Tag: Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Practice before you preach” Bumper Sticker

“Practice before you preach” Bumper Sticker

Nothing could be less characteristic of today’s social policy and its adherents than the advice contained in this phrase. Rather than trying to be a living example their claims, and abjuring bigoted and discriminatory actions; they insist their right [by virtue of their race, gender, ethnicity] to perform acts of bigotry and discrimination [by race, gender, and ethnicity] — thereby double dipping into the very evil that they tar their victims with; while hiding the hypocrisy of their own actions behind censored news, fiddled statistics, and a smokescreen of self-righteous anger and secrecy.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Global Warming & Weather” Bumper Sticker

“Global Warming & Weather” Bumper Sticker

Some problems just don’t go away. Some systems don’t heal themselves after injury.

The TDML attitude says; “I can leave my car engine running because it’s more efficient”; but a more sensible attitude would be to make use of that efficiency to further reduce the carbon footprint.

The world may not return to its previous state; but it may recover more quickly. Or we could just wait . . . with the engine running.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – EASY MAZE – “Housing Maze”

EASY MAZE – “Housing Maze”

“Cornithaca County” uses the concept of “US” as a way for the Elite to move their burdens onto the backs of others.

Even though Ithaca is one of the most expensive cities in the country to live in; it retains its neighborhoods of wood frame houses and surrounds itself with large tracts of “conservation spaces;” while pushing thousands of housing units into the meadows and fields of outlying rural communities and creating Urban “Nodes.”

The County’s latest Comprehensive Plan doesn’t mention “urban sprawl” once.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Sewers of the Land”

SEWERS OF THE LAND

Every Silence Tells a Story

Like a relative that no one wants to talk about; the County’s Plan tiptoes around the effects of agricultural pollution in a blatant example of skewed environmental reporting.

The presentation of some of the arguments is a bit technical; the facts are unequivocal.

The County Plan: “Fall Creek, Cayuga Inlet, and Sixmile Creek play a significant role in determining the quality of water in the southern basin of Cayuga Lake as they contribute approximately 40 percent of all the surface water entering the southern end of the lake.”

• Salmon Creek is located in Tompkins County and is one of “the three largest watersheds in the Cayuga basin as a whole.”

“The watershed land uses range from the highly urban and forested Cayuga Inlet to the mostly agricultural Salmon Creek.”

Nutrient pollution from runoff and groundwater discharge “are relatively minor in the urbanized watershed but are much more significant in the two more agricultural watersheds, Fall Creek and Salmon Creek. The high contributions from groundwater in those watersheds, 55% and 72%, respectively, pose difficult challenges for management because only long-term changes in land use can reduce these loads.” — Quoted from Nutrient Loads to Cayuga Lake, New York: Watershed Modeling on a Budget, 2012

Why was Salmon Creek or agricultural pollution never mentioned in the County’s Plan?

The County Plan: “Most of the phosphorus that enters the southern end of Cayuga Lake is bound up with the sediment carried by Fall Creek, Cayuga Inlet, and Sixmile Creek. This sediment is largely the result of stormwater runoff and erosion of stream banks.”

• Actually, the percentage of bioavailable particulate phosphorus [available nutrient for algae growth] measured in Salmon Creek was more than twice that of Fall Creek, and more than three times that of both Cayuga Inlet, and Six Mile Creek. [Phosphorus Bioavailabiltiy and Loads, Upstate Freshwater Institute, 10/22/2015]

The County Plan: “Impaired water bodies and their related pollutants, are published by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC). The most recent list published in 2012 identified the southern end of Cayuga Lake as impaired by three pollutants: phosphorus, silt/sediment, and pathogens.”

Phosphorus

• “Mean annual TP [Total Phosphorus] load to Cayuga Lake is just under 100 Mg∕year, of which 60 Mg∕year is DP [Dissolved Phosphorus.] The largest source of both DP and TP is agricultural runoff, providing 45% of the DP and 47% of the TP. Urban runoff provides 13% of the TP but negligible DP. The largest urban TP source, at 8%, is high-density impervious residential land.” — Quoted from Nutrient Loads to Cayuga Lake, New York: Watershed Modeling on a Budget, 2012

Silt/sediment

• The County’s Plan makes no mention is made of the wide-spread agricultural practice of “tiling” fields [installing subsurface drainage on the entire field]. Tiling will drain a field in minutes, rather than hours; not only causing water to flow into streams more quickly and allowing less water to replenish the groundwater, but increasing the flow of sediment and manure into Cayuga Lake tributaries.

Pathogens

• The County’s Plan makes no mention of pathogens.

• From “The Effects that Liquid and Solid Cattle Manure have on the Water Quality of Drainage Ditches in Putnam County, Ohio”, Bowling Green State University, Janelle Horstman, 2014: “Conclusion” – “My results allow me to conclude that the most nutrient and pathogen pollution occurs after large rainstorm events, especially after manure has been applied to land for months with no precipitation events, and after manure application on frozen ground. These results support the findings from similar studies. I can also generalize that many of the soils from the field sites that I collected from had buildups of phosphorus, which likely contributed to the high concentrations of phosphorus in the runoff samples that I collected. I can also conclude that the manure pathogens that I examined for antibiotic resistance were resistant to high levels of ampicillin. This result further supports the severity of antibiotic resistance and the negative health effects and environmental effects that they can cause.”

• From “Antibiotic Resistance, Gene Transfer, and Water Quality Patterns Observed in Waterways near CAFO Farms and Wastewater Treatment Facilities” West; Liggit; Clemans & Francoeur, 2009: “Increased phosphorus levels were also detected after precipitation in the agriculturally impacted areas, and fecal coliform densities were much higher after precipitation. The strong correlation of turbidity, total phosphorus, and fecal coliform densities suggests a common source for these parameters. Elevated total phosphorus, turbidity, and fecal coliform densities are presumed to be the direct result of runoff from nearby tiled fields sprayed with liquid manure as reported by MDNRE in numerous previous waste discharge infractions by the CAFO farms in close proximity to our AI sites (Michigan Department of Environmental Quality 2003a, 2004b).”

The “Point Source” Runaround

The County’s Plan claims:

“New York State regulates pollution discharge into waters through its State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) permit program, including the control of all point source discharges to surface waters. The program is designed to maintain water quality consistent with public health, public enjoyment of water bodies, protection and propagation of fish and wildlife, and industrial development in the state.”

But fails to mention that this program does not adequately regulate pollution from agricultural sources:

• From “Maintaining a Healthy Water Supply While Growing a Healthy Food Supply: Legal Tools for Cleaning Up Agricultural Water Pollution” Mary Jane Angelo, Professor of Law & Director, Environmental and Land Use Law Program University of Florida Levin College of Law: “The Clean Water Act provides a comprehensive regulatory scheme for many discharges of pollutants to waters of the United States. Through the primarily regulatory NPDES permitting program, significant improvements have been made to the quality of the country’s water bodies. However, the NPDES permitting program only applies to point sources discharges, thus most agricultural discharges are not subject to permitting or other federal regulatory control. Nonpoint sources, including those from agriculture, remain the most significant water quality challenge facing the nation. Moreover, the CWA’s exemption from section 404 permitting for normal farming practices continues to allow many wetlands to be degraded by agricultural activities. Because the CWA does not provide direct federal authority for regulating many agricultural sources of water pollution and wetlands degradation, the responsibility for addressing water quality degradation from agricultural activities has fallen largely to the states. To date, most programs designed to address agricultural water pollution have been voluntary or incentive-based programs designed to encourage farmers to implement best management practices. These programs have been only minimally successful, and agricultural pollution continues to be one of the most significant sources of water quality degradation in the United States, meaning that there is a need for a more comprehensive regulatory system to address the water impacts of farming.”

Stormwater Runoff and Flooding

The County Plan: “Increased stormwater runoff has a significant impact on floodplain management. As land area is converted to more urbanized uses, the amount of impervious surface associated with that land use generally increases, causing water to flow into streams more quickly and allowing less water to replenish the groundwater.”

• Once again, the County refuses to acknowledge agricultural sources as a problem. When the increased runoff from “tiled” farm fields: an opaque, strong smelling liquid blend of water, sediment and agricultural contaminants; began to overflow the ditch in front of my house and spread across my lawn — the County merely dug a deeper ditch and put in a larger culvert.

Wetland Protection

The County Plan: “At the state level, NYSDEC regulates wetlands of at least 12.4 acres in size and smaller wetlands of unusual local importance. Taken together, these regulations have the effect of leaving responsibility for regulation of isolated wetlands of less than 12.4 acres to local governments. Identification and protection of these otherwise newly unregulated wetlands is a priority.”

• However New York State Agricultural Law has a different priority for land use that allows “grazing and watering livestock, making reasonable use of water resources, harvesting natural products of the wetlands, selectively cutting timber, draining land or wetlands for growing agricultural products and otherwise engaging in the use of wetlands or other land for growing agricultural products,” thereby completely undercutting the authority of local government to protect these valuable wetlands.

Riparian Corridors

The County Plan: “Riparian corridors are the lands bordering streams and represent a transition zone from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems. Maintaining lands adjacent to streams in their undeveloped state helps to support the natural functions associated with stream buffers, including protecting water quality, stabilizing stream banks and preventing erosion, trapping sediment and nutrients, improving floodwater retention and groundwater recharge, and shading stream channels in summer.

Riparian stream buffers in headwaters have proportionally greater impact on watershed health than buffers in downstream waters. Clean and healthy headwater streams are critical for protecting the water quality, stream stability, and wildlife habitat of an entire watershed. The downstream effects of even minimal disturbances in small upstream creeks may be compounded as waters join to feed into larger and larger streams.

Providing vegetated buffers of at least 100 feet either side of stream banks, or 50 feet from intermittent streams, is critical in achieving water quality benefits”

• Unfortunately, New York State NRCS agricultural manure spreading standards for CAFOs requires only 35-foot setback, where the entire setback width is a vegetated buffer; and just a 15-foot setback with incorporation within 24 hours of application to be maintained between manure applications and surface waters and surface inlets.

Well Water

The County Plan: “The amount of available drinking water is primarily an issue in rural areas that obtain drinking water from groundwater. As more homes and businesses are built in these areas, they are supported by new wells withdrawing more water from groundwater supplies. In some parts of the county it has been observed that new wells noticeably decrease the supply of water in nearby wells.”

• While slamming rural families; the County’s Plan deliberately ignores the massive negative impact that current “farming practices,” especially that of CAFOs, are having on the county’s groundwater supply. One CAFO owner in Minnesota reported a well water use of 570,200,000 gallons in 2017. [The average unrestricted water use for a family of four is 320 to 400 gallons a day.]

When the County’s Plan recommends that “Land uses and facilities that pose the greatest threats to groundwater should be located away from areas that contribute to drinking water supplies” — they are clearly excluding agriculture.

Climate Change – Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The County Plan: “While global energy and climate problems cannot be solved exclusively at the local level, and leadership is needed from global, federal, and state organizations, locally we can identify, plan for, and take steps to address these issues.”

“PRINCIPLE Tompkins County should be a place where the energy system meets community needs without contributing additional greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.”

The Plan goes on to state:

“Emissions from residential, commercial, and industrial buildings together accounted for the largest proportion of community emissions and transportation accounted for more than a third of all community emissions.”

But finally admits:

“. . . it appears that it would be more accurate to use a much greater GWP for methane to reflect its extreme potency in the shorter duration when reductions will most help in limiting warming that may result in a cascade of uncontrollable negative impacts. Such an analysis of methane will likely be incorporated into future energy plans, and would primarily affect the waste and agriculture sectors, as they are currently the highest emitters of methane.”

This admission that the “agricultural sector” is one of the “highest emitters of methane” is the one and only time that the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan acknowledges the negative impact of any agricultural practice on either the residents or the environment; and even then only states that it “will likely be incorporated into future energy plans.“

• Farm use of distillate fuels increased by nearly 11% between 2010 and 2015, more than 8 times the residential sector increase, while both the commercial and industrial use declined according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Open Burning

• While New York State prohibits the burning of garbage or leaves year round: Agricultural exemptions for open burning allow farmers to burn as much “agricultural waste” as they want, whenever they want. This includes but is not limited to: “Agricultural wastes generated on site, Naturally grown products, Fully organic waste generated on premise, Paper feed bags, wood shavings, baling twine, and other non-plastic materials.” This exemption also extends to “liquid petroleum fueled smudge pots.” This last is a further example of New York State’s ecological foot-dragging, since other states have already implemented incentive programs to move farmers to the much cleaner burning propane.

Conclusion

The City and Town of Ithaca sit like a spider in the center of the county; with redistricting placing 8 of the 14 Legislative Districts at least partly within their borders. The large student population living there [30% of the county’s total population] gives those County legislators a great deal of power; but little accountability, from a constantly shifting youthful population with no history or permanent ties to the area, and no association with the county’s rural communities. This leaves county and local government vulnerable to the influence of corporate and corporately-controlled entities like Cornell, and Cornell Cooperative Extension; who are only too ready to guide the future of the county and to serve their own interests. Tompkins County’s repeated refusal to acknowledge the amount or extent of agricultural pollution in any of their planning and reporting is clear evidence of this influence.

“Tompkins County” is in the process of yet another redistricting: in a program of ridding themselves of the rural population whose traditions and ethnicity they deride — and whose lands they covet.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Debunking the Ag Plan”

DEBUNKING THE AG PLAN

The three greatest factors in the fast-track approval of the Lansing Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan were:

1. The plan was never critically examined or allowed to be publicly questioned.

2. Lansing’s rural families were unrepresented by any agency or government representative, and prevented from having any meaningful participation in the plan themselves.

3. The lives and welfare of rural families living in Lansing were of no importance to the people who created and supported this plan.

This article will examine the Lansing Ag Plan itself. The biggest difficulty in debunking the Ag Plan is that its 55 pages are filled with so much distorted, misrepresented, and false information that it would take an even longer report just to untangle it all. [A detailed examination and critique was submitted to all the planning parties prior to its approval.] I will select a few of the more egregious Ag Plan “inaccuracies” as approved by the Lansing Town Board and ratified by the Lansing Comprehensive Plan.

The Importance of Agriculture to the Local Community

“Agriculture is an immensely significant part of the Town’s economy…” states the Plan “Total farm product sales in the town are estimated to be around $20 million per year with about $17 million attributed to dairy farming.” — These sales are not “in town,” there are no milk processing plants or wholesale businesses in Lansing, and even the milk trucking company is located in another county. Lansing farms are closed systems, with almost all the sales money recycled within the business or paid to outside vendors — only a trickle is leaked to the local community.

“Total tax liability paid by farmers in the Town of Lansing – $945,407” — More than two thirds of this was for school taxes, and most of that money was returned to farmers through the New York State Farmer’s School Tax Credit: a program that reimburses farmers for up to 100% of their school taxes from taxes levied on other New York State residents.

Lansing farmers can also take advantage of:

  • The New York State Investment Credit, an investment tax credit for farmers at 4% of the purchase price of qualified real estate, equipment, livestock and other tangible business property acquired, constructed, reconstructed or erected during the tax year.
  • A 10-year property tax exemption for agricultural structures and buildings that exempts them from any increase in the property’s assessed value resulting from the improvement.
  • Complete exemptions on silos, grain storage, bulk tanks and manure facilities, and temporary greenhouses.
  • Reduced assessments on farm and forestry land.

In addition, New York tax law exempts farmers from state and local sales and use taxes for fuel, gas, electricity, refrigeration or personal property used for production/operation; motor vehicles used predominantly for production/operation; building materials used for farm buildings or structures; services to install, maintain or repair farm buildings or structures.

And they can still receive all of the Star and other tax relief measures that ordinary residents are entitled to.

“The town’s farms provide a variety of jobs and thereby strengthen the local economy.” — Once again, a statement that misrepresents the true facts. Many of these jobs are given to foreign workers who live in housing provided and owned by the farmer with food provided by the farmer, and send most of their money out of the country to their families [a worst case scenario for both local and national economies.] Local workers can’t compete with laborers that live on the farm 24/7 and can support their families on fraction of what locals have to pay.

If all the farms in Lansing disappeared tomorrow and the fields were turned to meadows, it would scarcely cause a ripple in the local economy — and the water and the air would be cleaner, the bio-diversity and health of plants and animals would be increased, the taxes would be reduced, and the quality of life uplifted.

Farmers are “Stewards of the Land”

The Lansing Ag Plan’s cover features pictures of fruit trees, rolling hills, and heifers in a grassy field with a traditional red barn and silos in the background, but something’s missing… CAFOs [Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation] and the Industrial Farming experience. It’s the type of “agriculture” that comprehensive planners and committee members would never want their children to live next to, and it’s the reason why rural families have been made powerless to affect the future of their own communities.

The word CAFO is not mentioned once in the Lansing Comprehensive Plan — which is significant considering that Lansing is home to the largest CAFO in the county and has extensive farmlands owned by even larger CAFOs in Cayuga County. It’s as if, by not mentioning it and pretending not to notice it, they don’t exist. It’s time to acknowledge theses “sewers of the land.”

“Farming practices protect soil, environmental quality, natural resources, and provide scenic working landscapes that preserve the rural character and enhance the quality of life of the town.” — This is a lie: Influential agribusiness interests have worked hard to portray rural neighbors as villains, while covering up the aggressive and invasive changes in “modern farming practices” that have polluted the air, land and water, and seriously injured residents.

• Soil used in modern “farming practices” must be cleansed of pollutants before it can be used for Organic farming; and if these farming practices, “preserve the rural character and enhance the quality of life of the town”; why did the Ag Plan Committee need to exclude 95% rural community from any participation in its drafting?

“Lansing Ag Days” at the town hall included antique tractors, a family sing-a-long, and a pie judging contest — deliberately presenting a mid-century vision of farming that is a lifetime away from the realities of industrial farming in Lansing today.

The Lansing Comp Plan deliberately ignores the massive negative impact that CAFOs and modern “farming practices” are having on Tompkins Count:

• During the summer of 2016, a retired Cayuga County farmer told me that his tenant was trucking 100,000 gallons of water a day from Cayuga Lake to supplement the dairy farm’s wells [the average unrestricted water use for a family of four is 320 to 400 gallons a day]: with this kind of profligate water usage; it easy to see how modern CAFOs threaten whole aquifers, and not just the wells of neighbors.

• Millions of gallons of liquid manure [a fermented mixture of urine, manure, antibiotics, heavy metals like copper sulfate, bacteria, and antibiotic resistant pathogens] are stored in leak-prone, under regulated containment ponds on the slopes of Cayuga Lake tributaries like Salmon Creek.

• Cayuga Lake is already threatened as a source of drinking water according to the DEC, and it’s getting worse. [According to government studies: Farming activities contribute more than four times the pollution of every other source combined.]

• Famer’s drain fields with underground pipes; greatly increasing the speed and quantity of stormwater runoff, and the erosion of fields without cover plants is pervasive. [A county engineer told me that farm fields that used to take hours to drain; now take minutes: filling and overflowing the roadside ditches that empty into streams and the lake with an opaque brown liquid. The County’s solution? Dig bigger ditches.]

• While clamping down on wood heating [an essential source of warmth for many poor rural families] the Comp Plan ignores agricultural open burning exemptions that allow farms to burn as much “agricultural waste” as they want, whenever they want. [This includes but is not limited to vines, trees and branches from orchards, leaves and stubble, paper feed bags, wood shavings used for livestock bedding, bailing twine, and other non-plastic materials.] The dense smoke plumes from the inefficient burning of house-size piles of agricultural waste can be seen 20 miles away.

• Agricultural laws override our wetlands protection and exempt farmers in “grazing and watering livestock, making reasonable use of water resources, harvesting natural products of the wetlands, selectively cutting timber, draining land or wetlands for growing agricultural products and otherwise engaging in the use of wetlands or other land for growing agricultural products…” Wetlands and their biodiversity are disappearing: replaced by the spreading monoculture landscape of industrial farming.

• Not only is agriculture exempted from most air, water and land pollution control measures, but compliance with much of the rest is “voluntary,” and the regulations in place are deliberately ineffective measures that favor Agribusiness profits above the welfare of the community.

“Protecting” Agriculture

Far from being the victims of current planning policies and rural “neighbors”; farming is the most privileged and exempted business in New York State. And while other rural residents are in a month-to-month struggle to hang onto the homes their family has lived in for generations, Lansing’s farmers are looking forward to cutting a deal that will secure their farms [and all the Lansing Ag Zone] for themselves, their children and the future.

• When one renting landowner was able to lease a few acres of land for a solar array [at a much higher rate than farmers will pay], the response from farmers and the Comp Plan was immediate: “Additionally, while the development of more renewable energy in the Town is certainly encouraged (see Sustainability: Energy and Climate Change), it is believed that the development of “solar farms” at the expense of prime agricultural land would be a misuse of a valuable resource.” Showing that, while Lansing’s town government and its planners routinely ignore public citizen participation; they are sensitive to the welfare of rich and important private interests. The County’s rural policies insure that renting landowners, who rent nearly half of the land being farmed in Lansing, bear the brunt of high taxes and land assessments: forcing many to sell their land for “chump change” or lose money every year. And the biggest farms get bigger, and richer.

The Lansing Ag Plan never says it will protect existing farms or small farms.

Not even the state Dept. of Agriculture believes in this policy — NYS Agriculture and Markets law talks about a “competitive” industry and repeatedly uses the phrase “viable agriculture.” And since the largest farms have the economy of scale, the profitability and the money to put smaller farms out of business, and since their only limit to growth is the availability of land, they have both the ability and incentive to do so, and that is what they are doing.

The policies of the Lansing Ag Plan will only accelerate this process. By rejecting the local rural community and siding with powerful Ag interests, these small farms have lost the only long term support they have.

The idyllic agricultural community; so confidently set down in Lansing’s Ag and Comp plans does not exist in this century. There are no towns where modern farming practices have protected the soil, environmental quality and natural resources – no communities where they have preserved the rural character and enhanced the quality of life of the town. There are no examples to be shown, because all the examples show just the opposite — polluted rivers and wells, sickened neighbors, struggling local economies, and unemployment. Poor rural families dominated by CAFOs: eroded landscapes of manure “lagoons” that are devoid of the farm animals whose shortened, antibiotic and hormone-filled lives are confined to a few square feet in a giant shed.

So at the end of the Lansing Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan we are left with one important question:

“What sort of an agricultural community will we turn out to be?”

While there are no current examples of successes, the failures are really scary.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This long article shows how important elite policy making is to the big players in the county. Even though I wrote and distributed a report detailing the inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and untruths in this “Cornell Cooperative Concoction”; it was never questioned by any local or county authority; in fact, they had a hand in promoting it.

On a number of occasions, after I had spoken out; one of these authorities would ask me [with that practiced look of puzzlement] “What is it you want?” Every time I would answer: “I want the Ag Plan writer’s discriminatory assertion that “nobody but farmers deserve to live here” retracted, and for rural residents to have meaningful participation in planning the future of their own community.” Every time; there was no reply — only silence.

Many rural residents are afraid to speak out for fear of reprisals. Some are certain my herbicide spraying was payback for my unwelcome activism.

When elite policy making flows down to the rural poor; it plays hardball.

The old “Stewards of the Land” (we make the world better) wheeze has been replaced by the darker “We Feed the World” (you need us to live) threat; but when the Ag Plan was being written; there was still a little shine left on it.

The “cows in a field with red barn” photos and Ag Days “Dairy Queen and her Court” stuff is for the incomers who wouldn’t know hydrogen sulfide from hydrogen peroxide; and see rural poverty as a quaint roadside view from their speeding BMW.

Local, county, and state authorities parrot sugary drivel like a visitor’s brochure; while media outlets regurgitate handouts. Are these Agribusinesses that important; or are we that unimportant? Both.

The little farms and traditional farming families were just the patsy “poster children” for the big CAFOs. Farming is an occupation that speaks “corporate” these days.

Even large farms in Lansing with the latest farming practices are being pressured to sell to the biggest dairy farm in the state.

A parting concern: CAFOs are an ideal environment for breeding a pandemic. Money not only talks; it seals lips.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “The Road to Hell is paved with Good Credentials”

THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD CREDENTIALS

The rural Town of Lansing is racing ahead to be the “the growth part of the Tompkins County area,” but when you look around, there’s no competition in sight — so why are we doing this?

Ithaca was recently listed as both “the best destination for students” in the American Institute of Economic Research’s list of the best college towns in the country, and as #11 in the Top 20 cities with the “least affordable rents” by the New York Times.

The Problem: With 80% of your workers already forced to live outside the City, how can Ithaca attract new businesses and provide affordable housing for workers while keeping College revenues up and protecting those low-density, high rent urban neighborhoods with that “small town feeling” students and professors love?

The Solution: Convince another municipality to shoulder the costs of schools and services for the affordable housing your workers need; while you keep the businesses and spending in Ithaca.

• Create a “vision,” for Tompkins County and use a lot of credentials and influence to sell it to a town government; and by the time its residents realize what’s happening, it’s too late.

The new Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan heavily promotes the creation of an “Urban Center”

“The Urban Center includes portions of the City of Ithaca, the Towns of Ithaca and Lansing, and the Villages of Cayuga Heights and Lansing and is the largest of the Development Focus Areas.”

“It is envisioned in the future at least two-thirds of all new residential development would occur in the Development Focus Areas.”

Excerpts from recent local comp plans give a clearer picture of how this residential development will actually be shared among the municipalities:

Village of Lansing Comp Plan: “All HDR [High Density Residential/Multi-Family] parcels in the Village have been developed.”

Village of Cayuga Heights Comp Plan: “For the purpose of land use analysis, the County plan . . . anticipates no major changes for the Village in the coming decades.”

City of Ithaca Comp Plan: “No significant changes to the character of low-density residential areas are proposed.” “No significant changes to the character of medium-density residential areas are proposed”

Town of Ithaca Comp Plan: “The HDR–High Density Residential zone accommodates detached and semi-detached (duplex) residences in a medium density setting. . . Only 136 acres, or 0.7% of the Town, is zoned HDR.”

Town of Lansing Comp Plan:

• “From these residential housing maps, we can see that the area of South Lansing, which runs along Triphammer and Warren Roads, is currently unaffordable for the majority of people within the region. However, due to close proximity to jobs, shopping and the university it would make for an ideal location for housing, which would provide the opportunity for people to earn a living and spend less than the 30% threshold for affordability.”

• “By creating compact neighborhoods of high population density, TCAT would be more likely to expand into this area and thereby making housing more affordable by eliminating the costs of additional vehicles and associated transportation.”

• “Housing expansion in the form of new developments and PUD’s [Planned Unit Developments – a term used to describe a housing development not subject to standard zoning requirements for the area.] will result in increased traffic and the need to expand roads and/or mass transit to accommodate the resulting increase in population. As with municipal water and sewer, the logical choice would be to gradually expand out from the village into the area of South Lansing and eventually further north.”

Since the Town of Lansing will need to “create neighborhoods,” “expand roads,” and add “municipal water and sewer” to their infrastructure, as well as being miles further away from Ithaca’s job and business center than any other municipality in the County’s “Urban Center” plan — how can this be the best planning solution?

Scurvy Survey

The Town of Lansing survey never asked residents if they actually wanted a town center, only what should be included “In the town center” when they get one. Regardless of the soundness of the survey’s sampling methodology, the selection and wording of the questions clearly indicates the intent to gather responses that would validate predetermined policies.

Many of the survey questions are so general that the results could be used to support almost anything.

And if that isn’t enough evidence of manipulation, the Lansing Comp Plan uses statements like “the survey indicated strong community support for a ‘Complete Streets’ study and approach for this area to include safe travel, pedestrian and bicycle access,” when the survey responses only indicated that residents support “bike lanes” and “improving sidewalks,” and the survey never even mentions the ‘Complete Streets’ study.

Once a response was elicited that could be made to fit a preselected Comp Plan agenda, the public “participation” was over.

If it couldn’t be made to fit: it was ignored:

90% of those surveyed supported “laws or policies to protect scenic views and natural areas,” yet the Comp Plan recommended “infilling” the fields and woods for miles along Triphammer Road [the highway with the best Lake views in Lansing] with High-Density residential developments.

Ironically, the survey results showed that most town residents thought town officials did not respond to resident concerns or communicate information well.

The Town of Lansing Comprehensive Plan is only a “stooge” for the County Plan’s agenda: It backs exactly the same policies, and was jockeyed through its entire formulation and pre-approval process without any meaningful participation or oversight by the town’s residents.

There is very little of Lansing in the “Lansing” Comp Plan.

“Lansing’s” Plan includes no fact based models or projections on the impact that thousands of acres of new high-density development would have on the rural town’s schools, taxes, and recreational facilities. Instead, the Town of Lansing Comp Plan blandly claims; both that agriculture reduces taxes because of the low cost of services compared to new residential development, and that new residential development will also reduce taxes.

Elitist Policy Making

Planning in Tompkins County today is a textbook example of elitist policy making:

“Public officials and administrators merely carry out policies decided on by the elite, which flows ‘down’ to the mass.” – California State University Long Beach, Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration.

In other words:

“Tompkins County should be a place where all levels of government work cooperatively to address regional issues.” – Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan

This policy is perfectly represented by the County Plan’s flow ‘down’ to the Town of Lansing Comp Plan.

Examining the wording of the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan reveals its underlying elitist ideology: “All in all, the colleges define the community” proclaims the Plan, and in many ways and on many occasions reiterates this idea. Another common thread is the insistence on “restrictions needed to protect or otherwise benefit the larger community.”

The use of the word “protect” is revealing: The “haves” are always interested in “protecting” what is theirs.

• Although the County’s Plan “protects” agriculture 25 times, it does not mention “protecting” any other rural landowner or resident even once.

The Real County Development Plan

If you take the County Plan’s stated development goals:

• “Tompkins County should be a place where new development is focused in compact, walkable, mixed-use communities.”

• “Compact development lowers costs of government services by utilizing and reinvesting in existing infrastructure and broadening the base that bears the cost of maintaining that infrastructure into the future.”

And add the City of Ithaca’s existing assets:

• High walkability ratio.

• Existing infrastructure.

• Low-density residential downtown neighborhoods of old wood frame houses that are perfect for redevelopment.

Then obviously the City of Ithaca is the best location for building the affordable housing needed for its own workers — but that is not the County’s plan.

The Town of Ithaca, which surrounds the City, and admits: “The bulk of residential zoned land is undeveloped, underdeveloped, or occupied by non-residential uses” should be the second choice — but using that is not the County’s plan either.

The nearby Village of Cayuga Heights and the Village of Lansing, by their proximity and infrastructure, are the next logical choices — but neither is of them is County’s choice.

The Town of Lansing is the County’s default, but unannounced, choice as the development site for the thousands of housing units needed for their “vision.” It’s a rural town that has no existing infrastructure to support this development, the town that is the farthest from the county’s business center, and by a strange coincidence, the town that has a different school and tax district from the all other municipalities in the “development focus area.”

By adding the rural Town of Lansing to their Urban Center’s “development focus area,” County planners can bypass policies that: “encourage municipalities to protect rural character and scenic resources by limiting [urban] sprawl” and use its rolling landscape as a dumping ground for all the high-density and affordable housing that the other municipalities refuse to build.

The “Urban Center” housing agenda is an example of everything that’s wrong with planners and planning in Tompkins County today:

• Academic credentials at the service of vested interests.

• Adopting a lesser plan to appease a greater master.

And maybe even worse in a county with such smug pretentions of being a seat of learning and illumination — it’s intellectually dishonest.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An important part of elitist policy is making all decisions final. Policies made by Cornithaca’s elite; flow down invisibly until they are revealed to the masses by the County Legislature. There is no way of knowing exactly where they come from — just that our lives are being shaped “up there.” As in the “Non-disclosure Statement” article: County Legislators may go away saying one thing, and come back saying something very different. They’ve talked to someone(s).

Our County Legislators see a “need”; and implement a fully formed policy to fill that need. Government is that simple in Cornithaca County.

The Form Based Codes that the “County” is using for planning are not only an incredibly powerful tool for government control; they are unanswerable. This a Plan for everybody. Their Plan for everybody. A Plan made by and for the Elite to enforce “restrictions needed to protect or otherwise benefit the larger community.”

Form Based Codes slide in under the cover of “zoning” and rise to the position of “dictatorship.” Form Based Codes are not a new way of living: they’re as old as oppression.

See if the officials in your community are planning to use Form Based Codes — do you think they will use all that power with compassion and respect for human dignity and worth?

Haw, haw, haw, haw.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Smoke and Mirrors” 2

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Participation Circumvention

“The participation of citizens in an open, responsible and flexible planning process is essential to the designing of the optimum town comprehensive plan.” — New York Town Law § 272-a

Although Town Law stresses the importance of citizen participation in an open and responsibly designed town comprehensive plan, local officials downplay this mandate; claiming that the comp plan is only a “guide” — and use the minimum legal requirements for public meetings and notifications to limit disclosure and block participation.

The town of Lansing, like many rural towns, traditionally uses posters and signs along the roadsides to announce everything from chicken barbecue fundraisers to concerts in the park. The town’s government, although it placed a large display board for notification of a boat slip raffle, never placed one sign to advertise the town’s comprehensive plan meeting. Notifications were placed in the legal minimum two newspapers; and in spite of their low readership, no further efforts were made it inform or involve the residents.

The public meeting for the Lansing Comprehensive Plan draft was reduced to a segment of the monthly Town Board meeting, with a scattering of residents being told it was only as a favor they were permitted to speak, and allowed 2 minutes to do so. No questions were allowed to be asked.

This was an action that directly contradicted the State’s intent and the legal “duty” and “responsibility” of Lansing’s municipal government to “assure full opportunity for citizen participation in the preparation of such proposed plan.”

Why are so many county, town and village officials anxious to prevent residents from having a voice in the future of Tompkins County?

The public and private maneuverings of Tompkins County officials to minimize the importance of these comprehensive plans and exclude meaningful community participation — urging local governments to abdicate their duty and responsibility under Town Law, and give over all local power to the “County” — will be examined next.

New York Town Law § 272-a. Town comprehensive plan

Legislative findings and intent.

“The legislature hereby finds and determines that: 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 and to regulate land use for the purpose of protecting the public health, safety and general welfare of its citizens.”

It is the intent of New York State Town Law § 272-a that both local planning boards and the town boards “assure full opportunity for citizen participation in the preparation of such proposed plan”

To make the preceding as clear as possible; here are legal definitions of those words:

• Assure: to make certain; to inform positively, as to remove doubt; to convince.

• Full: abundant; brimming over; comprehensive; exhaustive; filled to utmost capacity.

• Opportunity: fair chance; proper time; reasonable chance; suitable circumstance; suitable occasion; suitable time.

These words denote a legislative intent that was never even remotely fulfilled by the municipalities granted the authority and charged with the responsibility of these “most important powers and duties.”

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” ― The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

The powerful interests behind the “County’s” Comprehensive Plan leave little doubt of their intention to take all power into their own hands:

“The County’s plan is based on the understanding that certain issues are regional in nature; cannot be fully addressed solely at the city, town, and village level ; and require proactive cooperation among all levels of government.”

• Since the County considers Housing Choices, Transportation Choices, Jobs and Business, Development in the city, villages and [County] designated nodes, and Rural Resources (the importance of agriculture and the need to protect farmland), all to be regional issues — they want to control everything. [Note that the importance of protecting agricultural interests is the only issue that the County’s plan recognizes for rural communities.]

The County’s plan requires “proactive cooperation among all levels of government.”

• Proactive cooperation is defined as: “two or more individuals cooperating together and acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty.” In this case, the expected difficulty is the participation of the County’s residents.

The interests that control the County are trying to take direct control of its towns and villages — urging local municipalities to let the “County” decide local planning:

“Often, local municipalities have a full workload simply addressing the important day-to-day issues of local concern. Planning at the county level can help municipal governments address key issues of concern that cross municipal boundaries, such as sprawl, economic development, housing affordability, and environmental protection.”

This attempt to subvert the “duty” and “responsibility” of local officials and planners has been largely successful. Policy decisions flow directly from the County into “local” plans; without public scrutiny or any meaningful public participation in the towns and villages themselves.

“A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.” ― Alfred Tennyson

The “ten elements already included in the Comprehensive Plan” by County Legislators, before the first community survey was even announced, remained unchanged in the final document.

The Plan’s “kickoff survey” itself was a vague and generalized 19 question survey using loaded terms like “Healthy Communities” to produce results that would support the policies the County had already decided on. [Who wouldn’t vote for a healthy community?]

Two additional topic areas were “identified” from a list of thirteen choices supplied by the County, but this made no meaningful difference to the final Plan.

The County’s reaction to comments critical of their Comp Plan draft was both defensive and dismissive.

To the comment: “efforts to acquaint citizens with this plan which will, by design, touch each and every resident of Tompkins County are pitiful to non-existent. There were 4 meetings attended by a total of 70 individuals out of a Tompkins County population of 101,570”— the County asserted they had made “considerable efforts to involve the public,” and pointed out the “large number of written surveys” received from Participation in Government Classes at local High Schools, and comments received from “approximately 40 individuals and several groups.”

In response to the comments:

• “Can there be a policy that prioritizes transportation investments for the ‘transportation insecure’ – especially low-income families with children in rural areas.”

• “I think it’s important to pay attention to the needs of rural residents. In addition to fixed-route what is possible as a systematic approach to meeting public transit needs.”

The County made the following “substantive change”:

• “Proposed Policy: Consider the needs of populations that are particularly challenged by transportation when developing systems and alternatives.”

[Note that the County chose not to use the word “rural” in their policy statement.]

To the request for equality:

• “Overarching principle – looking out for rural landowners (Broaden the idea so people are as important as the rest of it.) All residents matter/ every resident matters.”

The County evasively replied:

• “A Foreword was added to explain how the principles, policies and actions of the Comprehensive Plan can contribute to a positive future for both urban and rural residents of the County.”

Like snakes in snake oil, the County’s “Plan” squirms around every issue of human dignity and worth. If you could polygraph the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan, it would “show deception” on every page.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Once again, you can see how the implementation this new society is just another form of colonizing — and for the same purposes:

A source of wealth, raw materials, and cheap labor – a dumping ground for the unwanted and criminal in their own population – and an unconsidered people to squeeze dry of all worth – all for the exclusive benefit of the colonizers [and a useful distraction from problems at home.]

Ithaca always looked down on the rural residents of the surrounding towns and villages — they still do; but now they snap the whip.

“Cornithaca County” Book Preview – “Whose Plan Is This Anyway” 2

WHOSE PLAN IS THIS ANYWAY?

At first glance; the County’s “vision” reads like a promotional brochure — but a careful inspection reveals a dictator’s boot marks among its carefully shaped phrases.

“THE TOMPKINS COUNTY COMPREHENSIVE PLAN presents a vision for the future of the community. It is based on a set of principles that reflect the values of the community as expressed by the County Legislature they have elected. The Plan seeks to foster a place where individual rights are protected while recognizing the benefits that can accrue to community members from common actions. It largely focuses on voluntary collaboration between the public and private sectors, but also supports the role that local regulation can play in addressing key issues impacting the entire community and helping people to live together in harmony. Where regulation is required, it should balance the burdens placed on individuals and businesses with the restrictions needed to protect or otherwise benefit the larger community. In most cases the Plan seeks to expand individual choice in terms of where and how people live their lives.”

This “vision for the future”:

  • Reflects the “values of the community” but only “as expressed by the County Legislature.”
  • Claims to “foster a place where individual’s rights are protected” but in the same sentence subordinates this to “common actions.”
  • It “focuses on voluntary” but “supports the role of local regulation.”

The phrase “helping people to live together in harmony” is particularly fatuous: Harmony requires more than one voice, and that’s something that is entirely missing from this “vision.”

And while the Plan states “Where regulation is required, it should balance the burdens placed on individuals and businesses with the restrictions needed to protect or otherwise benefit the larger community,” it nowhere states who will decide what these “regulations” or “burdens” are and when they are “needed.”

By removing those portions of the Plan’s foreword that are negated by qualifiers; this seemingly contradictory policy statement becomes clear:

This plan is based on values that reflect the principles of the County’s legislature. It uses local regulations to place burdens on individuals and businesses in serving that agenda and restricts individuals in their choice of where and how they can live.

Statements like “The Plan includes policies that, when considered together, can help create both rural and urban communities” indicate that these policies are intended to “create” new communities, rather than help the existing ones. Just what these communities will be and who will benefit is the subject of Cornithaca County.

“Prosperity for All”?

The Plan’s paragraph that begins with “Prosperity for all” ends with an equivocating “encourage the payment of livable wages whenever practical and reasonable” that completely drains statement of any meaning.

The County’s assertion: “Unemployment rates in Tompkins County have experienced the same cyclical ups and downs as New York State and the U.S., but have consistently been lower than statewide,” is used to minimize rural joblessness: “Still, unemployment is considered a problem by local residents, especially rural residents, with nearly 60 percent of rural residents calling it ‘critical’” — and the County further weakens the issue’s significance by the omission of any factual data, and the use of the qualifications: “still” and “considered.”

While admitting that “Individual poverty rates here are quite high, around 20 per-cent in 2011” and “It is clear that not everyone in the community shares in the region’s economic prosperity,” it muddies the issue of rural poverty with: “this can be partially explained by the fact that about 30 percent of the local population consists of students,” and goes on to add generalized family data; thereby avoiding any specifics or insight into the very real plight of the county’s rural poor.

The Plan makes no mention of mitigating rural unemployment or poverty.

Re-colonizing Rural New York

Most frequently, however, the Plan refuses to admit that Tompkins County’s rural communities have any place in its future:

“In rural areas the Plan envisions a working landscape of farms and forests providing products and jobs that support a strong rural economy, while providing for management and protection of these resources to maintain their ability to sustain the community into the future. Rural economic activities may include businesses processing agricultural and forest products, and other small businesses appropriate to a rural setting.”

It’s easy to see this “envisioning” was never done by rural residents; because this policy would exclude the lifestyles and destroy the communities of the majority of the county’s rural population.

“Employment choices for those interested in living and working in rural areas will include full- and part time farming, independent “homestead” lifestyles, entrepreneurship in agricultural and forest product processing, and at-home workers who want to live close to nature.”

Agriculture is historically among the lowest paying of all jobs — the owners may make millions, but the workers are frequently living below the poverty level.

NY farmers were furious with the minimum wage hike even though they are the only industry to receive a tax credit for the wage increase. The NY Farm Bureau was not only a self-proclaimed “leader in the fight against $15,” it’s also an important voice opposing the farmworkers’ right to organize…and an important voice in rural policy.

A May 2016 article in Grassroots [the NY Farm Bureau’s “Voice of New York’s Agriculture”] points out that NY agriculture needs cheap labor to compete with Pennsylvania’s minimum wage of $7.25. Nowhere in the article does it mention what it is like to try to live on $7.25 an hour, or show any concern for the farmworkers who do.

While the right to organize for all workers is guaranteed in the state’s Bill of Rights, the state’s Employment Relations Act excludes farmworkers from being defined as employees, effectively denying them those same rights.

In Conclusion

The County’s “Plan” is a regressive and autocratic vision from the past — a stratified society that serves the goals of vested interests and leaves rural communities in the position of powerless suppliers of raw materials and cheap labor.

This Plan takes that big step from telling people how they should live to making them live that way. The Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan is a “kick out notice” for rural residents unwilling or unable to conform.

The repopulation of rural towns by affluent incomers demanding services and conveniences that local residents neither need, want, nor can afford is the death knell for their historical independence and way of life — leaving young couples unable to buy a house in the town where they were born, or even eat in the local restaurants.

“Living here is only affordable when jobs are paying wages that make household costs manageable.” proclaims the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan.

Whether by inadvertence or design, the county’s high taxes, aggressive property assessments, and high rural unemployment rates are forcing the community’s rural residents to sell the land and homes their families have lived in for generations and leave Tompkins County — a problem that the Tomkins County Comprehensive Plan neither acknowledges nor plans to prevent.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This article focuses on the fate of the rural community under the Plan’s “vision.”

Once the takeover of the surrounding towns was accomplished: The vested interests/nobility were given lands and position; with the understanding that they would acknowledge the leadership/sovereignty of the College Town through its County Legislature and the Plan.

Like the unborn who are no longer human beings, and the elderly who died in their thousands from COVUD-19 while state government shrugged its shoulders; New York’s rural residents are a troublesome segment of the population already marked for the chop.

In a county based on using and taking at the highest levels; the less-educated rural poor stand out like a starveling in a field of contented cash cows.

If we don’t “wither away”; there are other means.