Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Of Interest

There is an opinion piece by Timothy O'Connor and Margaret Carlon in today's Register-Star entitled "MY VIEW: Cheryl Roberts and the LWRP."  

4 comments:

  1. I think it's safe to assume that regular Gossips readers know that today's "My View" presents the tip of an iceberg of subterfuge. (The piece couldn't exceed 800 words, which was a torture considering the amount of material at our disposal!)

    In relation to the two upcoming waterfront meetings - the first being tomorrow at 6PM - the timing of this "My View" is a good reminder of the value of that perishable thing called trust.

    But when it comes to specifics, we're actually still early in the planning process for the development of North Bay. With the amount of planning and design still ahead, these meetings should really be more of an introduction than anything else. Establishing a comprehensive overview is necessarily prior to the as-yet undecided details of any plan.

    If and when it turns out there's an authentic opportunity for public participation, I don't anticipate any need for vitriol. (Our politicians can help things along by appreciating the anxiety that the public is already at a disadvantage; cf. today's "My View.")

    I would emphasize the importance of the role of our coastal management policies in coordinating a diversity of coastal interests. These policies, derived from federal policies, haven't been considered before now, primarily because public input for the conservancy's plan was not sought earlier.

    In New York state anyway, no plan can be called comprehensive where the public's own stated interests are not entertained.

    Let's hope that today's "My View" serves as a cautionary tale, away from which we may work to reestablish a sense of participation - one might almost say from the water surface up.

    The 44 Coastal Management Policies:

    http://www.dos.ny.gov/communitieswaterfronts/pdfs/CoastalPolicies.pdf

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  2. Thank-you Timothy O'Connor and Margaret Carlon ,
    and contributors for most excellent and important article.
    This needs a much bigger forum than Register Star.

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  3. You're welcome, Prison Alley!

    We sent the piece to other newspapers as well, but so far it has only appeared in the Register Star.

    We should all appreciate that the Reg. Star saw a value in running it, considering that this is not a large town and that everyone involved probably knows one another socially.

    It would have been far easier to do what the New York League of Conservation Voters did after I sent the piece to the league's director. As the saying goes, the NYLCV was not available for comment.

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  4. Merely "of interest," the same opinion piece was published in the Troy Record on Saturday, 20 October:

    http://troyrecord.com/articles/2012/10/20/opinion/doc50808dfc74ff6129369456.txt

    What should be of greater interest is Roberts' part in Hudson's next ecological challenge, the Brownfields Opportunity Area (BOA).

    As a BOA Steering Committee member, Roberts has already had a hand in denying public participation. The explanation is in the application:

    "[It] would be deleterious and, potentially, confusing to the pre-nomination process, for the public to be so soon again intimately engaged .... a planning-process fatigued public."

    Gee, thanks for deciding for the rest of us!

    Wake up people.

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