Cornell – Rural Tompkins County

Tompkins County: Living the Lie

I could say: “The other shoe has dropped” — but their actions are always carried out in a dismissive silence: the “needed repaving” of Lansingville Road, that it’s residents were never informed of, is half done — and Tompkins County has widened the road by four feet.

What was once a neighborly community of long-established families, has become an “Ag ghetto” of health-debilitating factory farms, cheap foreign labor, drugs, and poverty. Many families have been taxed out of their homes, which are then remodeled and repurposed into low income apartments for the county’s unwanted. And the only mandate for law enforcement is to keep it all contained.

Lansingville’s rural community is already prostrate; with Cornell’s boot on our necks, and Cornell’s spittle on our faces. Now, the dwindling pocket of rural families is being targeted for even more repressive Urban Colonialist policies. Policies that strip us of almost every permitted land use, and establish an unregulated raceway through the middle of our hamlet: creating a “do whatever you want” highway for big trucks and speeding commuters — an attractive shortcut, without any of the speed reductions placed on the state highways that surround it.

How many of our Town and County politicians, administrators, and authorities were aware of probable outcome of these policies?

From their documented statements, questionable behavior, and refusal to help; I would say: “All of them.”

With the conscious superiority of the elite: Cornellians moved into our 200-year old community, and cut, shaped, and discarded what existed to create a suburban pastiche, for their comfort and short term gain.

The Secret Cornell is more than a tale of greed, misconduct, and corruption: it’s a window into an unchecked progressive government: One Thought, One Taught, One Voice, One Choice — Theirs.

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How many people are “too busy,” or claim that I “depress” them with my documentation of our millennium dark side – and thus seek avoid the need for any thought or action. The denial of reality has never worked to bar its arrival. It’s a storm so wide that trying to escape its path is futile — and it’s impossible to get a grip on the slippery slope.

The Secret Cornell – Paperback and eBooks available at:Amazon.com – BarnesandNoble.com and many other online booksellers

“The World According to Doctrine” — Form Based Code Cornell [formerly Lansing] NY

Form Based Codes are a simplified form; for a simplified government: themselves. Form Based Codes bring zoning into line with modern authoritative thinking: 100% public comments – 0% meaningful participation.

Form Based Codes are the perfect tool for Urban Colonialism: the preservation of urban spaces – and the resettlement and destruction of the rural community. A “streamlined” tool for taking.

“The real tragedy of these small enclaves of marginality and poverty is that people are playing a game of life that has been structured in such a way that they are required to play but prevented from winning.” — Janet Fitchen, “Poverty in Rural America”

In rural New York; No one can hear you scream.

“The World According to Doctrine” — Tompkins County’s “Separate but Equal” Policy

Important corporations in Tompkins County: like Cargill and Cornell, receive tax cuts — while the rural areas receive cuts in services. Having basic services in rural areas, like Sheriff’s patrols, cut entirely; because they’re “too expensive” – is the definition of “unimportant” in Tompkins County’s Ivy-league-corporate planning – and it helps the bottom line – while the County’s rural tax assessments are the closest thing to Prince John since Robin Hood’s time.

“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” – Complete Streets

Cornell’s Design Connect: Transportation Issue Assessment and Best Practices Guide leaves out the most important planning ingredient: the people. Its self-serving New Urbanism vision sees rural Lansing’s urban sprawl bedroom community as a solution; not a problem – and its recommendations are designed to maximize the community’s size and density. The town’s original rural residents are never mentioned – except as an obstacle. They are “outside the Study area” — outsiders in their own town.

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COMPLETE STREETS

A children’s puzzle-book approach to solving real-world problems

It’s NIMBY planning with Ivy League backing: Cornell’s Design Connect Complete Streets transportation “design interventions” drop the traffic and esthetic of a “mini-city” urban sprawl bedroom community into the middle of a green rural landscape.

It’s part of the University’s plan to solve Ithaca’s residential development and housing problems — by dumping them on someone else: the rural town of Lansing.

Cornell’s Design Connect isn’t just looking to help residents; they’re advocating “changes to town policy and planning procedure” as well.

It isn’t surprising that their policy recommendations echo every other “helping” voice – since it’s all the same voice and the same agenda. While the Design Connect study uses every possible reason for increasing the construction of residential housing in Lansing; it declares that the town should: “Limit the acreage of land zoned for commercial and light industrial uses in the Town. Dis-courage strip commercial development through appropriate zoning mechanisms. Limit heavy industry to existing Industrial/Research (IR) Districts.”

“County” planning has decided that Ithaca should be the only business center, and has actively worked to block Lansing’s attempts bring businesses into town — the Tompkins County Legislature actually went to Albany to stop NYSEG from supplying Lansing with the natural gas that was needed for new commercial and industrial development.

“. . . the southern portion of the town of Lansing will likely continue to serve as a bedroom community for Ithaca professionals and other workers.”

Design Connect’s “Best Planning Practices” not only accept the existence of a major urban sprawl bedroom community in the rural town of Lansing; they seek to greatly increase its size and density through “urban design overlay zones,” and recommend that the town “increase density and provide affordable housing,” change zoning with “reduced minimum open space requirements,” “Density Bonuses,” and “Amended Density Requirements,” – and build a new infrastructure to accommodate that increase – merely tacking on the goals of efficiency and low carbon emissions onto what is clearly not the “best planning practice” for a rural community.

Their recommendations for Lansing include “redevelopment of underutilized properties”; while at the same time there are block after block of old wood-frame houses in downtown Ithaca that would be perfect sites for redevelopment as high-density housing, and thousands of unused acres suitable for building surrounding the City’s core.

The redevelopment of Ithaca’s unused and underutilized building lots, and creation of affordable and appropriate urban housing, will solve the housing shortage, require no new infrastructures, efficiently use existing bus routes, be in the closest proximity to jobs in the education, business, institutional, and health care sectors, increase access to the cultural center of the county, and have the highest possible walkability and the greatest alternative transport choices for residents, while at the same time reducing the carbon footprint for transportation to a minimum.

It would solve every one of Lansing’s housing and transportation problems but one: Cornell does not want that solution.

Everywhere; there is the exhortation for more higher-density housing in the town of Lansing: high-density housing for affordable housing, high-density housing for sustainability, high-density housing for the environment, high-density housing for lower taxes, for the aging, for reducing carbon emissions, for curing cancer, for bringing about World Peace . . . the high-density housing that is needed in rural Lansing to maintain Ithaca’s gentrified, college-town pastiche for students – taking four years of memories, going to a six-figure salary, and adding more coin to Cornell’s corporate coffers.

“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” – Form Based Codes

In “The List of Adrian Messenger” – the victim’s last words were a breathless, “Clean sweep. Clean sweep.” — A fitting epitaph for Euclidean zoning’s humanist precepts under the heel of Form Based Code (FBC) regimentation.

This New Urbanism regulatory device has an authoritarian clout that garners approval from all those who aspire to be those authorities.

Our “old fashioned” and “inefficient” Euclidean zoning is ridiculed by Form Based Code proponents; who want to replace “what can we agree on?” with “do this because we say so.”

In the darkening of our enlightenment; experts and professionals increasingly cleave to the Political-Corporate-Institutional Centrality for profit — and survival.

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FORM BASED CODES

What’s really wrong with “Euclidean” zoning?

It’s one area of government where people still have the right to discuss and to decide — as neighbors – and as themselves.

Form Based Code proponents want to change all that.

Form Based Codes ensure only one thing; the overriding regulatory power of authorities to enforce conformity to their wishes — once that power is given; there is no taking it back.

Like the “Nine-Point Plans” that are so beloved by agricultural polluters and their cronies – Form Based Code implementation limits the public to ineffectual commenters; with no meaningful participation or oversight in the decision making process. All the pre-planning sales talk of multi-day “charrettes” and public input is merely window dressing with no legally defined existence. Form Based Codes are designed to promote development, not to protect residents.

Contrary to common ethical standards; the discussion surrounding the adoption of Form Based Codes is limited to praising its beneficence; and never touches on its inherent flaws nor discloses the extent of its authoritarian powers.

The dream of planners: to design communities as efficient interlocking parts; and only afterward “populate” them – and the desire of authorities: to control all within their sphere [without annoying objections and obstacles] – combine in the creation of Form Based Code environments: the biggest threat to human worth and individuality since the Skinner Box.

The inclusion of Form Based Codes into the Town of Lansing’s Comprehensive Plan strategy reveals much about the process and intent of government in Tompkins County:

The “Town of Lansing Comprehensive Plan” could more accurately be called: “Cornell’s Plan for the Town of Lansing.”

The complete marginalization of Lansing’s residents took place in three steps:

1. Cornell’s Survey Research Institute prepared and administered a questionable survey; the results of which were recanted during public outcry, and later quietly reinstated as the underpinning mandate for all the Town’s Comprehensive Plan policy decisions.

2. Cornell’s fraudulent “Rural Sprawl” domino effect scenario was adopted without debate by Lansing Town authorities; a fear provoking concoction designed to suppress rural opposition and legitimize the creation of a “mini-city” with thousands of housing units; thus artificially maintaining Ithaca’s “small-town living” as an attraction for the students and professionals needed by an ever-expanding University and growing business center — and keeping thousands of acres of suitable building land in Ithaca untouched and taxes lower by placing the housing for their workers and families, and the high cost of services, in another municipality.

3. Cornell’s Design Connect Form Based Code planning offered an unopposable regulatory power to block any possibility of resident oversight or revision.

What was the Town of Lansing’s decision process for the inclusion of a Form Based Code future in their Comprehensive Plan?

A simple one:

Cornell’s Design Connect made a presentation that was attended by 25 residents.
Those residents were asked for comments.
A 27 page “sales brochure” promoting the benefits of across-the-board Form Based Code regulatory policies was added to the Comprehensive Plan without any further public involvement or approval. No alternative planning idea was given any space.

This is how things work in Tompkins County Government: authorities “identify a need” – they develop a plan – and they adopt the plan. Form Based Codes streamline the development planning and approval process by removing the public from any planning or approving — that’s one more reason why politicians, planners, and developers everywhere are so enamored with this tool of power.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Tompkins County: New Mottos” Bumper sticker

“Tompkins County: Creating rural communities where drugs, crime and poverty can thrive.”

“Policy Appropriate” mottos would be a great help in raising public awareness of the ongoing destruction of rural Tompkins County.

It’s not the self-serving evil of Urban Colonialism that sets it apart – it’s the repressiveness of its policies.

And if Cornell isn’t responsible – why is it always at the center of the web?

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “There are plenty of fish in the sea” Bumper sticker

The college experience in Tompkins County used to be characterized as “Centrally located; in the middle of nowhere” – now it’s “Centrally located; in themselves.” So many college students, staff, and alumni are wrapped up in being the “destination” of the future – they’re unable to wrap their heads around anything else.

Being in the middle of nowhere not only eliminates the competition; it throttles any opposition: there is only one source quoted for all information and explanation.

The metropolitan seas may offer a greater variety and number of opportunities; but the Tompkins County puddle offers the opportunity to be an absolute ruler — and for many people here – that’s the destination that attracts them most.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Tompkins County: There’s no you in University” Bumper sticker

Cornell is a closed system. They act on; instead of interacting with those around them. We are the materials that they use to create their “vision” — and remake our lives. All roads lead to Ithaca [or Cornithaca] – there is no other way. One Thought – One Taught — One Voice – One Choice: and none of them are ours.

“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” – The Problem

This piece will probably fit in before the County and Town of Lansing plans are examined.

Since these plans have no public oversight, and almost no public readership; they have ballooned into a dumpster’s worth of poorly supported arguments and misrepresented problems – gaining importance through the sheer weight of their endlessly insistent claims.

It’s not a question of “Cui Bono”; because the players are unfazed by the spotlight – but “Can anything be done to save the community?”

Is there anything left but the rot?

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THE PROBLEM

There is a public relations problem that comes pre-packaged with every Tompkins County government agenda: Why does every policy decision work to the benefit of Cornell University?

The “All of Us Together” concept of “Tompkins County” was created to mold the surrounding towns and villages into a pattern that is beneficial to Cornell’s corporate growth — it has no other purpose.

“Tompkins County” government doesn’t work with the people – it works with the corporations, the institutions, the politicians, bureaucrats, and special interests.

They are power brokers.

That’s why the county’s public policies are never decided in the public sector — it’s not a government of the people – it’s a government above the people.

“Tompkins County’s” decision making flow chart is a beautiful example of Vertical Integration: every stage of government action is integrated and controlled from the top.

It’s the very strength of this system that makes it so easy to spot – and once spotted; its methods of public “predation” can be studied:

Camouflage – Cornell moves everywhere among the shadows – policies are carried out by them, because of them, or in gratitude to them. Even when the “County” claims its concerns are with the people – Deferential nods are given to Cornell’s “importance”.

Media stories read like the handouts that they are; and if public opposition forces the reporting of a community or environmental outcry – the article always ends with rebuttals of those concerns; at length.

Deal making – as exampled by the Town of Lansing’s Comprehensive Plan and Agriculture Protection Plan: this once rural town was divided into two distinct land uses to appease the county’s powerful Development and Agricultural interests. Not only do both plans dovetail perfectly and express wholehearted support of each other as an important part of their own plan’s success — both were written by Cornell.

Credentials – every policy “push” releases a flood of credentials – even if they know nothing about the particular community or the needs of residents: they know exactly how to solve every problem — do what “Tompkins County” wants. [If you want to have career longevity.]

Beneficence – while I have never met a single resident or employee who believes that altruism plays a part in the University’s corporate agenda – their dictator-inspired “parades” and proclamations are a not-to-be-gainsaid part of Cornell’s “Sun King” persona.

Meaningless public participation – public participation is kept to a minimum: none. Tompkins County fosters rulership; not representation. At Lansing Town meetings the public cannot ask any questions; and are told they’re lucky to even be allowed to speak.

Power – Cornell is more than just a big frog in the small pond of Tompkins County – it’s a big frog that swallowed the county. Connected at all levels of government and business, even internationally; they are the controlling authority for every activity within the county.

On the workplace level there’s “Cornell Paranoia”: The fear of being associated with any thought, belief, or person that makes your superiors unhappy – even a social media link or the mention of a critical observation might get back to the hierarchy and result in your losing your job — it’s palace intrigue in a new millennium setting.

Stone walling – If you ask unwelcome questions, or persist in opposition – the County just shuts down; and refuses to communicate or acknowledge your existence. It’s a further proof of the power behind County government that they can do this and get away with it.

Enhancing Cornell’s power and profit is what Tompkins County government does — it’s what they are.

The reader may find this essay a bit “offhand” for the seriousness of the subject; but it’s intended to be descriptive of the situation, and not a rigorous examination.

It’s something to keep in mind when you’re presented with a bill of goods.