An idea whose time has come?

It’s hard not to look at yesterday’s election results as anything other than an endorsement of the Lowe’s project. With the two candidates unequivocably in favor of the project polling 61.4 per cent, it is clear that the people of Geneseo want a Lowe’s. How the town gets there from here, however, is not very clear.

Supervisor Wadsworth will have a big job in cleaning up the legal, political and ethical mess surrounding  this issue when he takes office in January. His claimed abilities to find consensus on this and other matters will be sorely tested.

The reality that almost 40 per cent of the community was prepared to say no to the Lowe’s will give substantial encouragement to those who continue to believe that this is the wrong project, in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

As I told representatives from Newman Development at last week’s public hearing, their best course of action would be to withdraw their application until such time as a new master plan and new zoning that permits their proposed use can be adopted. I believe that, the election results notwithstanding, this is still good advice.

Might does not necessarily make right. Just because a majority of the voters want something does not mean that an illegal process can be used to trample on the rights of a substantial minority. This is because we are a nation of laws, not men.

It seems a little more likely now that the Lowe’s will be built than it did yesterday, but it is still a long way from a done deal. There is such a thing as winning the war after losing every battle, and the fight will go on. The pro-project forces have lost their General. It remains to be seen if their new leader has the stomach and the ability to carry it forward to a successful conclusion.

A non-political night

Last night’s “Town Meeting” on the Newman PDD application was intended to be a non-political event and I think we succeeded in keeping it that way. The meeting was sponsored by PDDG which bills itself as a “non-political” group in the sense that it does not support candidates for public office.

As has become apparent in recent days, not all members of PDDG support the political campaign or positions of their founder and supreme leader, and yet somehow the group is still able to function. Three of the four Supervisor candidate’s showed up although I was the only one that did much talking.

I mainly tried to answer questions that people had about the process and point out where particular issues might be addressed at next week’s public hearing. I did not want to venture my own opinions about those issues since they are already pretty well known and there was no lack of kindred souls who were fully capable of framing those issues.

I was a little disappointed by the absence of town board candidates or any members of the current town board. To be fair, however, perhaps they felt it was inappropriate to attend this meeting, since they are the ones who will be sitting upfront next week.

I did venture the opinion that the timing of next week’s hearing, just a week before the election, was suspicious and intimated that perhaps things were being pushed forward so that a “lame duck” town board could take some action before leaving office.

An approval of the PDD zoning by the town board, before the town planning board finishes the SEQR process, would clearly be premature, but it wouldn’t totally surprise me if they tried it. Finally, I was glad to see a half dozen SUNY students in attendance at the meeting, even though they didn’t say anything.

Hear the Clarion Call!

Finally, after six months of blogging, we’re seeing a real debate break out around a blog. And who would have thought it would be my little Clarion Call weekly column blog that would catch fire? Yesterday I set a new record for traffic to that blog, and as of this morning we have 8 comments posted under this week’s column. (O.K., three of those are mine, but there are four others who have ventured to add their thoughts!)

This is what I hoped would happen when I ventured into the blogosphere last March, but it has been very slow to get started. The pressure of the upcoming election and the impending public hearing, however, has shown the value of a blog as a place to vent and express your opinions.

Of course, that still leaves a huge number of you lurking in the background without expressing your thoughts. All my web statistics tell me there are hundreds of you out there reading these blogs on a regular basis, but there are probably no more than a dozen that have ever posted a comment on any of the four blogs.

As Mr. Lamb and Kurt Cylke have proven, I don’t censor comments just because I may not agree with them or they are critical of me. As moderator, I have decided to be as liberal as possible in allowing comments, although I sometimes will not post a comment that is simply repetitive of something the same person has already said.

There’s really no excuse not to get involved since I also allow anonymous comments, although I do reserve the right to trace your electronic footprint and hunt you down like a dog!

P.S. Some of the increase in traffic to this blog (which also set a new record yesterday) can be traced to a nice letter about my campaign web site from Jean Lindsay that was published in the LC News this week. Thanks Jean! The letter is also posted on my campaign site here.

A Lowe’s compromise that puts Geneseo First

The title of this column is also the title of a new ad that will be coming out in the Pennysaver today. I understand that compromise is a dirty word to the true believers on both sides of any issue. Those who are rabidly pro-Lowe’s don’t want anything that will slow it down, and working out a compromise takes time.

My friends in PDDG who are adamantly against the Lowe’s don’t want to allow for any circumstances in which the Lowe’s could be built. I understand their passion, but that view may not be politically practical. Given the reality of elections, which are almost never decided on single issues, it seems unlikely that the new board that takes office in January will contain three solid anti-Lowe’s votes.

After spending the last four months going door-to-door and talking to hundreds of people about this issue, I am convinced that the majority does not have a strong opinion on either side. They do, however, support a position that requires the developer and the county to pitch in and help with the mitigation of any problems created by this project and they do not want to see a continuation of retail sprawl into the future.

I believe my position is responsive to that majority. For my friends in PDDG, please be assured that I will set the bar for Newman very high before I ever vote yes on this. Perhaps they will be unwilling to jump over it.

For my friends in the Lowe’s Yesterday group, I don’t have much reassurance. I understand your personal desire to have shopping convenience and value, however, I am not willing to sacrifice the quality of life of the rest of the community to provide it to you.

As for the vaunted tax impact of this project I remain a skeptic. Has anyone ever actually seen taxes go down? I believe a policy that returns the Gateway back to its original plan for non-retail development is the best chance for tax stabilization. At this point, however, it may take a compromise on Lowe’s to get there.

Remember: The sign of a good compromise is that both sides are unhappy!

Anger management

In talking to literally hundreds of people about the Lowes issue, I have come across a small number who are really angry about it. Typically these folks are in the pro-Lowes camp, although the anti-Lowe’s contingent is not immune from this all-too-human feeling.

Anger management experts tell us that anger usually can be traced to two root causes: 1. Frustration about not getting what we want, especially when we were expecting to get it. 2. Feeling that somebody does not respect us or care how we feel.

On the pro-Lowe’s side, some are frustrated that we don’t have a Lowe’s already. They are especially upset because they were expecting to have one open by now, and reasonably believe that we would have, except for those darn PDDGers who have messed everything up.

This is where part two comes in. Some of our pro-Lowe’s friends are angry at the opposition because they feel that “those people” don’t really understand or respect them. Frequent statements I hear are that the PDDG members are all college people and don’t understand what it is like to be in business. This is then extended to the contention that they therefore don’t care about the concerns of ordinary people.

On the other side of the spectrum, PDDGers are frustrated in their expectation that government will operate in a fair and open manner. They then assume that the reason that our government is taking certain actions or appears to be hiding things is that they have a hidden agenda and are in league with the developer.

From here it is just a short step to conclude that if they care about the developer’s interests then they probably don’t care what the ordinary person thinks. As you can see, both sides have come to the same conclusion starting from totally different positions: the people on the other side of the argument don’t respect us and don’t care what we think.

It is always a temptation to try to harness this kind of anger for political purposes: “Vote for me, I am the one who shares your frustration and feels your pain.” Even more effective is the negative campaign: “Don’t vote for them, they don’t respect you or care what you think!”

Of course all this can cycle repeatedly without making any progress towards a resolution. If you read the current crop of letters to the editor, you will see much anger, although the more effective are those who have learned to cloak their feelings in passive-aggressive language.

These folks will complain bitterly about the overly aggressive tactics of the other side and maintain that their side is only trying to be reasonable. They will then proceed to personally attack and savage the other side. Some will, no doubt, see this column as an example of that technique.