Fair Haven Mayor Bill McVea passes through Wayne County on his drive to the office. That wouldn't be so odd, except that McVea's home and office are both in the village, and thereby both in Cayuga County.

At the Gillis Family Restaurant in Sterling, a calendar from the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office hangs on the wall behind the counter, while on a nearby tabletop, the local paper's headlines focus on Oswego County's landfill and Palermo Town Court.

And at Sterling Town Hall, a community bulletin board is covered with cards and flyers from businesses seeking to advertise their services - a chiropractor in Hannibal, janitorial services in Oswego, a hair salon in Red Creek.

More than 30 miles from the county seat and roughly 60 miles to the county's southernmost point, the location of Fair Haven and Sterling - sandwiched in between Wayne and Oswego counties - ensures that village and town residents often identify more with their western and eastern neighbors than with those in their true geographic location: Cayuga County.

Whether it's where they go to school, shop or work, the northernmost Cayuga County residents blend county boundaries on a daily basis.

“When you're near the county line, things get mish-mashed together,” said Judy Devries, co-owner of the Fair Haven Gift Shop. “You don't even think about crossing county lines.”

Border-hopping made easy

When Lisa Shortslef walks into the voting booth, she is often unfamiliar with the names before her. Those running for Cayuga County public office don't usually campaign all the way up north.

Shortslef, a Sterling resident who works as the administrative assistant to the Hannibal superintendent, doesn't follow Cayuga County news because most of it isn't relevant to her life.

“I generally know more about what's going on in the Oswego County Legislature or the city of Oswego than I would even know what's going on in the town of Sterling,“ she said.

Like many Sterling residents, Shortslef dines in Oswego or Fulton, rather than drive the 1 1/2- to 2-hour roundtrip to Auburn.

Sterling Town Supervisor Joan Kelley does her shopping and banking in Oswego, just 12 miles down the road.

And McVea gets his medical needs met in Wolcott and Rochester.

“I think there are a lot of people up here who have never been to Auburn or who never go to Auburn for any reason,” said McVea, who himself puts on the mileage for his frequent trips for political and organization meetings.

It's not as if Sterling residents are suffering from an identity crisis - come tax season, they know they're writing checks to Cayuga County.

Rather, geographic location can create some unique similarities among people from different regions.

People from the north end of the county are bound together by several intangible factors, McVea said. And convenience plays a starring role.

If Oswego has everything - movies, restaurants, doctors, stores - that Auburn has, why bother spending valuable gas money, not to mention time, simply to show county loyalty?

Devries can't recall the last time she was in Auburn. She does her local shopping in Fair Haven, and when she needs to pick up more or bigger items, she goes to Oswego or to the Great Northern Mall in Clay. Great Northern is about 30 miles away from Fair Haven, six miles closer than the Fingerlakes Mall, and mapquest.com estimates the ride to Great Northern takes 17 minutes less than the trip to Fingerlakes.

“It's not a nice ride,” Devries says of the trip down to Auburn. “It's an awful trek.”

Not everyone feels that way, however.

Judy Loftus, owner of Curious Moon in Fair Haven, has taken classes at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center; she makes the 45-minute drive to Auburn without a second thought, though in bad weather, things can get dicey.

And Richard Bills, also of Fair Haven, visits Auburn more than he does any other city, though he's learned to combine trips as of late because of increasing gas prices.

But in case of emergency, such trips are out of the question. Northern Cayuga County residents are much more likely to go to Oswego Hospital than to Auburn Memorial Hospital.

When Shortslef's husband was scratched by a rabid raccoon, health officials wanted to send him to Auburn for his follow-up shots because the two live in Sterling and are Cayuga County residents.

“He would have had to take a day off from work to drive to Auburn,” Shortslef said.

Fortunately, after much debate, the Shortslef's were able to convince officials to give him the shots in Oswego.

Follow the jobs

It's not just about spending leisure time outside of county boundaries.

Many Fair Haven and Sterling residents work in Wayne, Oswego, Onondaga or even Monroe counties.

“We're pretty limited in terms of employment opportunities,” said Kelley, who worked in Oswego County for more than 30 years while living in Sterling.

Other than the Renaissance Festival, which is only in town for seven weeks during the summer, there are few large employers in the northern region.

The biggest ones in the area are the neighboring Hannibal and Red Creek school districts, in Oswego and Wayne counties, respectively, as well as the power plants in Oswego and Xerox in Webster, McVea said.

“I don't really personally know anybody that works in Auburn,” he added.

For Shortslef, county lines have played a factor in her career path. Before she got married, she lived in Hannibal and worked for Oswego County.

But after she left that job and then moved to Sterling, Shortslef, now a Cayuga County resident, either had to work for the state or Cayuga County if she wanted to stay in Civil Service, and she wasn't about to drive to and from Auburn everyday.

She took at job at SUNY Oswego and later in the Hannibal school district.

Holley Webster, a Fair Haven trustee, believes that having to leave the area to go to your job is one of the downsides to living in a small community. But there are plenty of advantages.

“It's a real big comfort zone,” Webster said. “If I am wanting to stay in a smaller community and not be bothered, it's a nice little hide-out, this little tuckaway in the world.”

Loftus, who vacationed in Fair Haven during the nine years she lived in Puerto Rico, is also very happy living the quaint life.

“We love living here,” she said. “I enjoy the small-town living.”

Webster's employer, Bayside Grocery in the village, demonstrates the blending of counties: Webster represents Cayuga County, the store is owned by an Oswego resident, and a co-worker, Athena Krause, of Red Creek, crosses from Wayne County to Cayuga County to get to work.

Krause took the job at the grocery because it's close to home and gas is expensive.

Webster also cuts down on her mileage. She manages the Fair Haven portion of the Cayuga County Senior Nutrition Program out of the local American Legion, but “I don't go to the meetings (in Auburn) because they're so far away,” she admitted.

Share and share alike

Cayuga County's northernmost residents are akin to their western and eastern neighbors for a variety of reasons - especially their orientation toward Lake Ontario.

“It sort of seems like people on the west side of the Little Sodus Bay feel like part of Wayne County,” McVea said, “and people on the east side feel like part of Oswego County.“

Cayuga County's No. 2 water and sewer district will be connected to a Wayne County treatment facility, and Sterling residents depend on Rochester Gas and Electric, not NYSEG, for their energy needs.

Yet perhaps more than anything else, it is the school districts that draw more of a concrete line between Sterling and other parts of Cayuga County.

More than half of Red Creek Central School District's 1,100 students live in Cayuga County; all Fair Haven residents attend school there.

Sterling children that don't attend Red Creek go to the Hannibal Central School District in Oswego County. Approximately 187 Cayuga County residents out of Hannibal's 1,655 total are part of that district.

Devries, who grew up in Red Creek and attended school there, said that she wasn't even aware of the different counties when she was younger.

Red Creek Superintendent David Sholes doesn't think that having two separate counties changes the dynamic of the school at all.“It's like the county line is not even there,” he said.

Different interests

Yet at times, some northern residents feel, it's like they're not even there either.

“There's actually kind of a resentment of our amount of taxes we pay to the county,” McVea said. “A lot of people feel we're just not getting our money's worth out of it.”

McVea said that while Cayuga County Legislator Chris Palermo is doing an excellent job bringing the Legislature's attention to northern issues, it's difficult because he is just one on a 15-member body.

There are certain issues, particularly security and West Barrier Bar, that may not get as much attention from the Legislature because Sterling is far away from the bulk of the county's population in Auburn, McVea said.

The problems that northern Cayuga County residents face, and those confronting central and southern residents, are all very different, he added.

“Because we're this little piece and we're far away, our needs aren't the same as the masses,” Devries said. “We're special, and it's hard being special.”

Devries realizes the challenges that the Legislature faces in dealing with the northern locations; any growth or development in Sterling or Fair Haven will likely affect the Oswego and Hannibal residents that drive through the area more so than most Cayuga County residents, she reasoned.

The political connection may also at times be lost because, like many other areas of Cayuga County, those up north don't receive the cable broadcasts of the Legislature meetings.

And though most county meetings don't attract many members of the general public, if any, the geographic distance doesn't help the cause.

Even Kelley doesn't usually go to the meetings in Auburn. “That's 70 miles roundtrip,” she said.

In addition to security concerns, one of the main bones of contention in northern Cayuga County of late has been West Barrier Bar.

Oswego developer Steve Thomas has proposed building a housing subdivision on this section of lakeshore land, but at a recent meeting of the Sterling town board, many members of the public wanted to know why the area had been allowed to deteriorate under the county's guardianship.

West Barrier Bar receives just $4,000 of the parks and trails budget.

The Sterling Nature Center is budgeted for about $67,000, while the county spends more than $360,000 on Emerson Park in Owasco.

McVea said that Parks and Trails Director Gary Duckett is wonderful but likely overwhelmed by all that has to be maintained at Emerson.

Still, northern residents aren't seeing the benefit of this money spent in the south.

“If you ask most people in Fair Haven what they think of Emerson Park,” McVea quipped, “they'd say, ‘What? What's that?”

Staff writer Linda Ober can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 237 or linda.ober@lee.net