Planning committee reports new grant applications, approves planner promotion

The Cayuga County Planning Committee received updates on recent grant applications and planning projects and approved a personnel resolution promoting an incumbent planner to principal environmental planner.

Committee chair Tom Winslow called the meeting to order and the committee approved minutes from Feb. 13, 2025. Planning staff member Terry Tulligan reported that the county submitted a county infrastructure grant application the previous day and that the application will bring the county just over $1,100 in reimbursable revenue for staff time and will reimburse the $250 application fee. Tulligan also described two recently circulated New York State grant opportunities: a Coastal Rehabilitation and Resilience grant that would apply only to Sterling and Fairhaven, and an inland flooding/LWRP implementation grant that would apply to municipalities in the Owasco Lake watershed including Sterling, Fairhaven, Cayuga and Union Springs. Tulligan said both opportunity types are roughly 90% state-funded for qualifying public-lands projects.

Tulligan described two multi-month planning efforts the department will lead: a 36-month county strategic plan starting in mid-April and a 24-month brownfields/BOA project that will start the same time. She said those efforts will include outreach and inventory work, multiple stakeholder and focus-group meetings, and a series of public meetings planned in three locations across the county (the north end, Auburn, and Moravia) so residents from different areas have an opportunity to attend.

The committee also considered a revised personnel resolution that would promote the incumbent associate planner to principal environmental planner. The resolution, which the presenter said is funded in the department’s approved 2025 budget, would abolish the associate planner position once the promoted incumbent successfully completes the civil-service probationary period. The personnel committee had reviewed and recommended the promotion and corresponding starting step for the new title. Committee members moved, seconded and approved the resolution by voice vote.

Other routine updates included staffing interview schedules for an open planning position and ongoing department work on town zoning amendments (one town had requested targeted amendments to a set of earlier changes and has a memorandum of agreement and a percentage-based payment arrangement for that work). Committee members briefly discussed a transfer-station land-use item; Tulligan said the requested amendments would remove transfer stations as an allowed land use in that town’s draft. The committee also heard several program and events updates from other county staff present (youth STEM and workforce events, 4-H activities, tourism summit planning, Sterling Nature Center awards and parks grant application planning for a bridge replacement), which county staff said will be advanced through the appropriate standing committees or the legislature when needed.

The meeting adjourned after routine business.