Getting Ready for Tomorrow--Election Day
Can you explain each of the six proposals that will be on the ballot tomorrow? Have you decided on which proposals you will vote yes and on which you'll vote no? If not, you may want to review last week's "Election Prep." You may also want to take a look at the sample ballot for your ward (or your town, if you're not a Hudsonian). They are all posted on the Columbia County Board of Elections website and can be accessed by clicking here.
I've been studying Proposition 5 on the Adirondack Land Swap, keeping my mind open all the while.
ReplyDeleteFinally it comes down to the question, why now?
Well, there's absolutely no real reason that the company needs to extend this particular mine AT THIS TIME. It's merely convenient for them to do so, while the act would set a precedent for private resource development in the public Adirondack Park.
The fact that the DEC has apparently signed off on the deal can mean nothing to us in Hudson. The same agency signed off on the new causeway road as "maintenance and upgrade," which was either the result of hallucination or graft.
Perhaps if the mine-owner, NYCO, had shown that it can repair its previous open mine pit - a promise that applies to the hoped-for land we'll vote on tomorrow - I'd have weighed that in. The company's made no such effort.
They've got another Wollastonite mine they've barely begun mining, otherwise such a deal AT THIS TIME might make sense.
There's no urgency here, and they can resurrect the deal when their other material runs out, which is decades away. I say let this one pass.