Briefs: Tompkins Bank CEO retires, event to address hunger, more

CEO of Tompkins Bank CNY Greg Hartz retires

The Board of Directors of Tompkins Community Bank recently announced that Gregory J. Hartz will retire as president of Tompkins Community Bank – Central New York in the spring of 2023, after 20 years of service to the company.

Hartz retires after 40 years in the banking industry. He joined Tompkins in 2002, in the role of vice president and trust officer for the former Tompkins Investment Services, now Tompkins Financial Advisors. He was promoted to the role of senior vice president and then to president/CEO of Tompkins Trust Company in 2007 and today serves in the role of president of Tompkins Community Bank’s CNY market. (Tompkins Trust Company and its sister banks became Tompkins Community Bank in a charter consolidation earlier this year.)

He currently sits on the Board of Directors of the bank and is an executive vice president of the bank holding company, Tompkins Financial Corp., and a member of its senior leadership team.

Consistent with his personal values and that of Tompkins, Hartz is active in community service through multiple nonprofit boards and many leadership roles throughout the market. He currently serves on the board of Cayuga Health System as chair of the personnel and finance committee and a member of the executive committee; on the Ithaca Area Economic Development board as past board chair and a member of the executive committee; on the Cornell University Council as a member of the administrative board as well as mentoring committee chair; as emeritus member of the Dyson Advisory Council; as a Cornell Community Relations Committee member; and on the event committee for the Racker Rivals Big Red.

Past community affiliations have included service to the Legacy Foundation as past board chair; United Way as past campaign chair and board chair; Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce as past board chair; and Challenge Workforce Solutions as past board chair. Prior professional involvement includes serving in the role of board chair for the Independent Bankers Association of New York State (IBANYS).

Tompkins has a robust succession planning process in place that will be conducted over the next several months. The process includes the bank’s board and senior management and will help leadership identify the best candidate to serve the central New York banking community in the role Hartz vacates upon his retirement. It will include careful consideration of both internal and external candidates.

“Greg Hartz embodies everything good about community bank leadership. His many contributions to Tompkins and this community cannot be overstated,” said Dan Fessenden, Tompkins Financial board member and chair of Tompkins Central New York community bank board. “He has been a significant player in the growth of our bank here in central New York and led Tompkins’ expansion into the Syracuse market.”

Steve Romaine, president and CEO of Tompkins Financial Corp., added, “Throughout his long career and two decades with Tompkins, Greg has been a friend in the truest sense to not only those he worked with and for, but to our community as a whole. He wears his natural love of people and passion for his community on his sleeve. You can’t know him without knowing how deeply he touches everyone around him, both inside and outside of the bank’s walls. I know I speak for all of us in wishing Greg and his family happy times ahead, as he retires to continue to pursue his many interests, involvements and friendships.”

Hartz expressed gratitude to the Tompkins team and reflected on his history.

“I have enjoyed a wonderful career at Tompkins and I am grateful for the opportunity to have served this company for so many years,” he said. “I am proud of our company’s commitment to the community and I am proud of the many very dedicated employees who work every day to deliver an outstanding experience for our customers, communities and shareholders.”

 

Event to address hunger in America, around the world

Catholic Charities Tompkins/Tioga has teamed with local faith communities and the national ecumenical anti-hunger organization Bread for the World in organizing an educational event for the Tompkins County community on the 2023 re-authorization of the federal Farm Bill.

The event will take place Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church parish hall, located at 210 N. Cayuga St. in downtown Ithaca.

The Farm Bill is a multi-billion-dollar package of legislation authorized every five years by Congress that funds SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly called Food Stamps) and international food aid programs, as well as agricultural credit, crop insurance, food research and many other programs.

Additionally, the legislation has important ramifications on climate change policy, particularly regarding efforts to reduce food waste in landfills. Advocates are also asking that the Farm Bill include measures to provide greater support for people of color in agriculture.

Attendees will hear about the impact of the Farm Bill on low-income people and the broader community and how to join in advocacy on the bill.

Speakers at the event will include former SNAP recipient and farmer Anne Lee, Meaghan Sheehan Rosen MSW, coordinator of Friendship Donations Network, and Cheri Andes, senior regional organizer for Bread for the World.

Laurie Konwinski, justice and peace ministry coordinator for Catholic Charities, explained: “We need many people speaking up so that Congress passes a Farm Bill that ensures fewer people go hungry and that farmers, especially farmers of color, can access the support they need to grow food for all of us.”

The event is sponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Church, the Justice, Peace, and Integrity of Creation (JPIC) Committee of First Presbyterian Church of Ithaca, Catholic Charities Tompkins/Tioga and Bread for the World.

Bread for the World, founded in 1974, describes itself as “a Christian advocacy organization urging U.S. decision makers to do all they can to pursue a world without hunger [with a] mission to educate and equip people to advocate for policies and programs that can help end hunger in the U.S. and around the world.”

 

Help name Cayuga Nature Center’s animal ambassadors

Cayuga Nature Center, a public education venue of the Paleontological Research Institution (PRI), is reaching out to the community to help choose a name pairing for its new animal ambassadors, two opossum brothers, and help raise funds for their feeding, general care and new enclosure.

Cayuga Nature Center’s two new opossum brothers arrived at the Nature Center on Sept. 20 from a local wildlife rehabilitator. The rehabilitator received these brothers and the rest of the litter after their mother was sadly hit and killed by a car when the boys were only 1 month old.

While their siblings will be released back into the wild, these two brothers are non-releasable due to a bone disease that prevented their bones from developing correctly. They cannot climb as well or run as fast as they would need to survive in the wild, but as animal ambassadors, they will still get to live full lives teaching people about their wild relatives.

Currently the opossums are almost 6 months old and need plenty of food, vitamins and exercise to ensure they continue to develop healthily. Like all the animals at the Nature Center, it takes a lot of time, money and effort to ensure the opossums are getting high quality food, plenty of enrichment and a comfortable place to live.

It costs $20 a week to feed the opossums, $600 a month for their general care and about $2,000 to complete their outdoor enclosure.

Cayuga Nature Center Director of Live Animals Shyia Magan shared, “With the support of the community for this fundraiser, taking care of these boys will be much easier.”

The opossums will stay in a temporary enclosure at the Nature Center, off-exhibit to the public until the new enclosure is built. The Nature Center staff plans to complete the new outdoor enclosure for the opossums by spring 2023. Visitors are encouraged to come meet the brothers in spring 2023.

Voting is open now and will run through Nov. 14. The top voted name pairing will be announced a few days after voting ends. One vote in this naming campaign costs $5, and the name pairing with the most votes will be given to the new animal ambassadors.

Learn more and vote at cayuganaturecenter.org/opossum-fundraiser.

 

County honors public safety telecommunicator Zach Guidi

Zachary Guidi, a dispatch supervisor in Tompkins County’s Emergency Communications Center, was named the 2022 Dispatcher of the Year by the APCO (Association of Public Safety Communications Officials) Atlantic Chapter. He was presented with the award this week at the group’s fall conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.

Communications Center Manager John Halaychik accompanied Guidi to the conference and said, “Zack has proven time and again that he is a valuable asset and team player to our department. Respected by his co-workers, he’s always into work early, engages with his colleagues, has valuable input for administrative staff, and exercises sound judgment when critical thinking and decision-making is required.”

In accepting the award, Guidi added, “This wasn’t possible without the support of my family, my colleagues and my bosses. Congratulations to all the APCO Atlantic Chapter award winners.”

In October, Guidi was recognized as Telecommunicator of the Year by the New York State 9-1-1 Coordinators Association at its fall conference in Cattaraugus County.

Tompkins County Emergency Response Director Michael Stitley said, “It is a true honor to achieve such distinction on both the state and national levels. We are extremely proud of Zack and congratulate him on his well-deserved recognition.”

Guidi joined the Tompkins County 9-1-1 Center in October 2016. He also serves as an assistant fire chief in Newfield, where he lives with his wife, Melanie, and their two children.

Since 2004, the Tompkins County 9-1-1 Center has provided emergency communications for 18 fire departments, seven law enforcement agencies and four EMS agencies.

 

New Roots students enjoy ‘Sense of Place’ Fall Intensive

During the New Roots Charter School Fall Intensive Week, Sense of Place, students engaged with nature, themselves, one another and community partners learning about this place we call home.

Fieldwork and service learning activities included habitat restoration, planting and harvesting food at the New Roots “big farm” at EcoVillage, urban beautification and bird habitat restoration at Stewart Park.

Additionally, during their educational cruise on the “MV Teal” floating classroom with Discover Cayuga Lake (pictured), students learned all about the ecology of our lake, tested water oxygen and temperature levels and collected plankton samples to observe under the microscope.

Sense of Place is named for an Education for a Sustainable Future standard woven throughout New Roots’ four-year curriculum:

Students will recognize and value the interrelationships between the social, economic, ecological, geological and architectural history and current condition of the place in which they live and contribute to its regenerative capacity and continuous health. They will also be able to rotate from a local perspective to a global perspective by developing geo-spatial literacy.

The weeklong immersion experience is an opportunity for students to become oriented to learning in our community’s natural and public spaces.

Community-based learning is a fundamental part of a New Roots education, one that is directly connected to interdisciplinary academic studies.

The week also included the school’s first community meeting of the year, opened by Sachem (Chief) Sam George who shared the Words Before All Else. Also known as the “Thanksgiving Address,” these words are an expression of gratitude for the people gathered and the natural world and are used to open important gatherings by members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. New Roots said staff and students were honored to have this rare opportunity to hear this address spoken by Sachem Sam George in the Gayogohó:nǫˀ language.

Sense of Place week laid the groundwork for a year of meaningful learning, inviting students to use knowledge and skills from all academic areas and real world experiences to produce highly individualized expressions of learning. Shared in student-led conferences, this work was also the first piece collected for portfolios, a collection that will be built and reflected on over the course of the year to express the full range of each student’s learning and growth.

To learn more, visit newrootscharterschool.org.