Thoughts from the edge of our mainstream society – which is where they’ve been pushed out of the way. I you think; you can say “I don’t think so.” If you don’t; you just say “That’s wrong.”
More bumper stickers; less space. More of your thoughts – no text added. Does thinking increase or reduce stress? It adds some stress of course — but it helps to remove that “Oh, My God!” moment — and increases your lifespan.
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.
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An unfinished and unpublished companion piece to the “Truck Route” chapter [Road Weary] has even more jaw-dropping disclosures of the actions of local and County authorities; and their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.”
I was talking to a neighbor today about the weather and the state of things – and he announced that his family had made plans for leaving New York State. Since the County removed rural sheriff’s patrols as being “too expensive” – He won’t even let his kids ride their bikes on Lansingville Road. “I’m planning on leaving” is a phrase that crops up in almost every conversation with younger families – while “I can’t afford to leave” is the sad statement of the elderly just trying to survive.
The millionaire farmers who have taken over give criminals free rein; as long as they don’t cut into their profits – and our once neighborly and hard-working rural community has become a dumping ground of rentals for the county’s unwanted: an Ag Ghetto of drugs, poverty, and crime.
New York policy makers are like someone who refuses to learn to swim — but when they start to drown — they pull down everyone around them while trying to keep their heads above water.
The back of the bus – the end of the string – by putting rural people last; they’re able to oppress by exclusion – we get less, or nothing: because there’s nothing left – someone measured wrong – it’s unexpected – there isn’t enough money – enough workers – enough government interest. They always run out of everything; by giving plenty to everyone else first.
There are exceptions: the tax assessors are never too busy to give us the highest possible assessments. Tompkins County’s policies are forcing the same rural families that its roads were named after out of their homes. Does that mean that policies will be changed? Of course not — it means they’re working.
There is no meaningful public participation in Tompkins County. Dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” in is just the on-ramp for a highway to nowhere – you do all the work; and they use up your energy – handing you around in a bureaucratic circle; until you realize there’s no gold ring; and the only meaningful action is to get off. And find another road.
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AG PROTECTION PLAN
Title VI – Take the High Road
Impenetrable is the word that best describes Tompkins County government’s policy making. From their “identifying needs,” and continuing through their entire policy formulation and approval process — there is no place where the public has any meaningful participation; or any participation. County and local government decision making is as far out of reach of the rural residents as a royal coach parading past the commoners.
The Town of Lansing Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan is a good example of how well government is defended from public intrusion; even at the local level — and how each level is supported and protected by every succeeding level of authority.
In response to my email expressing concerns with the “Summary of Findings” section of the Proposed Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan, after my opening comment:
“This Summary gives overall feeling that nobody else lives [or deserves to live] in North Lansing but farmers.”
M** R** [Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Agricultural Issue Leader – and the Plan’s lead writer] inserted the phrase:
“- you are right”
This blatant statement of planning bias was never retracted or contradicted by CCE, or any subsequent authority, at any level of government.
Title VI Complaint
12/21/2015 – I completed a Formal Complaint/CCE Tompkins County form and mailed it via Certified Mail to K** S** [Association Executive Director and CCE Title VI Coordinator.]
Opening summary of the Complaint’s issues:
Re: Complaint Under Title VI Environmental Justice
I submit this complaint against Cornell Cooperative Extension Tompkins County for issuing a report [The Town of Lansing Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan] and associated documents under the heading “Ag Documents” recommending the creation of an Agricultural Zone with significant zoning changes that will have a disproportionately negative impact on the poor non-farming residents of that district.
The Environmental Justice Community identification methodology was flawed. CCE Tompkins never [EJ] mapped the actual Ag Zone. The boundaries and inclusion/exclusion of land in the Lansing Agricultural Zone is arbitrary and capricious. The mandates for meaningful participation were consistently ignored. The non-farming residents [95% of the district’s population] were entirely and deliberately excluded from the report writing and making process. Plan information released was deceptive and false. The CCE Tompkins County Agricultural Issue Leader was clearly and admittedly biased. No venue or public meeting for rebuttal of the Plan’s assertions and policies was ever held. No disclosure of the negative impact of the Plan’s policies and recommendations on non-farming residents was ever made. No outreach was made to advertise or inform the non-farming residents of the Plan’s public hearing. Plan’s assertions were never questioned, or allowed to be questioned. No questions of any kind were allowed at the public hearing. The committee appointed for “setting the plan into motion and prioritizing the actions” will be composed entirely of farmers and agricultural landowners, preventing non-farming residents from having any say in the future of their own community.
“The Environmental Justice component of Title VI guarantees fair treatment for all people and provides for Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County (CCE — Tompkins), to identify and address, as appropriate, disproportionately high and adverse effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority and low-income populations”
The body of the Complaint identified and detailed numerous defects in the Plan; where it knowingly and deliberately ignored mandates for meaningful participation:
The EPA’s goal for Environmental Justice:
“the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people” with “particular emphasis on the public health of and environmental conditions affecting minority, low-income, and indigenous populations”
The DEC:
The creation of a zoning district is a “permitting” activity. [NYSDEC CP-29] “This policy will promote the fair involvement of all people in the DEC environmental permit process.”
The Complaint also listed Ag Plan Committee actions that would further disenfranchise the rural poor by removing their ability to participate the future of their own community.
The Conclusion of the Complaint:
“In spite of their claims of ‘Building Strong and Vibrant New York Communities,’ their Title VI mandates and the publicly stated policies of New York State; Cornell Cooperative Tompkins County deliberately excluded the very community they’ve chosen to bear all of these health, monetary and life costs from the decision making process of this Plan.
Public participation is intended to provide legitimacy to government decisions — excluding 95% of the people speaks for itself.”
I would like to be able to write about how these issues were argued and adjudicated; but I can’t — because I never found out.
This is how it all went down:
The Formal Complaint was received and signed for at CCE Tompkins on 12/21/2015 – but I was unable to get a response to my emails until 1/21/2016 and finally arranged a meeting on 2/8/2016 with the CCE Title VI Coordinator.
He said he would read through the Ag Plan; and spoke of a revised Plan with the representation of all rural residents.
2/9/2016 – my follow up email was unacknowledged.
2/22/2016 – 2/29/2016 – 3/9/2016 – follow up emails were all unacknowledged.
3/28/2016 – Title VI Complaint with cover letter mailed via Certified Mail to CCE Director C** W**.
Reply dated 5/3/2016 – from CCE Director C** W**:
“In reviewing the information you shared with S** and information contained within the Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan we have come to the conclusion that the responsible party for the plan is the Town of Lansing. We ask that you direct your complaint to the Town of Lansing as this is their plan and responsibility.”
6/21/2016 – Letters with enclosures mailed via Certified Mail to Town of Lansing Supervisor and Town Board members [and copied with enclosures to three Senators.]
Replies from two Senators: “I do not have authority or jurisdiction to intervene . . . the Town of Lansing would have the final decision in this matter.” “Your situation involves city agencies and is, therefore, under the jurisdiction of your local government officials.”
There was never any acknowledgement or reply to this letter from any of my “local government officials.”
8/4/2016 – Follow up letters mailed via Certified Mail to Town of Lansing Supervisor and Town Board members regarding their lack of response to requests for meaningful participation by rural residents.
There was never any acknowledgement or reply to this letter.
Like a narrow pathway winding around the outside of a towering stone barricade – taking the “high road” to public participation brought me ever-higher – but never closer to my goal.
The “high road” leads nowhere.
“Tompkins County: Rich, dark, evil – covered with a thin candy excuse.” Vibrant, reimagined, progressive – Yes. Compassionate, caring, giving – No. Tompkins County evinces all the New School next-gen networking and brand sloganizing savvy that moves people ahead today — while eschewing all the Old School ethics that caused people to stop by those who had fallen.
The silence of the COVID exploded the “caring” myth and exposed them for what they are: elite of the New Dictatorship.
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.
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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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:
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.