THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY
The mapmakers are
If it is ethics that give a government legitimacy; what does the County’s creation and continued use of this map represent?
The Town of Lansing’s 2016 Agricultural Property map is just one example of the deliberate misrepresentations that riddle the County’s planning agenda:
• This map misrepresents existing facts: i.e. actual acreage receiving Agricultural Exemptions in 2016.
• The County’s Assessment Department admitted that they knowingly supplied a map misrepresenting the actual acreage receiving Agricultural Exemptions: “The intention of the map is to show the parcels that receive an agricultural exemption – it is not intended to show how much of each parcel receives an exemption.” This is clearly not the representation of the map. [As an example: Contrary to the 100% shown on the map, only 40% of my neighbor’s tax parcel receives an Agricultural Assessment.]
• This map was used to support preferential agricultural policies, including the creation of an Agricultural Zone, to the exclusion and detriment of the existing rural community — an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage.
A knowingly inaccurate map should neither have been created nor have been offered for inclusion in a legal document that is described in NY Town Law as follows: “Among the most important powers and duties granted by the legislature to a town government is the authority and responsibility to undertake town comprehensive planning.”
Additionally, whereas this map is offered as a proof of intent by the Town for continued agricultural land use; a different Comp Plan map shows that the Town has zoned most of the agricultural land in the southern half of town for residential and commercial development.
Just changing the legend and/or name of the map would only cover up the situation and retain any advantages that the misrepresentation has already given to the parties involved.
I sent these arguments in an email requesting that the County Legislature remove this map from its files and from any documents wherein it has been used, and to correct as much as possible the damage its use has caused.
Attachments included both the Agricultural Property map and the “clarification” email from the County Assessment Department.
There was no response or acknowledgement of my email from any of the county’s 14 legislators.
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Government in Cornithaca County is inaccessible to its residents. The doors that lead to meaningful participation are merely a decoration. The actual decision making process takes place out of sight; and is revealed to the people as unalterable policy decisions.
Cornithaca County is the template for a secular religion: a stratified and compartmentalized society based on 200 years of bureaucratic materialism.
One thought, One taught • One voice, One choice . . . a shiny dictatorship with a dark underbelly.
