Tag: Tompkins County

Little Black Boxes

It’s sometimes helpful to think of local and municipal government policy as little black boxes.

Frequently the policy inside is fully finished, and hidden from sight until its presentation.

Cause and effect are replaced by undisclosed bureaucratic processes and behind-the-scenes communications.

Tompkins County’s never-once-mentioned policy towards traffic control on Lansingville Road is contained within one of these bureaucratic “black boxes.”

After many months of complaints about the noise and reckless behavior of hundreds of thru-cutting dump trucks and tractor trailers to representatives, and requesting a weight limit on our road; the County Highway Department Supervisor assured our representative that there was nothing but agricultural activity.

We sent photos of a number of different dump trucks with gravel plainly visible, and there was silence for a while. Suddenly signs appeared from the County Highway Department stating a limit of “20 Tons” [a sign that is commonly reserved for bridges]; effectively short-circuiting our efforts. [The signs used to stop thru-truck traffic on other local roads have a “4 Ton” limit.]

Recently there has been an even greater upswing in large truck activity on Lansingville Road; especially from one company. Yesterday, when these trucks were followed, they were found to be traveling to and from the site of a 2-year bridge construction project on a state highway. It had been announced that heavy and large trucks would be detoured onto other state highways to avoid small roads and hamlets.

Our email of these findings got no response. Today, there were no big trucks on Lansingville Road.

Is this a coincidence?

Maybe County authorities are reaching out to the State to cut off any chance of our blocking large trucks, or they’re writing a new truck policy with an appendix; like Lansing Town Zoning did when they zoned all “sexually oriented businesses” for rural neighborhoods only.

The rural people of Tompkins County have no oversight or clear view of its policy making; and no right to vote on its policies, or even have their questions answered.

What is going on inside this “black box”?

We have an idea . . .

Form Based Code Dictatorship

With Form Based Codes; the words used to describe their scope are the key to understanding their use.

Form Based Code regulations are completely authoritarian; both in formulation, and in administration. Its planning advocates use the term “community” with the same sincerity as a dictator speaks of “the people.”

I was not able to find single instance of Form Based Code guidelines that recommend meaningful public participation as part of the regulatory process. The New Urbanism [like the Urban Colonialism that is destroying rural America] is an example of rulership, not partnership.

Form Based Code advocates always stress the great power it gives authorities to decide how people will live; a power without public control or oversight: it’s like signing a blank check.

Here are a few examples that give a glimpse of the iron fist inside the “community friendly” glove. [Something to think about before your municipality rushes to adopt Form Based Code regulations.]:

“A form-based code is a regulation, not a mere guideline, adopted into city, town, or county law . . . a powerful alternative to conventional zoning” — formbasedcodes.org

“They are keyed to a regulating plan that designates the appropriate form and scale (and therefore, character) of development, rather than only distinctions in land-use types.” — formbasedcodes.org

“Not to be confused with design guidelines or general statements of policy, form-based codes are regulatory, not advisory.” — formbasedcodes.org

“It has the most regulatory “teeth”—compliance is required.” — Wikipedia

“Form-based codes have emerged as a powerful tool for city planners” — Caroline Cournoyer, Better Zoning through Breaking Old Codes

“with appropriate enabling legislation, form-based codes can be contained within a planning document called a “specific plan,” which can completely override the zoning ordinance for a given geographic area.” — Wikipedia

“If the architects could understand that they’re part of a larger effort of placemaking, and it’s not just a restriction like any old code . . .” — Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk

What a world of arrogance in a few words: anyone who so dismissively refers to the result of centuries of human accommodation and reconciliation as “any old code”; has either a dangerous lack of understanding of people herself, or a fear of the “disorder” that results from human complexity. Save your Lego logistics for the plastic figures.

Form Based Codes are the powerful new tool that authorities can use to answer “I don’t want it” with “you have no choice.”

In case you’re wondering what this New Urbanism aberration has to do with rural communities; Tompkins County’s urban planners have “identified” development nodes in rural towns throughout the county — resettlement and control will spread from there.

There’s No Such Thing

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and you can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps; but today’s policy makers pretend that you can selectively repress and oppress on the basis of race and gender without doing harm.

Like a parent who argues that they only abuse their child rarely; so they should be judged on the majority of days – Or a driver who excuses driving in the wrong direction; with the idea that he’s risking his life too:

Their irrational rationalizing declares that you can isolate the cause from the effect; just by saying it is so. And that you can defend any evil action by minimizing the victim, and stressing the self-righteousness of your excuse.

Nothing so undercuts their paper-thin pretensions of a greater good, than a comparison with those that have fought in the cause of human worth.

It’s not surprising that today’s policies, so at odds with ethical behavior; are also at odds with the lives and beliefs of every respected figure of human dignity and equality we hold as examples:

From Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King, Jr.; and from Mother Teresa to Malcolm X: their belief was that equality was unconditional — for everyone, everywhere, and always.

You can’t follow someone in the opposite direction.

Today’s policy makers are not the inheritors that cause – they are its betrayers.

New Word: “Stonewindowing”

New Word: “Stonewindowing”

Mealy-mouth manipulation has risen to a tsunami of treachery in government policy making; so it’s time to coin some new words to describe the doctrinal dictatorship we live in.

In a county where legislators went to the state capital to block our town from access to the natural gas needed to attract businesses; for “environmental” concerns; and later approved the construction of a 2,000 student residential complex powered by natural gas in their own — the word “mealy-mouthed” just means “business as usual.”

The Wall of Hate

Some of the mail I received last election. A number of these mailings don’t even promote an opposing candidate: just hate.

The Wall of Hate

What did I learn?

They have an awful lot of money from somewhere.

They don’t want to debate the issues.

They hate anyone that stands in their way.

And when they take complete control: Cornithaca County.

Codifying Corruption: New School Marks

Codifying Corruption: New School Marks

Is nothing sacred? In the Revealed Church of Secular Self-interest; Doctrinal policies are.

With new programs and attitudes that directly contradict the lives and beliefs of every respected figure of human worth and equality; it’s time for Full Disclosure – Full Exposure of our government policies and statistics.

After all, if there was nothing to hide; it wouldn’t be secret.

The Lansingville Road Incident

I have frequently blogged about what has happened after the fact; but this blog is about something that hasn’t happened yet:

Traffic control on Lansingville Road.

These blogs will update readers on the effort being made to establish traffic management on this beleaguered rural road.

What is Lansingville Road?

It’s a 20ft wide north-south strip of asphalt with narrow gravel shoulders, sandwiched in between two New York State highways less than 4 miles apart.

Then why take Lansingville Road?

There is no traffic management whatsoever. The County’s policy of ignoring the rural community, and refusing to patrol or manage traffic on this road; means that drivers can drive however they want, at whatever speed they want. Even drivers with commercial licenses feel no need to follow the laws.

The mean speed on Lansingville Road has increased 5 mph in the last three years alone, and the 85th percentile is up to 62 mph; despite local and farm traffic traveling under 45 mph. In a 2019 speed volume check: vehicles were recorded at speeds of up to 90 mph.

Gravel trucks coming from the next county sometimes make hundreds of trips a day on Lansingville; roaring up and down the middle of the narrow roadway and further destroying its already cracking surface.

Last week I saw a Town dump truck and two cars passing a farm tractor with agricultural equipment, traveling as a single unit, across a double-yellow line into the opposite lane, and on a curve. And this is an everyday example of the reckless driving plaguing this once quiet and safe roadway.

My neighbor tells of how he used to walk the entire 1,600 foot length of his long driveway and not see one vehicle passing by on the road. Now, he has to wait for four or five cars and trucks just to have enough space to run across the road to his mailbox.

Why isn’t something being done?

The County Highway supervisor has twice stated [even in the face of photographic proof] that this truck traffic “was found to be Agriculture Trucks cutting the fields.”

An Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council representative put the issue off with talk of petitions and documentation; but ended by stating that their final decisions were made of the basis of the “greater good.”

Will the County’s concern for the safety and welfare of the rural community ever rise above the convenience and profit of the Collegiate Corporations and their cronies?

No.

I will blog as events unfold.

All this morning, every 15 or 20 minutes, a cement mixer thundered by. [Probably carrying cuttings from the fields.]

More blogs than you can shake a fist at

After making another folder, and saving yet another partially written blog; I’ve decided to make a State of the Blogs Address. As they say in the Deli: “Many are chilled, but few are frozen.” So here is a mixed list of the works that are cluttering my “can’t go the pub” life:

The Lansingville Road Incident – I have frequently blogged about what has happened after the fact; but this blog is about something that hasn’t happened yet: Traffic control on Lansingville Road.

Will Cornithaca County’s doctrine elite place the safety and welfare of the rural community above their own convenience and profit? Not on your crony!

Here are some more of the blogs in process:

Divide and Conquer, For ALL Lansing, Full Disclosure – Full Exposure, Lies and Lubyanka, May the Source be with You, Meaningful Political Participation, Melting Pot Myth, Old and In The Way, Principles vs Arguments, Put on a Different Face, Reasonless Reasoning, Rural Social Justice, Sauce for the Goose, StoneWindowing, The Bigotry Survey, Turned on its Axis, What’s Causing It?

And as promised: Black Box Bureaucracy.

I have recently updated two websites:

The Idea Enhancement Project – exploring the use of visual imagery to promote innovative and creative thought.

Doug Baird Art – representative artworks.

At Christmastime; when the only thing hanging over your head should be mistletoe, and the only thing under your head should be beer — it’s time to have a pint and a kiss, and get back to work. [Did I put them in that order?]

As a poet, I have a confession

I embrace every case for depression

I can sit on my ass

With a great gravitas

And get drunk with a thoughtful expression.

Handyland

Affirmative Action is most notable, not for its part ending discriminatory practices; but as the wedge that opened the door to the wholesale countenancing of discriminatory practices.

By the New Millennium; there was no meaningful participation left for the people in the formulation of government policy, and no protections against the tyranny of the “greater good.”

In Cornithaca County, the “greater good” is not a decision that is reasoned, or that is voted on, or even answerable — it’s an edict; a proclamation; a caricature of benevolence; an indifferently disguised cronyism that fools no one; emanating from an authority that is too powerful and too much in control to care.

And in the County’s heavily stratified society; you need to step on those below you to keep your place [and keep them in theirs.]

Handyland

Just as nothing so undercuts the pretensions of the elite as the poverty of those at the bottom; nothing shows the “greater good” in a truer light than its policies in the Cornithaca County’s marginalized rural community.

When Cornell’s expanding bedroom community took over Lansing’s government; they lock-stepped with the “County’s” plan to build thousands of units of housing and create an urban “node” in this once rural town.

New zoning [with a Form Based Code agenda] was pushed through, with “Complete Streets” and a “Town Center” creating a suburban pastiche of cozy cul-de-sacs; but there was a problem: by law, they couldn’t exclude “sexually-oriented businesses.”

The solution: Dump it on the rural people.

APPENDIX II: ADULT ENTERTAINMENT ORDINANCE

1) INTENT

It is the intent of this local law to regulate sexually-oriented businesses, to promote the health, safety, morals and general welfare of the citizens of the Town of Lansing and to establish reasonable and uniform regulations to monitor the location and concentration of sexually oriented businesses within the town of Lansing.

USES PERMITTED – RESTRICTIONS

Sexually-oriented business, as defined herein, shall be permitted in a Rural Agricultural district only

If you lived on an isolated rural road, with no Sheriff’s patrols and no street lights, and your nearest neighbor was a 24-hour “Adult” bookstore: how would you feel about the “health, safety, morals and general welfare” of your family?

This is how the Greater Good is worked in Cornithaca County.