“Only a fool would assume they won’t abuse their power.” Don’t we know it. It seems like wisdom has become old fashioned – with so many cautionary tales about people who expect to retain power while renouncing their authority; and those who give over their authority for the promise of thoughtless ease – it’s surprising that today’s uber-naive demand that their government act responsively; when they’ve already given up the power to demand anything.
It’s an age where people don’t need to know what they’re talking about – only that it needs to conform to what they are supposed to say. When this book is finished and available; even with all the documentation – many people will see it as an attack on their beliefs – without reading it – and without thinking. It’s “fake” news, “fake” facts, “fake” something.
This unthinking mob of adolescent adults may be useful for politicians and corporations – but it’s a one-trick-pony where survival is concerned. They need to see a disaster movie screenplay where they are not selected as the designated survivors; because no one survives.
Today’s government policies read like a man who jumped off the roof of a hundred-story building and as he passed the 79th floor was heard to say: “All right, so far!” We’re falling to place most people can’t imagine; and are not being told about. Parachutes made from recycled plastic bottles will only give you a soft landing into a toxic sea, breathing unsupportable air.
I won’t live that long — but here’s a thought: maybe the building is only 50 floors . . . or twenty five. Think “fake” extinction.
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TOWN OF LANSING COMPREHENSIVE PLAN
Part 1
Home Invasion
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 they doing this?
Nothing shows the duplicitous agenda of Tompkins County government as clearly as their treatment of housing. This essay will examine housing policy statements in both the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan, and the Cornell-written Town of Lansing Comprehensive Plan.
Ithaca has been simultaneously 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.
With its high rents, high taxes, and lack of housing already forcing 80% of their workers to live outside the City, how can Ithaca attract new businesses and provide affordable housing while keeping College revenues up and protecting those low-density, high rent urban neighborhoods with that “small town feeling” students and professors love?
Answer: Force another municipality to build the affordable housing that your workers need, and let them shoulder the cost of the schools and services; while you keep the businesses and spending in your upscale, “small town” Ithaca.
Create a “vision,” for Tompkins County and use all of your credentials and influence to sell it directly to another town government – and by the time the town’s residents wake up to what’s happening; it’s too late.
The Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan’s backers heavily and aggressively promote the creation of an “Urban Center” and “Development Focus Areas”:
“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.”
The following excerpts from the comprehensive plans of the “Urban Center” municipalities gives a clearer picture of how this residential development will actually be shared:
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.”
Since the rural Town of Lansing is the farthest municipality in the County’s new “urban center” – 8 miles – from Cornell and Ithaca’s business and shopping: arguing this development on the basis of its “close proximity” and “ideal location” is more than a misrepresentation.
“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.”
How can you argue to expand mass transit into a new area; when you already have an existing transit system and great walkability in an urban area with endless housing redevelopment potential? An area that has the jobs and businesses that these relocated workers would need to be bused many extra miles to get to.
“Housing expansion in the form of new developments and PUD’s 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.”
[PUDs are “Planned Unit Developments” – a term used to describe a housing development that is not subject to standard zoning requirements for the area – a further erosion of any community control.]
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 could this ever be considered the best planning solution for Tompkins County?
Town of Lansing 2018 Comprehensive Plan’s “Proposed Future Land Uses”: depicts thousands of acres that will be zoned for apartments and condominiums. Tompkins County and “Lansing’s” government plan to turn a once rural town into the largest and most concentrated collection of housing developments in the region.
“The construction of a new four-lane highway on the outskirts of Ithaca, NY created a rapidly growing commercial center in the previously rural Town of Lansing. The clash between the newcomers and the old-timers over the direction and pace of this change led to the formation of a new local government and the incorporation of the Village of Lansing.” – Lansing at the Crossroads: A Partisan History of the Village of Lansing, New York, Rita Smidt
Incomers from Ithaca and Cornell continued to move into what was left of rural Lansing; creating a large urban sprawl bedroom community and gradually taking over the town’s government and planning. Finding a loophole from an old agreement to share municipal Highway Dept. services: that allowed residents of the Village of Lansing to vote in the Town of Lansing’s elections without any reciprocity – they blanketed the Village’s streets with election signs calling themselves the candidates “For All of Lansing” — there were no ethical qualms about having residents from a different municipality, with a very different viewpoint, voting into office a Town Board that would radically change the community they had historically “clashed” with. The plan worked.
It’s the Fall of 2021; and upcoming elections for Lansing’s Town Board – a sign in the Village of Lansing:
PLEASE VOTE!
Village of Lansing
residents
vote in
Lansing Town Elections
First Tuesday in November
After all; isn’t this in line with the ethics and actions already demonstrated by Tompkins County government itself?
The “Urban Center/Development Focus Area/Rural Sprawl” housing agenda that County Planners concocted for the Town of Lansing is an example of everything that’s wrong with the “City-centric” planning of Tompkins County today:
• Academic credentials at the service of vested interests.
• Adopting a lesser plan to appease a greater master.
And maybe what’s even worse; in a college “destination” with such smug pretensions of being a seat of learning and illumination — it’s intellectually dishonest.
This piece will probably fit in before the County and Town of Lansing plans are examined.
Since these plans have no public oversight, and almost no public readership; they have ballooned into a dumpster’s worth of poorly supported arguments and misrepresented problems – gaining importance through the sheer weight of their endlessly insistent claims.
It’s not a question of “Cui Bono”; because the players are unfazed by the spotlight – but “Can anything be done to save the community?”
Is there anything left but the rot?
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THE PROBLEM
There is a public relations problem that comes pre-packaged with every Tompkins County government agenda: Why does every policy decision work to the benefit of Cornell University?
The “All of Us Together” concept of “Tompkins County” was created to mold the surrounding towns and villages into a pattern that is beneficial to Cornell’s corporate growth — it has no other purpose.
“Tompkins County” government doesn’t work with the people – it works with the corporations, the institutions, the politicians, bureaucrats, and special interests.
They are power brokers.
That’s why the county’s public policies are never decided in the public sector — it’s not a government of the people – it’s a government above the people.
“Tompkins County’s” decision making flow chart is a beautiful example of Vertical Integration: every stage of government action is integrated and controlled from the top.
It’s the very strength of this system that makes it so easy to spot – and once spotted; its methods of public “predation” can be studied:
Camouflage – Cornell moves everywhere among the shadows – policies are carried out by them, because of them, or in gratitude to them. Even when the “County” claims its concerns are with the people – Deferential nods are given to Cornell’s “importance”.
Media stories read like the handouts that they are; and if public opposition forces the reporting of a community or environmental outcry – the article always ends with rebuttals of those concerns; at length.
Deal making – as exampled by the Town of Lansing’s Comprehensive Plan and Agriculture Protection Plan: this once rural town was divided into two distinct land uses to appease the county’s powerful Development and Agricultural interests. Not only do both plans dovetail perfectly and express wholehearted support of each other as an important part of their own plan’s success — both were written by Cornell.
Credentials – every policy “push” releases a flood of credentials – even if they know nothing about the particular community or the needs of residents: they know exactly how to solve every problem — do what “Tompkins County” wants. [If you want to have career longevity.]
Beneficence – while I have never met a single resident or employee who believes that altruism plays a part in the University’s corporate agenda – their dictator-inspired “parades” and proclamations are a not-to-be-gainsaid part of Cornell’s “Sun King” persona.
Meaningless public participation – public participation is kept to a minimum: none. Tompkins County fosters rulership; not representation. At Lansing Town meetings the public cannot ask any questions; and are told they’re lucky to even be allowed to speak.
Power – Cornell is more than just a big frog in the small pond of Tompkins County – it’s a big frog that swallowed the county. Connected at all levels of government and business, even internationally; they are the controlling authority for every activity within the county.
On the workplace level there’s “Cornell Paranoia”: The fear of being associated with any thought, belief, or person that makes your superiors unhappy – even a social media link or the mention of a critical observation might get back to the hierarchy and result in your losing your job — it’s palace intrigue in a new millennium setting.
Stone walling – If you ask unwelcome questions, or persist in opposition – the County just shuts down; and refuses to communicate or acknowledge your existence. It’s a further proof of the power behind County government that they can do this and get away with it.
Enhancing Cornell’s power and profit is what Tompkins County government does — it’s what they are.
The reader may find this essay a bit “offhand” for the seriousness of the subject; but it’s intended to be descriptive of the situation, and not a rigorous examination.
It’s something to keep in mind when you’re presented with a bill of goods.
Like the elite in any authoritarian social structure; Tompkins County uses the needs and fears of its citizens to control and direct their energy.
Coining new terms to make people believe they’re getting a new deal is as old a trick as targeting a group of people for suspicion and hate.
While Tompkins County may deny they are stacking the deck against the rural community; they won’t let anyone else touch the deck – or deal the cards.
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RURAL SPRAWL
“How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” — Abraham Lincoln
. . . But if you keep on insisting his tail a leg – people will start to believe you.
This is the rationale behind the creation of the term: “rural sprawl” — a term designed to obscure the truth.
Since this chapter focuses on a single example, and the area’s Town and County comprehensive plans will be subject to a detailed examination in other chapters; I will merely outline the housing agenda in Tompkins County.
Ithaca; named the “Best College Town in America” is also reported as being the “8th most expensive city in the U.S. to raise a family.” The ability of landlords to rent a 3 or 4-bedroom apartment to students for far more than families can afford to pay, along with the high property taxes; have pushed out the college and business workers; and artificially forced the creation of urban sprawl bedroom communities in the outlying rural towns and villages.
While Ithaca planners designate block after block of their wood frame houses as historically important and surround the city with 3,800 acres of “conservation land” — the rural town of Lansing has 0 acres of conservation land; and its secluded 33-acre Salmon Creek Bird Sanctuary has been turned into a sanctuary for drug dealers and drug users through County cut-backs.
The best way for Ithaca to preserve its gentrified way of life – while expanding the colleges and increasing their importance as a business center – was to markedly increase the size and density of their urban sprawl “satellites.”
This is where the concept of “Rural Sprawl” comes in.
These sprawl bedroom communities became “identified” as Development Focus Areas for “compact residential development” – the County adopted a plan that categorized rural Lansing as an Emerging Node with the need for a municipal water and sewer infrastructure to support additional development in the area.
The awkward problem of urban sprawl – was suddenly the solution.
Increasing Tompkins County’s urban resettlement was now the only answer to “rural sprawl”: the new “Red Menace” of rural residents destroying the land, water, and future of the county.
[An interesting attribution for a rural community that had done just the opposite for over 200 years.]
The fact that “rural sprawl” and its attendant denunciations appear 11 times in the Town of Lansing Comprehensive Plan is not surprising — Cornell not only wrote the Town’s Agricultural Plan; it supplied all the planning for the Town’s Comp Plan as well.
By 2021; Lansing’s native residents were completely disenfranchised and marginalized – with incomers taking control of the government. This is how Urban Colonialism works in Tompkins County.
The “rural sprawl” argument is a patronizing pastiche that any rigorous questioning would expose; but in a dictatorship, even a pseudo-democratic one, you can’t change anything . . . and you don’t ask questions.
Tompkins County policy making is a puzzle with thousands of pieces; all the same size, the same shape, and imprinted with the same design. No matter how many pieces you put together; the picture never changes — it just gets bigger.
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THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY
The mapmakers are
Sometimes it can be little things that point the most clearly to misconduct and undue influence in government policy making.
Removed from the shadows of bureaucratic justification: each piece tells a story of the ethics and intent behind these public policies — who receives the benefits — and how that affects the life of the community.
In this chapter; I will use the legal definition of fraud to examine a map that was used to support far-reaching policy decisions, summarize the results of that examination and its disclosure
The map is the “Town of Lansing, N.Y. Agricultural Property” map displaying the legend: “Agricultural Exemptions 2016”. The source is “Tompkins County Assessment Dept, 2016” and it contains the seal and imprint of the “Tompkins County Planning Dept”.
Fraud is commonly understood as dishonesty calculated for advantage. It can be proved by showing that the defendant’s actions involved five separate elements:
(1) A false statement of a material fact
Nearly half of the land marked as “agricultural property” in this map is not owned by agricultural entities; and is only rented for agricultural use. Much of this property is residential or commercially owned and rented for a little tax relief – in a county that has one of the highest median property taxes in the United States.
Although the map purports to show “Agricultural Exemptions” – much of the land marked does not receive any agricultural exemption. For example: only 40% of my neighbor’s land received an agricultural exemption; but 100% was marked as receiving it in this map.
(2) Knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue
In a “clarification” email; the County’s Assessment Department admitted that they knowingly helped create a map misrepresenting the actual acreage receiving Agricultural Exemptions: “The intention of the map is to show the parcels that receive an agricultural exemption – it is not intended to show how much of each parcel receives an exemption.” Although this is clearly not the representation of this map; the Assessment Dept. still insisted: “The map is in fact correct.”
(3) Intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim
This map was used to support preferential agricultural policies for a handful of influential farmers, including the unilateral creation of an Agricultural Zone, to the exclusion and detriment of 95% of the existing rural community — an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact. This is an “afterthought” piece of supporting evidence; created and added after the town’s Agriculture Protection Plan was already approved – what it claims to be is clearly, knowingly, and admittedly, not a true representation.
(4) Justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement
This map is “signed off” on by both the County Assessment Dept. and the County Planning Dept.; it was included in the Town’s comprehensive plan, and was presented with those credentials as a factual representation. Residents were invited to place reliance on this map and approve the rezoning of half of the town from Rural/Agricultural to Agricultural only.
(5) Injury to the alleged victim as a result
This map was used by authorities to justify the enactment of restrictive policies against “non-farming” residents; further marginalizing the county’s rural poor — to promote Agriculture as the only preferred use of rural land, and to designate farmers as the sole and exclusive “stakeholders” in the rural community.
This map is included in the arguments of Town and County “representatives” who fostered citizen petitions to prevent the sale or rental of rural land for solar farms or for housing, and force highly-taxed rural landowners to sell cheaply to farmers; already the richest and most influential people in the community. The “consolidation” of rural land into the hands of ever-larger farming corporations; further enables the spread of “modern farming methods” that have been proven to cause “significant harm” to neighboring families.
A knowingly inaccurate map should neither have been created nor have been offered for inclusion in the Town’s Comprehensive Plan – a legal document that is described in NY Town Law as: “Among the most important powers and duties granted by the legislature to a town government.”
Additionally, whereas this map is offered as a proof of intent by the Town to protect land for continued agricultural use; the Town has sold the land that it rented for agriculture use to a housing developer — and a different Comprehensive Plan map shows that the Town plans to zone most of the agricultural land in the southern half of town for future residential and commercial development.
Just changing the legend and/or name of the map would only cover up the situation and retain any advantages that the misrepresentation has already given to the parties involved.
I sent these arguments in an email requesting that the County Legislature remove this map from its files and from any documents wherein it has been used, and to correct as much as possible the damage its use has caused.
Attachments included both the Agricultural Property map and the “clarification” email from the County Assessment Department.
There was no response or acknowledgement from any of the county’s 14 Legislators.
If it is ethics that give a government legitimacy; what does the County’s creation and continued use of this map represent?
The Town of Lansing’s 2016 Agricultural Property map is just one example of the deliberate misrepresentations that riddle the County’s planning agenda.
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:
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
Another excerpt. If you’ve read the previous excerpts; you’re probably thinking: “Oh, another example of elitist policy making; can’t he write about something different.” There is no other kind of policy making in Cornithaca County.
I am trying to present a strong circumstantial case by showing the reader how all the facts point in the same direction. I could write about a hundred incidents that that support this argument; but it would be a waste of time: where could I go with it?
As I point out in my Deadly Drift story, even the laws don’t matter — they have the power and the friends to ignore or even rewrite them.
This book can be seen as a cautionary tale. As they used to say when I was in grade school: “A word to the wise is sufficient.” The “unwise” become characters in their own cautionary tales.
THE MAP IS NOT THE TERRITORY
The mapmakers are
If it is ethics that give a government legitimacy; what does the County’s creation and continued use of this map represent?
The Town of Lansing’s 2016 Agricultural Property map is just one example of the deliberate misrepresentations that riddle the County’s planning agenda:
• This map misrepresents existing facts: i.e. actual acreage receiving Agricultural Exemptions in 2016.
• The County’s Assessment Department admitted that they knowingly supplied a map misrepresenting the actual acreage receiving Agricultural Exemptions: “The intention of the map is to show the parcels that receive an agricultural exemption – it is not intended to show how much of each parcel receives an exemption.” This is clearly not the representation of the map. [As an example: Contrary to the 100% shown on the map, only 40% of my neighbor’s tax parcel receives an Agricultural Assessment.]
• This map was used to support preferential agricultural policies, including the creation of an Agricultural Zone, to the exclusion and detriment of the existing rural community — an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage.
A knowingly inaccurate map should neither have been created nor have been offered for inclusion in a legal document that is described in NY Town Law as follows: “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.”
Additionally, whereas this map is offered as a proof of intent by the Town for continued agricultural land use; a different Comp Plan map shows that the Town has zoned most of the agricultural land in the southern half of town for residential and commercial development.
Just changing the legend and/or name of the map would only cover up the situation and retain any advantages that the misrepresentation has already given to the parties involved.
I sent these arguments in an email requesting that the County Legislature remove this map from its files and from any documents wherein it has been used, and to correct as much as possible the damage its use has caused.
Attachments included both the Agricultural Property map and the “clarification” email from the County Assessment Department.
There was no response or acknowledgement of my email from any of the county’s 14 legislators.
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Government in Cornithaca County is inaccessible to its residents. The doors that lead to meaningful participation are merely a decoration. The actual decision making process takes place out of sight; and is revealed to the people as unalterable policy decisions.
Cornithaca County is the template for a secular religion: a stratified and compartmentalized society based on 200 years of bureaucratic materialism.
One thought, One taught • One voice, One choice . . . a shiny dictatorship with a dark underbelly.
