Lansing Comprehensive Plan – Page 2

“The World According to Doctrine” — Lovely Lansing Videogame: “Public Hearing”

It’s a “takers” society – and as the events, policies, and media hype swirl around us: there’s an erosion of individual worth and the “work ethic” – and all ethical conduct.

Rewards come; not from the persistence of hard work – but from the persistence of a fox circling the henhouse. Life is not the opportunity to achieve – but the opportunity to take.

The legitimacy of our government is no longer based on ethics; but on the profitability of its policies. Politicians and experts have swelled their egos to become the deciders:

They are reshaping the world — and some people are just excess population.

If you want to experience the futility of our future: attend a Public Hearing.

“The World According to Doctrine” — New Definition: “Public Hearing”

What fools we are! Our taxes pay for the lawyers that advise our local governments on how to legally minimize or eliminate public participation in the decision making process – and all the new regulatory programs enacted – like Form Based Codes and Nine-Point Plans – remove the public from any authority or oversight; even in the most radical and far reaching policy decisions.

It’s hard to blame the public for being apathetic; when the sole result of attending public hearings is the legitimizing of decisions that are anything but public mandates.

Publicly presenting your thought out and well-documented criticisms; to a Town Board that approves the policy within seconds of your speaking — is like voting in an election with only one candidate.

The sound of one hand clapping? It’s meaningful public participation.

“The World According to Doctrine” — “Survey questions they won’t ask”

When people ask you; “How are you doing?” – just say “Good” or “I’m doing OK” – because most people don’t want to hear your problems — the same thing is true of surveys.

Our Town survey, like everything to do with policy and politics, comes from Cornell. The cold-call telephone questions were loaded, open for interpretation, and asked well in advance of public awareness of the issues they would be used for. When the agenda of the survey emerged – its authors quickly backpedaled in an angry Town meeting: claiming it was only a preliminary indication; and of no great importance — this same survey was later used as the sole determining mandate from the residents for the Town’s Comprehensive Plan and all future development.

Surveys are used to provide an appearance of public legitimacy to the unilateral decision making of Cornell County planners. When residents claim that they are inadequate, biased, or deceptive – county officials merely defend the results; and make no changes,

People may not make the right decisions — and surveys are an important step to prevent that.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – Rise of the Evil Ones – Expediency: “Lying”

Lying is just another way to get what you want — and it’s a way that has seen a phenomenal growth in recent decades. With a government that cannot be questioned or held accountable — lying is the only form of public involvement left.

If you question their lies; they shut down. If you question anything; they shut down. If they feel like it; they shut down. What are you able to do about it?

In Tompkins County; the people just say that their government is corrupt and there is no meaningful participation — and go back to doing whatever they’re doing.

There may be a little cause and effect in this situation.

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“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” has been published and is available as a free ePub download on Smashwords.com; and as Kindle and in paperback on Amazon.com.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – Rise of the Evil Ones – Expediency: “Planning Flow”

With “black box” Planning Flow; there’s nothing to trip you up – a few quick steps and “fait accompli” you’re done.

For a more detailed examination of how planning is approved in “Cornithaca” County: “Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” has been published as a free ePub download on Smashwords.com; and as Kindle and soon a paperback on Amazon.com.

“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” – Complete Streets

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.

“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” – Form Based Codes

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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FORM BASED CODES

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:

Cornell’s Design Connect made a presentation that was attended by 25 residents.
Those residents were asked for comments.
A 27 page “sales brochure” promoting the benefits of across-the-board Form Based Code regulatory policies was added to the Comprehensive Plan without any further public involvement or approval. No alternative planning idea was given any space.

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.

“All Roads Lead to Cornithaca” – “Rise of the Evil Ones” – “Local Government Planning”

This graphic is like looking across an intersection; towards the policy making documented in “Tompkins County and Tammany Hall.”

The actual survey questions are just as manipulative, although they are crafted more subtly in the Town of Lansing Survey – and the Town’s Comprehensive Plan is demonstrably written by Cornell; through its parts and partisans – and Town authorities did turn their backs on any meaningful participation, review, or approval by the town’s residents.

The violence? Well, there are some rural people who believe I was sprayed with Roundup and poisoned because of my Rural Social Justice activities.

The facts? There is no one in authority left to go to – no one left to trust. That’s a fact.

“Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” – Town of Lansing Comp Plan – Introduction: “From First to Last”

The Town of Lansing is proposing a new Local Law – one that only applies to the “Rural/Agricultural Zone”; and further restricts the lives and activities of the town’s rural residents.

In today’s world of unabashed self-promotion; where the most repressive and discriminatory policies are marketed as the “Greater Good” — a dictatorship has crawled through the crumbling remains of our once representative government. How can you survive on the path to world-wide dissolution? Conforming won’t help you get a place in the lifeboat: you’re just clawing up the backs of those who are already drowning.

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TOWN OF LANSING COMPREHENSIVE PLAN

Introduction

From First to Last

Buried towards the end of Chapter 4 in the Town of Lansing Comprehensive Plan; is a paragraph that should have come at the plan’s beginning – a statement that reveals the true authorship and intent of the town’s future policy making:

“The best way to plan for the long-term future of the Town of Lansing is to decide regionally where the major commercial, educational, shopping, recreational, health care, agricultural, manufacturing and residential sectors will be located. The reality is that our municipalities are not in competition with each other; rather they survive in symbiotic relationships. We should build upon these cooperative relationships in land-use decisions as well, while respecting a town’s right to home rule. New York State Law delegates planning decisions to the town and city levels but does not forbid a more coordinated process.”

This statement unilaterally rewrites the whole structure of responsibility and obligation of town government; and directly contradicts New York State Town Law § 272-a:

“The development and enactment by the town government of a town comprehensive plan which can be readily identified, and is available for use by the public, is in the best interest of the people of each town.”

The Law clearly shows the intent of the law is NOT to make the Town’s comprehensive plan a “regional” decision.

“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”

The comprehensive plan is an important “duty” and “responsibility” of the town government – and as such cannot be delegated or subordinated to other agencies or interests.

“The participation of citizens in an open, responsible and flexible planning process is essential to the designing of the optimum town comprehensive plan.”

The Town of Lansing planning process was anything but “open”; with citizen participation relegated to a scattering of meaningless pre-planning activities – and offering NO participation for residents throughout the entire decision-making and policy approval process.

Lansing Town Government’s claims of public representation rests on a single telephone survey, prepared and administered by Cornell University’s Survey Research Institute (SRI) [See Ruler of All you Survey for a more detailed examination.] – A survey that was widely attacked by Lansing residents in a Town Meeting. The advocates of the survey retreated – and ended up by claiming that it was only meant to give an indication, and was not to be considered an important policy document. This same survey was later cited and used throughout the final Comprehensive Plan as both a definitive source and as a mandate from the town’s residents.

In this “Community Survey” – 365 town residents were cold-called on issues that had never been brought up for discussion or debate, to reply to a series questions that showed a definite bias in their preparation.

The Survey’s method of formulation and its inclusion as the Town’s only source of policy-defining public participation – shows the ongoing misrepresentation of policy goals and lack of ethical underpinning that pervades policy-making in Tompkins County.

New York State Town Law § 272-a:

“In the event the town board prepares a proposed town comprehensive plan or amendment thereto, the town board shall hold one or more public hearings and such other meetings as it deems necessary to assure full opportunity for citizen participation in the preparation of such proposed plan or amendment”

Everybody I talk to; everybody; believes that there is no meaningful participation by the people in either Town or County government — and the actions of government policy-makers to stubbornly continue insisting that there is meaningful public participation; while refusing to allow public participation and oversight; gives legitimacy to that belief.

The lead writer of the Town of Lansing Agriculture and Farmland Protection Plan [from Cornell Cooperative Extension] publicly expressed the opinion that nobody but farmers “deserved to live in north Lansing” [an opinion that no Town official would rebut] – And the entire Plan was prepared while excluding 95% of the rural residents from any participation at all. This “Protection Plan” [including its policy of rural citizen exclusion] was then approved by both the Town of Lansing, and Tompkins County governments – and became an important part of the Town’s Comprehensive Plan’s “vision.”

It’s should be interesting for students of Tompkins County government to note how perfectly both the Ag Protection Plan and the Lansing Comp Plan dovetail together — with both supporting each other and claiming that the other Plan is essential to the success of their own.

Unsurprisingly; the 2018 Town of Lansing Comprehensive Plan echoes the exact same policies and concerns as the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan of three years earlier: Lansing Town Government has abjured their duty to the people of the town — and meekly acquiesced to the County’s primacy by accepting “planning at the county level”.

The Town of Lansing should post a disclaimer on all their documents stating: “No meaningful public participation was used in the formulation of these policies and regulations.”