county documents.

In a few years, those buildings will house much of the county’s operation.

“We're going to be building a new building at some point and try to guess right now I'd say we're maybe three years away from that,” Klein said. “It’s going to be on the same property, right next door to the courthouse, and it will enable us to move out of the courthouse completely so that New York State can have it back.”

Klein said the project will cost tens of millions of dollars, hoped that this would be a “once in a hundred years” situation, and asserted that the new building would be made to be extremely energy efficient.

“We’ve been talking about it for years because the need has been there for years, and it's such a big project that we've just pushed back a bunch of times and then COVID came along,” Klein said. “it's a huge challenge. For one thing .. we operate in the city of Ithaca and we have to abide by their zoning laws and historic district laws and all that kind of stuff. Their laws are pretty strict, so we don't even know yet if we are going to be able to do this easily in terms of permission from the city.”

The county also plans to demolish the building that currently houses the Tompkins County Board of Elections at 128 E. Buffalo Street, likely replacing it and the adjacent parking lot with the new home of the legislature.

Parsing priorities

Aside from being what he likened to a traffic cop for the county and making sure that communication keeps flowing, Klein said he hopes to see two major initiatives come to fruition.

Tompkins County Director of Emergency Response Michael Stitley and EMS Coordinator Joe Milliman detailed the proposed two-year Rapid Medical Response Project pilot program at an October legislature meeting.

Milliman said volunteer first responders are becoming increasingly hard to recruit, and that low staffing levels in the county are effecting emergency response times, particularly in more rural areas.

The proposed countywide rapid EMS response program would offer three response units placed in locations around the county, allowing for a quick response.

The units would not use traditional ambulances or transport individuals for medical attention, but would offer rapid, on-site support to address an immediate issue or support someone while they await additional resources.

Director Mike Stitley shared how this program would supplement the existing system, and is not designed to replace existing services offered by local municipalities. Stitley added how this new program could be dispatched for any type of call, even those regarding lower-level concerns.

The estimated cost to start the program is just shy of $700,000, which would support three units of full and part-time staff members, each with a vehicle and EMS equipment.

“We're hoping to have it all grant funded this first year, but the next year 2025, we need all local funding for,” Klein said Tuesday. “In a couple of months, probably in March, I would guess we are going to start convening meetings with all the municipalities in the county to see if we can figure out a cost-sharing arrangement of how to pay for the system.”

The county sent out an email notification last week, alerting members of the public that the county is now hiring for the response team, seeking independent workers with strong basic life support skills, and a sense of valuable community outreach.

Although most in the county have access to the internet, another big issue on Klein’s radar is the county’s broadband project, which aims to supply the estimated 5% of Tompkins County residents who do not have the option to receive of broadband internet.

The legislature in June approved a request for proposals for an internet service provider to institute and maintain a broadband network that would provide an estimated 1,200 locations the ability to connect to broadband networks.

“It turns out that the five percent that doesn't have access to broadband internet is over 1,000 addresses in Tompkins County,” Klein said. “It's a significant number of people who don't have the opportunity to have broadband internet, much less affordable options or competition, anything like that.”

Klein has pushed for grant funding for the effort since its approval. He has represented Danby and Caroline during his 10 years serving on the legislature, and he said that those two towns along with Newfield are where most of these unserved addresses are.

This article originally appeared on Ithaca Journal: Tompkins County Legislature Daniel Klein discusses 2024 priorities