Gas commission meeting rescheduled

The meeting of the Town of Delaware's natural gas drilling commission scheduled for tonight at 5:30 p.m. at the Hortonville firehouse has been cancelled. The next meeting will be next Monday, November 5.

Green grow the dollars

UPDATE 10/31/12: the Agriculture and Sustainability meeting, originally scheduled for Thursday, November 1, has been postponed to Tuesday, November 13.

At 1:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 13, at a meeting of the Legislative Committee on Agriculture and Sustainability at the Government Center in Monticello, NY, Sullivan County’s Office of Sustainability will be fighting for its life. At issue is funding that will decide whether the county can move forward and break ground as a leader and full participant in the green growth industries and lifestyles of the 21st century, or be left in the economic backwaters of an outmoded and increasingly desperate way of life.

Admittedly, the idea of allocating county funds to anything but today’s bills is particularly tough during a period of major financial crisis such as that we currently face, with double-digit tax increases in prospect. Some might argue that matters such as climate change and sustainability are too distant and abstract to worry about in the midst of such an emergency. But even stipulating that premise for the sake of argument*, that way of thinking misses the point.

The plain truth is that the only way you can extract yourself from a deficit on any long-term, ongoing basis is to make your economy grow, and economies are made to grow by bold investment, not by nickel-and-dime cheeseparing. Businesses grow by investing money in new directions, new lines and new means of production. That’s not to say that improvements in efficiency and elimination of waste are not important. But any company that is trying to survive purely by cutting expenses is clearly on its way out the door. The same applies to government.

The steps the county, its communities, businesses and households can take to attain sustainability are all part and parcel of the most vibrant economic trends in the nation—indeed, on the planet—today. Technologies, energy sources, products and services that are part of renewable cycles are what’s up-and-coming around the globe. These practices also, by definition, reduce expenditures in the long run, because they are all about the efficient use of resources. If we fail to connect with such trends, that financial emergency we’re all so worried about is likely to become permanent.

So we must invest somewhere in order to extract ourselves from the current budget bind, and it looks like the place to put our money is the economic trend of the future: green. And maybe that’s also the answer to another question I’ve heard bandied about a lot recently, that of branding. How can we brand Sullivan County to appeal to businesses, tourists, entrepreneurs, homeowners? How about green?

Brand us as not only a rural retreat, but a rural retreat committed to maintaining its open spaces, recycling its resources, generating local energy, constructing zero-energy buildings, making innovations in energy-efficient, low-emission transportation. Brand us as the little engine that could, an area that started out poor and disadvantaged but nevertheless showed others the way in creating a viable way of life that respects and nourishes natural cycles. Do that, and we will have an identity that will be immensely attractive to tourists, second-home purchasers and entrepreneurs from nearby metropolitan areas. And that, in turn, will allow us to incubate business, attract business and create jobs.

 It is this opportunity, as well as a commitment to good environmental stewardship that was opened up when the legislature passed the Sullivan County’s Green Vision Statement and the Climate Smart Communities Pledge. It is this opportunity that the development and implementation of the Sullivan County Climate Action Plan (CAP), with which the CAP Advisory Committee is tasked, should be all about. To take advantage of it, actions will be required at the county level, at the town level, and by businesses and consumers, and it is the business of the CAP advisory panel to enlist the help and participation of all these sectors and facilitate their actions. But seed money is required, among other things to fund a technical support staff to help the volunteer members of the panel, and that’s what Sullivan County lawmakers are being asked for on November 1.

Some of the projects for which funding is being requested will start to generate savings almost immediately, like energy management for county buildings and facilities. Others will take more time, like the collection and analysis of energy use data from Sullivan County towns needed as a basis for developing plans to increase efficiency. But all aim in the same direction: helping us to grow out of the deficit. I hope Sullivan County legislators have the vision to see it as such, and to help the county take its next step toward a better future.


*I am deliberately avoiding here the argument as to whether climate change itself is an emergency—the most dire one we face. I believe it is, and have argued about it elsewhere. But I don’t think anyone has to agree with that belief in order to understand the advisability of investing in this area.

Volunteers sought for emergency shelter in Tusten

Town of Tusten Superintendent Carol Wingert has sent out the following appeal in light of the impending hurricane:

As you all know we have a major storm facing us and the strong possibility of lengthy power outages. If people are out of power too long, we may have people in need of shelter. I am asking for volunteers to man our Emergency Shelter if need be. We will need people to help set up, cook, clean, prepare, and take down. If you can help in any way or know someone who can, please forward to me your contact information, (phone/email) so that I can create a list of folks to contact.

Thank you and please stay safe. ~Carol Ropke Wingert

Truth hurts: mailers but no debate from Lang in Tusten

Tusten voters who have now received five electioneering mailings from town council candidate Ned Lang (six, if you count one mailed during the primary), might want to ask themselves the following question: why is it that Lang is happy sending out mailers, but has turned down at least three proposals to present his views side by side in public with his opponent Andrea Reynosa?*

A brief review of the content of the mailings, which consist largely of unsupported allegations against Reynosa and her allies, rather than specific proposals for improving the town, suggests a possible answer: perhaps Lang’s allegations can’t stand up to the light of day.Here are some of the actual facts behind a few of Lang’s charges:

• The 11-member zoning rewrite committee consists of 10 Tusten residents, including many who are or have been important town officials, plus sewer and water superintendent Dominic Hillard, who currently lives in Callicoon, but is included for reasons too obvious to be explained—and hardly constitutes a majority. The committee is chaired by long-time resident and deputy town clerk Carol Coney, and other members are Supervisor Carol Wingert; councilman, UDC alternate and previous ZBA Chairman Tony Ritter; Planning Board Chairman Ed Jackson; Lisa Dowling, who was a councilwoman when the current zoning ordinance that is being amended was written; Code Enforcement Officer Gary Amerbach, Town Assessor Ken Baim; current ZBA Chairman Kevin McDonough; Sue Sullivan, Conservation Council and UDC representative; and Town Clerk Kathy Michell.
  
  Why any of these is to be considered any less a “stakeholder” than Ned Lang, whose most recent contribution to town governance was to resign from the ZBA last year after having been cited by the town for posting a sign that was larger than permitted by the ordinance then in force—and then engaging in still-ongoing litigation against the town on account of that citation—is a puzzle on which many would probably welcome illumination.

• The Big Eddy Waterfront Revitalization Project would create and enhance public spaces, including rare public waterfront access space, in the hamlet of Narrowsburg. The river walk would be placed about 12 feet below the existing back of the Main Street buildings, so it would not create an additional access to them. By granting easements, Main Street building owners are ceding space and privacy to the general public, not gaining a special privilege. (See “Ignorance is Strength” below.)
• A state grant of $77,000, applied for in 2009 under a different town administration, has been received to go toward the $154,000 cost of the engineering study phase of the Big Eddy project, and additional grant money as well as in-kind matching are to be used to go toward the local share. At no point have $150,000 in Tusten taxpayer dollars been used, or proposed to be used, for this project. For more facts, not fiction, about the project, visit http://www.tusten.org/FAQ_Narrowsburg.pdf
• No one has suggested moving Veterans Park, contrary to the straw man that has been set up in one of Lang’s flyers and in a whisper campaign on the streets; all that has ever been suggested is to enhance it—just as he proposes. The difference is that Reynosa proposed it long before he ever did so, and has already put some elbow grease and fundraising (not taxpayer dollar spending) expertise into the project.

Sending out mailings is fine as far as it goes, but if the mailings aren't complemented by public interchanges, they allow candidates to avoid accountability for what they say. Though it wasn't possible to schedule a Meet the Candidates session with both candidates present, Reynosa plans to engage in a public Q&A session on Saturday, October 27 at 4 p.m. at the Tusten Town Hall. Voters who have questions about Lang's mailings, or more to the point, about what Reynosa plans to do to make the town a better place, should make every effort to attend.

*The three invitations were a proposal for a radio or online debate made by Tony Ritter in a letter to the editor; an invitation to participate in a proposed documentary representing the two sides in the election; and an invitation to the Meet the Candidates event to be held by Tusten Concerned Citizens at 4 p.m. on Saturday, October 27 at the town hall.

Ignorance is strength: the doublespeak attack on Tusten's esplanade

In George Orwell’s “1984,” the government maintained control of the populace largely by the destruction of its capacity for rational thought. It accomplished this goal by dint of a particularly bold and corrosive style of lying that consisted in concealing the truth by simply calling things their opposites: “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.” (This practice has entered the popular lexicon in the word “doublespeak,” though Orwell himself referred to it in his book with the words “newspeak” and “doublethink.”)

The attacks currently being made in the Town of Tusten against the Big Eddy Waterfront Development Project, aka the esplanade—currently spearheaded by Ned Lang, candidate for a seat on the town council—invoke this Orwellian tactic. What the project is about is providing something that is unfortunately quite rare on the Upper Delaware riverfront, not only in Tusten but all the way along its banks: access to the riverfront for members of the general public, those of us who are not fortunate enough to personally own waterfront land.

The increase of such access up and down the river corridor is in fact an obvious goal for the community to strive for. To begin with, it would improve the quality of life for all who live in the river valley but, ironically, have all too little opportunity to get up close and personal with the river itself. It would also increase the attractiveness of the area to tourists, bringing in more visitors, more business, and more dollars circulating throughout the community. And any hamlet that could provide a particularly attractive access would obviously be particularly competitive in attracting traffic, both local and from outside the area, stimulating business in its environs—and oh yes, boosting the tax base and county sales tax revenue.

Yet somehow, a small cadre in the Town of Tusten has succeeded in creating a foothold of opposition against the town’s Big Eddy Waterfront Vitalization Project, which would accomplish just these public benefits. It has done so by averring, without foundation in fact, that the project would benefit just an elite few businessmen on Main Street.

First of all, the current project, plans for which will shortly be posted in the window of the National Park Service office on Main Street in Narrowsburg, includes a river walk to be built a good 12 feet below the level of the lower stories of the Main Street buildings. It’s true that some of the plans drawn up years ago by planners such as Tom Shepstone called for a boardwalk that would directly abut the buildings and provide entrances to them, essentially expanding the business district. (Frankly, I can’t understand why that would be seen as a bad thing for the town, but under the circumstances I don’t have to even get into that argument. It’s not going to be done.)

So by granting easements across their properties, the current Main Street businesses aren’t gaining new business space or an increase in rental footage. What they are doing is giving up part of their properties to the public, so that people can take a stroll or sit close to the river, something that is not currently possible. They will be losing some privacy, and picking up some potential noise and disturbance. Main Street businesses will pick up only the same benefits that the town as a whole will pick up: more people visiting, more dollars circulating throughout the town.

This is the project that Lang and his cadre have somehow convinced a significant segment of the populace is an elitist project. Yeah. And ignorance is strength.

Some grains as small as a mustard seed

Following the recent sturm und drang in the Town of Delaware surrounding the Roeder Resolution and its aftermath, two resolutions passed by the council tonight at the regular town meeting could present the seeds of a very different direction for the town.

First was a resolution that the town should sign the Climate Smart Community Pledge, essentially a pledge to join in Sullivan County’s Climate Action Plan initiative to reduce carbon emissions by all sectors, adopt sustainable practices and policies—and just incidentally create jobs and economic growth centered around this transformation. Delaware joined the towns of Tusten, Highland and Lumberland in signing the pledge. The town’s next step will be to collect baseline information about its current carbon emissions. After that, it can start developing particular projects, eligible for funding, that can carry forward the plan’s goals.

Second was a resolution to propose Local Law #3, the Delaware version of the Local Road Use and Preservation Law created by the Sullivan County Multi-Municipal Taskforce (MMTF). The law spells out a system to make sure that when new, heavy industrial users come into the area, they, not taxpayers, pay for the damage they inflict on town roads—while screening out existing, traditional traffic by agricultural, lumbering and construction vehicles and the like.

Admittedly, you can’t make too much of either of these at this point. As noted both by Supervisor Ed Sykes and by Michael Chojnicki, who made the request that the council act on the pledge tonight, it does not actually force anybody to do anything. If, once specific emissions-reducing projects have been proposed, the council elects to vote every one of them down, it can still do so.

And the road use law has only been proposed, not voted on—indeed, the hearing has yet to be held. Moreover, in the past year or so, the work of the MMTF has in fact run into opposition in the county from several angles. Some see it as a tacit concession that natural gas drilling activity will be coming into our area, coupled with a mistaken implication that the steps taken by the law adequately mitigate the damage of that activity. (I find these criticisms misguided; see http://www.riverreporter.com/editorial/16/2011/07/12/issue-hand .)  On the other side are people like town council candidate Ned Lang in Tusten, who argues that the law is an unreasonable interference with business activities. We’ll have to wait until the hearing to see if such opposition raises its head in Delaware.

But what is interesting to note for now is that both resolutions passed without dissent either on the council or from the audience, and that means one very important thing: right now, despite all the recent contention, there are a few issues on which people on both sides of the gas drilling rift in the Town of Delaware can find common ground. With regard to the pledge, the common ground is that good stewardship of the environment may be possible to pursue at the same time as economic renewal. With regard to the road use law, it is that it should not be the obligation of small rural households to bankroll industrial corporations’ usage of the taxpayers’ common resources. 

From these small beginnings, perhaps some way forward can be found to a future in which green energy and conservation initiatives, not extractive industries, provide the basis of economic vitality, and town government recognizes its obligation to protect all the common resources of the town—including air and water, not just roads. Pollyanna stuff at the moment, certainly. But the climate plan and road law ought at least provide a place where people can begin to talk about it.

Field & Stream Club files action against Town of Highland re drilling ban

EID Marcellus has posted a news story reporting that the Town of Highland's Field & Stream Club has filed a notice of action with the Town of Highland, a precursor to legal action, claiming that the town has violated its constitutional rights in enacting a law banning the club's ability to access its mineral rights.

http://eidmarcellus.org/marcellus-shale/town-of-highland-gets-sued-over-natural-gas-ban/13991/

Email notification sent to EID by the club's attorney noted that "Additional causes of action are also pled in the Notice of Claim filed with the Town of Highland Clerk on October 5, 2012."

 I have no further information on this at this time.