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Tully News — August 2026

Tully News · August 2026 · Neighbors Helping Neighbors · Serving the People of Tully

Archived issue. This is the August 2026 edition of Tully News. Dates, officeholders, contact information, job openings, and event details below reflect the issue as published. Events may have passed and opportunities may have closed; confirm current information with the named organizer. Village of Tully information is identified separately from Town of Tully information.

Download the original August 2026 Tully News (PDF, 29.5 MB) · All Tully News editions

In this issue

Community events and save the dates

The following details are transcribed from event flyers printed in the August 2026 issue.

Tully Community Day 2026

  • When: Saturday, September 12, 2026, 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
  • Where: Tully Elementary School lawn.
  • Parade: 10:00 a.m.; line up from 9:15 to 9:30 a.m. at Tully United Community Church.
  • Activities: Arts and crafts; magic tricks and balloon animals from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.; antique car show at St. Leo’s; chicken BBQ at the Masonic Lodge; Guttendorf’s Wintry Acres baked goods and jams.
  • T.A.G. garage sale: Friday and Saturday, 9:00 a.m., at Tully United Community Church.
  • Food available to purchase: Hot dogs, hamburgers, and hot sausage.
  • Sponsor: Tully Area Historical Society. Information: 315-696-4681.

Second annual Tully Kustom Car Show

  • Host: St. Leo’s Church.
  • When: Saturday, September 12, 2026, 8:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
  • Where: 10 Onondaga Street, Tully, NY 13159.
  • Donation and registration information: $15 donation; no pre-registration.
  • Features: Food and drinks available, 50/50 raffle, door prizes and awards at 2:00 p.m., and a DJ spinning classic hits.

Kettle Lakes 10 Miler and 3 Miler

  • When: Sunday, September 13, 2026, at 9:00 a.m.
  • Where: Green Lake Beach, Tully, NY.
  • Registration as printed: Active.com – Town of Tully.

Run the Lakes. Make Waves.

Tully Alumni Gathering

  • When: September 20, noon to 4:00 p.m.
  • Where: The Loft at Vesper Hills.
  • Who: All classes, retired faculty, and staff are welcome.
  • Details: Reconnect with familiar faces, renew old friendships, and enjoy an afternoon together. Light refreshments served. $5 donation requested. No reservations needed – just stop in.

St. Leo’s Annual Open House Picnic

  • Organizer shown: Church of the Nativity – St. Leo’s, St. Joseph’s/St. Patrick’s, and Immaculate Conception.
  • When: Sunday, September 13, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.
  • Where: St. Leo’s Hall, behind the church at 10 Onondaga St.
  • Activities: Free food for the whole family, balloon animals, face painting, and a magic show. All are invited; fun for kids of all ages.

Tully’s Knight of Pumpkins

  • Event: Jack-o’-Lantern Trail.
  • When: Friday, October 30, 2026, 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.
  • Where: Tully Recreation Trail, Meeting House Road.

News from Tully Free Library

The end of August brings a close to our Summer Reading Program, “Unearth a Story.” We hope you had fun with our events and reading challenges! Please join us on Friday, August 28 at 3:00 PM for our End of Summer Party, where you can have some ice cream and turn in your reading trackers (they’re the entries for the final raffle prize)!

Adults who complete their whole reading log and turn it in by the end of the month will be entered into a special prize raffle: two tickets to a Friends of the Onondaga Public Library Author Series event! We thank FOCL for making this available to us.

Highlights for September programming include: “Creating an Earth-Friendly Landscape” on Thursday, September 10 at 6:00 PM, with Janet Allen, President, Habitat Gardening of CNY “Wild Ones” Chapter. We are excited to bring Janet to the library for this program!

We are currently accepting donations for our fall Book Sale, which will start on September 11. We will accept gently-used fiction and non-fiction books for all ages. Donations will need to be made in person, and checked by a staff member. Please do not put donations into the book drop or into our outreach box in the front yard.

Come see us during the Community Day celebration on Saturday, Sept. 12! Say hello at our booth on the elementary school front lawn, or stop into the library and check out the book sale! We’ll be open that day from 10 AM to 2 PM.

Congratulations to John McDougal

Congratulations to John McDougal on his retirement from the Highway Department after 19 years of dedicated service!

John’s experience, commitment, and hard work will be greatly missed. Enjoy your well-earned retirement, “Sprout,” and thank you for a job well done!

Village of Tully notices

These notices concern the Village of Tully, not the Town of Tully. They are reproduced from the archived August issue.

Village Board meeting change

The monthly meeting of the Board of the Village of Tully has changed. The board now meets the first Wednesday of the month at 6:30 p.m.

Help wanted: school crossing guard

Help keep Tully students safe! The Village of Tully is looking for a dependable, community-minded School Crossing Guard for Route 80 between Tully Jr./Sr. High School and Melinda Lane. School year only; Monday-Friday, 7:30-8:00 a.m. and 2:30-3:00 p.m. School holidays and summers off. Pay: $16.00/hour, paid monthly. Contact Village Clerk Maureen Bibik at (315) 696-5041, or apply in person at the Tully Municipal Building, 5833 Meetinghouse Rd.

Parks and Rec news

We want to thank our community for a wonderful summer at the lake! We are lucky to employ a wonderful crew of local lifeguards who teach swim lessons to Tully, LaFayette, Fabius and Pompey residents and also monitor our open swim hours. Thank you to Ella Tordel, our head lifeguard, for being a wonderful leader to our summer crew. We look forward to seeing our residents back at the beach next summer!

We are looking forward to our second year of the Kettle Lakes Run, Sunday Sept. 13th. We have adjusted the courses this year and will have a 3 mile and a 10 mile course along with our kids fun run. All races will begin and end at Green Lake beach. Register at active.com – Town of Tully.

It’s soccer season! If you haven’t registered your children yet, please do as soon as possible. The season officially starts the weekend of Sept. 12th.

As a reminder to all, our fields and adjacent park lots are smoke free, young lungs at play! This is a smoke-free property. Thank you for not smoking.

Tully Community Calendar

The Tully Community Calendar is provided as a service to our community to help residents and neighbors stay up-to-date on what is happening in Tully and the surrounding communities. Access the Calendar on TullyRec.org using the link at the top of the page.

For information on how to add the Calendar to your phone or to display your event on the Calendar, see the Calendar FAQ.

Local businesses – To better serve our community and support local businesses, the Calendar invites Tully area businesses to post events they are hosting that are open to the public and community-oriented. For more information visit TullyRec.org/Calendar-FAQ or email TullyNYevents@gmail.com.

Baseball Box Score: volunteers needed

As the summer sun tilts lower in the sky, I would like to thank all the kids who came out to play on the diamond this summer, from the Varsity club to the Modified ranks to the summer squad, and the community that supported and maintained the field. Our Tully baseball facility is recognized as a first class facility. It allows us to work with PBR (Prep Baseball Report) to host games that serve as the primary fundraiser for the field. Teams from Quebec, Vermont, Long Island and the Bronx, including the 3rd ranked 15u player in the country, found their way to Tully this summer. It takes knowledge and work to maintain a field at this level and as my kids and their teammates have gone on to college and beyond, it is important we find the next generation of kids and families that will take the same pride in sustaining and preserving our grassy oasis. How we move forward may look different than what it has in the past but it’s important we identify some folks that would like to be part of the process. If you would consider volunteering in any capacity, whether it means rake in hand, supervising an event or something in between, please attend a short Q and A at the field Saturday, September 12 10:00. And feel free to bring the kids! I’ll put out some tees or let them in the cage.

Don Mohat (zekemohat@gmail.com)

Community submission

Questions Deserve Answers. Facts Deserve Sources.

Submitted by Annie Barbedo on behalf of Southern Hills Wind Watch (SHWW). The following is a community submission from the August 2026 issue, not a Town Board statement.

Editor’s note from the printed issue: The previous articles, for or against the windmills have been submitted by private groups and individuals and do not necessarily reflect the position of the town board or its members.

Recently, it was suggested that Southern Hills Wind Watch presents opinions as facts. We welcome that conversation.

In fact, we invite it.

If you visit our website, you’ll find a place to ask questions. Use it. Challenge us. Ask where a statistic came from. Ask for a report. Ask for the scientific paper. Ask us why we reached a particular conclusion. We are happy to provide the source material behind every factual claim we make.

We believe more conversation, not less, is exactly what this community needs.

None of us should fear respectful debate. We should encourage it.

Our goal has never been to tell people what to think. Our goal is to make sure people have access to the same government reports, engineering documents, scientific studies, and environmental data that we have spent countless hours reviewing. We encourage everyone, including those who disagree with us, to read the original documents and draw their own conclusions.

Our greatest concern has never been whether renewable energy belongs in New York.

Our greatest concern is whether this particular project belongs on this particular landscape.

The proposed Maple Harvest Wind project would place industrial wind turbines approaching 680 feet in height on the ridges surrounding the headwaters of the Tully Valley watershed. These are not ordinary hills. They sit above one of the most geologically unique and extensively studied groundwater systems in New York State.

For more than 35 years, the U.S. Geological Survey has monitored the Tully Valley mudboils and the complex groundwater system beneath them. Scientists continue to study this landscape because many of its hydrologic processes remain difficult to predict. Even recent scientific publications acknowledge that these systems are still not fully understood despite decades of research.

That matters.

Every stream begins somewhere. Every creek has a source. The proposed project is located within the headwaters that ultimately feed the Tully Valley and Onondaga Creek watershed. Before placing some of the largest industrial structures ever proposed for our community on these ridges, we believe it is reasonable to ask whether every potential geologic and hydrologic impact has been thoroughly understood.

According to information published by the New York State Department of Public Service, modern utility-scale wind turbines require massive reinforced concrete foundations and supporting infrastructure. These are permanent industrial installations measured not only in height, but in millions of pounds of concrete, steel, and equipment.

There are other concerns as well; wildlife, environmental impacts, community character, emergency response, property values, and local control. Those deserve discussion too. But geology remains, in our view, the most important public safety question because it is the one issue that cannot simply be changed once construction begins.

We also recognize an important reality.

Communities like Tully, Otisco, and LaFayette no longer have the authority they once did to decide whether projects of this scale move forward. Much of that decision-making now rests with New York State. A very small percentage of landowners may receive financial compensation for hosting turbines or related infrastructure. The overwhelming majority of residents will live with the long-term consequences of these industrial structures without sharing in those financial benefits.

That is not an opinion.

It is simply how the current process works.

This is not about creating enemies.

This is about creating dialogue.

Socrates believed that truth is discovered through questioning. We agree. Ask us difficult questions. Challenge our sources. Read the studies yourself. If we have made an error, we will correct it. If you disagree, let’s talk about why.

We are neighbors before we are opponents.

We all care about this place.

Whether you support this project, oppose it, or are still undecided, we invite you to join the conversation. Visit our website. Ask your questions. Request our sources. Read the evidence for yourself.

The more we talk, the stronger our community becomes. The more we understand, the better decisions we will make.

Because this valley is worth understanding before it is changed forever.

Smoke and carbon monoxide alarm reminder

Regardless of future changes to daylight saving time, the arrival of colder weather is an important reminder to check your smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.

The Tully Fire Department encourages residents to test each alarm and use a vacuum to remove accumulated dust and pet hair. Never ignore a carbon monoxide alarm – carbon monoxide can pose a serious danger to you and your family’s health and safety.

Important numbers and links

Contact details below are reproduced from the August 2026 issue.

About Tully News and submissions

The Tully News is a monthly publication of the Tully Town Board. The Town Board meets on the second Wednesday of each month at the Town Hall. Deadline for publication is the night of the Board meeting. Materials may be submitted to: The Tully News, 19 Railroad Street, Tully, 13159, or they may be emailed to ben.bibik@outlook.com.

Town of Tully information as printed

Village of Tully information as printed

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