February 24th, 2022 Daily Headlines
Yesterday, crisis counselors at Suicide Prevention and Crisis Service of Tompkins County announced they have unionized through the Communication Workers of America. According to the Tompkins County Workers Center, the SPCS voluntarily recognized the union. This means a unionization vote, originally scheduled for next month, won’t be necessary. The workers will be represented through the CWA local 1111.
——-
According to 14850.com the Ithaca Tompkins International Airport has confirmed that American Airlines will be dropping its daily flights to Charlotte, and will instead offer daily flights to Philadelphia. The change will go into effect on May 5th. The airport offered daily flights to Philadelphia for years up until September of 2020 when Piedmont Airlines began offering flights to Charlotte. Two months ago, Tompkins also lost daily flights to Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C. after United Airlines announced it would instead offer daily service to Newark. That change came due to a regional pilot shortage.
——-
New York State has extended its authority to enforce COVID regulations. According to ABC10, state protocols allowing COVID regulations must be renewed every 60 Days. This means the state will still have the authority to enforce masking requirements through April 22nd. This does not mean the state will require masks through April 22nd, just that the state can if it chooses to. The state lifted the indoor mask-or-vaccine mandate two weeks ago. Masks are still required in schools. Governor Kathy Hochul has said School mask rules will be reviewed as soon as next week.
——-
Polling out of Siena College shows 58 percent of New York voters support school mask requirements through early March. According to WKTV, two-thirds of voters without children support the requirement while parents with children under the age of 18 were closely divided on the issue. Meanwhile, 45 percent of voters said they felt an indoor mask mandate should still be in place with a little more than half saying the mandate either ended at the right time, or should have ended sooner.