In Tompkins County; when sacrifices have to be made: they don’t ask what? – They ask who? And the county’s rural residents are at the top of the list. We are the stumbling block to Cornell’s completely homogenized and conforming community vision – and their Legislature is always removing our services and increasing our taxes. How can they do this? Why don’t you ask the 30,000 students that give them that power – they’re our future.
It’s all stonewalling and pushback when rural residents try to implement traffic control measures. The same County that enforces a maximum speed limit of 30 mph on all roads traveling through the City of Ithaca; refuses to post any limits in their County-controlled rural roads. And in spite of the accidents and entreaties of residents: they have refused to patrol these roads – encouraging an ever-increasing flood of reckless workers, students, and commercial vehicles who know they’ll never get a ticket. Even with documented evidence of the most blatant disregard of law and human life – the have never once acknowledged that there is a problem. They sit there like stone-faced judges in a wall of indifference. They covet our land — without us. Urban Colonialism.
Tompkins County planners don’t counsel – they conspire.
We no longer create our communities by living in them – we just inhabit the communities our government creates.
They do all the planning. They have all the planners. They have all the power. They have all the cards.
Folks in rural areas don’t live under the same laws as other people – or have the same worth.
But, what would you know about it. And why don’t you?
Exposing misconduct, corruption, and cronyism in Tompkins County is not just digging into the past – it’s yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” documented only small piece of the overarching policies and actions that dominate and control the lives of the county’s rural residents – and includes nothing that has occurred since its publication.
An unfinished and unpublished companion piece to the “Truck Route” chapter [Road Weary] has even more jaw-dropping disclosures of the actions of local and County authorities; and their ongoing displacement and oppression of the rural community – actions that only those who feel beyond the reach of social justice and legal oversight would commit.
I have sent copies of the book to many people who, I thought, would be open to change – without even getting an acknowledgement – and bringing readers up to date would do nothing to change the situation – it would only increase the “body count.”
It’s hopeless – but I have a plan – as my cousin used to say: “Don’t force it; get a bigger hammer.”
![“The World According to Doctrine” — Form Based Code Cornell [formerly Lansing] NY](https://i0.wp.com/www.ruraltompkins.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/9982_Form-Based-Code-Living-Lansing_FLAT.jpg?resize=660%2C912&ssl=1)
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.
Agriculture is more than just a “cash cow” – it’s a regulatory carousel that goes around and around to the tune of money and votes. If you want to predict what the future holds for a reduction of Agricultural Pollution; just look at the past 50 years: gathering data, updating “Best management practices” [BMPs], voluntary programs, and incentives that have resulted in increased in levels of pollution – and a flood of tax money into farming pockets – over and over. Even as we enter the drain that we’ve been circling; Agriculture isn’t changing — if the climate disaster they’re helping bring about harms their profits – tax dollars will be found to fill the gap.
Rural policy making isn’t just about indifference – authorities use deception, misrepresentation, and misconduct to actively target rural communities for urban sprawl problems.
When Lansingville Road residents complained of high-speed, reckless through-cutting traffic and no law enforcement; the County produced a 48-hour traffic summary that showed a decrease in the 85th percentile speed.
When research uncovered that it was conducted in the fog – they had no comment. And provided no law enforcement.
Everywhere in rural Tompkins County; Cornell is stepping in – and stepping all over – the existing rural communities. There used to be a bumper sticker: “Ithaca – 10 square miles surrounded by reality” – but when reality began to intrude on and erode Cornell’s magical kingdom: Cornell created the myth of Tompkins County – an autocratic vision of Urban Colonialism: “allocating burdens” [their problems] to the surrounding rural communities – and marginalizing the rural population by “bringing civilization to the natives.” Tompkins County’s rural communities are disintegrating under the rulership of a collegiate elite who despise them – and covet their land.
Our emerging dictatorship follows an old path: in their quest for power; our representatives have become deciders, and now rulers. How could this happen? That’s old too: greed is the bait on corruption’s hook.
Spoiler: The click of our shackles will come with the enactment of Climate Change Disaster Laws.