O pioneers

Posted 6/7/11

Something interesting is happening in Sullivan County. Local governments in small rural towns, towns with apparently limited resources, high levels of unemployment and incomes well below the state …

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O pioneers

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Something interesting is happening in Sullivan County. Local governments in small rural towns, towns with apparently limited resources, high levels of unemployment and incomes well below the state average, are taking extraordinary actions to take control over their own governance.

The word that may best embody what we are seeing was spoken by Dr. William Pammer, consultant to the committee currently undertaking the Town of Tusten zoning rewrite, with regard to the committee’s intention to draft sections for the new ordinance that would restrict high-impact industrial uses in the town. The word is “pioneers.” In pushing to reaffirm municipal rights in this area, Tusten and its neighbors Highland and Lumberland are pioneering in the area of home rule.

The pioneering spirit is also evident in the Multi-Municipal Task Force (MMTF), a group of eight towns that have pooled resources to create a system ensuring that excessive industrial users of local roads have to pay for any damage they do. In fact, the leading-edge MMTF effort has apparently beaten a path that some are already seeking to follow: a few days after the publication of our editorial on the subject in our May 19 edition, we received a phone call from Delta Engineers, the MMTF’s consulting engineers, asking for permission to reprint it—so that it could be handed out at a meeting with officials from Otsego County who may be interested in doing the same thing.

That pioneering spirit, we think, is essential in facing the special challenges that confront areas like ours in today’s world. Poor in money, we are rich in natural resources including water, the all-essential compound that has been termed the oil of the 21st century. And our location between major Northeastern cities and the vaster natural resources of Canada make us vulnerable to transport systems like the New York Regional Interconnect transmission line project or, indeed, natural gas pipelines, for which our primary value is merely that we lie on the path between two other places.

Put in this position, the temptation may seem all too great to trade what we are rich in—our land and the amenities and the services it hosts—with what we have so little of: money. Because of this, fears—fear of poverty, fear that the moneyed interests that are seeking to exploit our resources may use their deep pockets to overwhelm us in court—may all too often tend to guide our decisions. It is out of fear that some in the Town of Delaware recently argued against a resolution that would have supported home rule. And we recently heard similar fears voiced with regard to Tusten’s abovementioned attempt to restrict high-impact industrial uses.

Prudence is admittedly an important guiding principle of any governing body. But we live in a world in which the increasingly large mega-entities, from national governments to multi-national corporations, that now hold sway over our lives, have shown themselves increasingly incompetent to run a viable economy, preserve democratic rights or prevent the damage we are doing to the environment from spinning out of control. While taking steps to control our own destinies may entail risks, we think the greater risk is to continue to rely on such mega-systems rather than beating our own path.

All of which is not to say that risks can’t be managed. To draft their zoning rewrites, Highland, Lumberland and Tusten have engaged the Community Environmental Defense Council (CEDC), which has had its model ordinance, on which the individual town ordinances will be based, extensively reviewed by attorneys throughout New York State. According to David Slotje of the CEDC, the universal response has been that it is watertight. And though even a sound ordinance can be challenged in court, an initiative announced at last Saturday’s Skydog Supper Club in Tusten by Peter Comstock of the Lumberland Concerned Citizens would help insulate the towns against any actual suits. Pledges are being collected—not yet actual dollars, but pledges—to set up a $100,000 legal defense fund. Those pledges might never be called in; they would come into play only if one of the towns were legally challenged. In that case, the fund would provide a resource that the town in question could draw upon without hitting its tax base. And only one case would need to be fought and won for the law to establish a legal precedent that would discourage further suits.

The pledge is a way for citizens of our area to cover each other’s backs and stand our ground together in favor of our own right to self government. If you are interested in being one of them, you can find a printable copy of the pledge online at tinyurl.com/6dwld6j.

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