I am Geri Tierney, and I am writing to you as a resident of Tompkins County to voice my concern for the proposed reduced funding for Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) of Tompkins County in the 2026 County Budget.

Cornell Cooperative Extension provides essential programs which strengthen and support families and communities, and which support local needs in the areas of food, agriculture, youth education, understanding energy choices and workforce development. My own family and many of my friends and neighbors have benefited from these programs. The proposed reduced budget would substantially reduce CCE’s ability to provide these valuable services. I urge the Legislature to restore level funding for CCE of Tompkins County, as requested by CCE.

You are breaking our backs with constant increases in taxes and now it’s at a time when the basics like food, shelter, utilities, and healthcare costs are skyrocketing. You can do better than this.

3 reasons for not spending our taxpayer money on the Ithaca Airport: 1. The weather. 2. The weather, 3. The weather. Ithaca will always be a low-traffic low-reliability air destination. At best a carrier will get you to Detroit. Also, air travel privileges the wealthiest. A tourist family with four kids is not going to fly here. Wealthy travelers don’t stay long. If they want to go camping, they’ll go to Nepal.
Think outside the box. Think TRAINs. Use this tourism $$ to launch a rail spur from Ithaca to Syracuse. Amtrak already has the rails and the right-of-way. Imagine a train traveling at 100 MPH covering the 56 miles to Syracuse in 40 minutes. Now visitors would have access to Ithaca from a busy International Airport with plenty of flying options nonstop to points worldwide.
And a train station brings travelers DOWNTOWN. Not out to the boondocks where the airport is. A train station ups the real estate values around it immensely, so a developer could be found to build the station along with retail, restaurant, hotel, and yes, housing, to further contribute to the developing West End of Ithaca.
Ann Michel

The Strategic Tourism Planning Board (STPB) supports the Tompkins County Legislature's decision to withdraw the proposed action to redirect $500,000 from the 2026 tourism budget to the Tompkins County Airport budget. This action avoids a situation that would have severely destabilized the County's tourism program, and we are grateful that the concerns raised were taken under advisement. By upholding the integrity of the tourism budget, the Legislature has averted the negative outcomes previously identified by the STPB:

1. Preservation of Critical Community Grants - The withdrawal of the request is crucial because a $500,000 cut would have necessitated the cancellation of approximately 70 percent of all STPB grant programs in 2026. These programs help build tourism through enhancing capacity for outdoor recreation and arts and culture organizations which also improves quality of life for residents in all municipalities across the county. These organizations are still recovering from the disaster of the pandemic. There are no corporate entities in town that could help these organizations replace this shortfall in grant funding. These grants are vital, supporting community organizations and projects that:
• Maintain stability, growth, and employment for staff throughout the county.
• Contribute to our quality of life and making our community a better place to live.
• Ensure Tompkins County remains a unique and attractive destination for visitors.
2. Maintaining the Integrity of the Advisory and Planning Process - The decision to maintain the current tourism funding is a vital step toward restoring predictable, long-term fiscal planning. Previous proposals for ad hoc budget reassignments have shown that such actions fundamentally undermine the entire advisory process, despite the STPB's careful review and proposal of the budget.

By withdrawing the request, the Legislature has affirmed the value of the careful budgeting and strategic planning conducted by the STPB. This allows us to proceed effectively with our duty to develop a new long-term plan for the County's tourism future. The STPB invests significant time and effort in meticulous budget planning, and the stability provided by this decision ensures that work is not negated.

We strongly urge the Legislature to continue to prioritize stable, consistent funding for the tourism program to ensure the long-term health and growth of our local economy.

I urge the legislature to reject the proposed use of $500,000 from room tax funds to support the airport. Tompkins County's vibrant arts scene is important to our quality of life and for attracting tourists, and the room tax money makes a huge difference in its support of the arts. There are many amazing programs that the room tax supports that might no longer exist if this goes through.

I urge you not to use room tax revenue to fund the Ithaca airport. Our arts and culture organizations and other tourism assets, heartbeats of our community, rely on this funding for their continued operations and growth. The Strategic Tourism Planning Board works hard each year to budget and plan in order to provide consistent, reliable funding to these critical organizations and initiatives. Pulling funds to support the airport would have a detrimental effect on this consistency and these organizations' ability to serve our community and visitors alike. The arts are not extra - they're essential.

The Food Bank of the Southern Tier is anticipating increased demand through our network of partner agencies as well as through our programs such as the Mobile Food Pantry and School Food Centers. Given the passage of the federal legislation this summer, we are anticipating a decrease in SNAP participation and also new clients to our network due to rising costs, inflation, and program cuts. Tompkins County has been a long-time funder of our network of pantries, and also recently enabled us to expand our School Food Center program including with a site at TST BOCES and a satellite location for Ithaca City School District. We encourage the legislature to prioritization food as a basic need for our county residents.

Good evening Legislators,

My name is Sue Ellen Holmes, and I am here to strongly oppose the proposed 27% cut to Opportunities, Alternatives, and Resources of Tompkins County. These cuts would remove nearly $144,000 from OAR’s budget and directly harm the most vulnerable in our community.

At Asteri Ithaca, 40 individuals who were once chronically homeless now have a safe home. At Ithaca Arthaus, another 40 young people who were homeless or on the brink of homelessness are now stably housed. Together, these programs represent 80 people whose lives have been changed. But 19 of them stand to lose the critical support they need if OAR is cut.

I’ve seen this first-hand at Asteri. The Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative provides case management, but it is OAR that delivers the direct, on-the-ground services—whether it’s help navigating daily challenges, staying connected to healthcare, or simply having someone to turn to. And whereas ESSHI services are voluntary, OAR has long-standing relationships with people who have experienced homelessness and can encourage their participation in services, building trust where others cannot. Without OAR, case management alone cannot succeed.

These cuts would not just reduce funding on a budget line—they would unravel the progress we’ve made, displace people back into homelessness, and close off real pathways out of poverty.

At a time when Tompkins County has an escalating housing crisis and only a temporary homeless shelter, protecting OAR’s funding is not optional—it is a lifeline. I urge you to preserve OAR’s budget and ensure we continue to build a community where everyone has the support they need to thrive.

Thank you.

I work for OAR of Tompkins County; I am the housing coordinator. During any given week I have upwards of 30 appointments with clients who are struggling with homelessness throughout our county. I was homeless and living in the encampments for 6 years along with 10 years of active SUD. When I started working for OAR I was on Tompkins County Treatment Court, and my main goal was to help people just like me. My week doesn't start on Monday and end on Friday. I work on weekends, nights and sometimes at the most inconvenient times. When I come into work at times there are 3 or 4 people standing outside waiting to come in and get coffee, get warm and to just have a safe place to be. We have no shelter. People feel safe here. Every single one of our employees has lived experience. Many of us have had a substance use disorder of some kind in the past, many of us have been arrested. We can relate. Cutting OAR over $140,000 would not allow us to help our clients in the way that we help them now. We are averaging about 40 clients a day. Almost all of which are homeless, addicted and have some sort of mental health diagnosis. Our drop-in center has clothes and coffee. We have donations of hygiene stuff. We have some snacks for people. We listen. It's not about what is best for OAR. It is about what's best for this community, for the vulnerable community that is the topic of so many discussions.

Emphasizing deep cuts in this moment is out of step with reality: prices are soaring, energy bills are spiking, and we’re laying off real people—not just ‘positions’—while holding sizable reserves for a building many residents don’t want and that has become dramatically more expensive to construct. At the same time, there’s a troubling trend of devaluing employees—especially in training. Training budgets are gutted for most, yet exceptions are made for a select few (Why does a three-person department carry the county’s second-largest training budget? Our oversight would be better spent understanding outliers like this than asking department heads—who know their staffing needs best—to repeatedly justify them). Frontline staff are the boots on the ground delivering services; expecting them to do more with outdated tools and training undermines quality and safety. Please reprioritize: protect jobs, invest in staff development and modern tools, and reconsider capital reserves that don’t serve immediate community needs. A budget is a values statement—let’s make sure ours shows we value people and essential services.