Archive: Opinions

If ever there was a time when Lansing needs vision, it is now.  An uncertain future for the Town's largest taxpayer coupled with state aid cuts to schools and the county, escalating costs and already high taxes presents more challenges for the Town than it has had in a long time.  If nothing is done taxes will rise, perhaps unsustainably.  Certainly they will be too high for a segment of residents who will not be able to afford to live here any more.

One way of looking at 2013 is that it was the year vision failed.  The only way to address the tax situation is to increase the tax base in a way that adds taxpayers without adding overburdening services, and to cut spending.  At the beginning of the year it looked like there was a lot of traction for a town center.  The idea was to increase the density of residential development in one controlled area to the point where small retail and professional businesses would be sustainable.  That would concentrate new services (water, sewer, snow plowing, etc.) in a place where the economy of scale would make them less burdensome to taxpayers, as well as attracting businesses that typically don't demand the level of services that residences do.

I am not going to argue that the failure of the sewer project was the end of the world for Lansing.  But the stalling of the Town Center may just be.  We continue to see nothing happening there, and in the meanwhile an explosion of residential development is popping up everywhere.  Except the town center where it could do the town some good.

The telephone survey and other input from residents has sketched a pretty good idea of what Lansing residents want.  The problem is that by the time anyone gets around to doing something about it, it will be too late.  Taxes will have pushed out the middle income segment.  Developments in the south of the town will eventually merge into a giant suburb.

One might argue that has already happened in the Village of Lansing.  While it now has a strong, pro-active planning board, it also has very little new land for that board to work with.  The retail area of the Village doesn't have any central focus, and while the Triphammer Road reconstruction project went a long way toward making the sprawl appear more unified, there is no identifiable village in the Village.

There are all kinds of pieces of a vision in the Town, but nobody has managed to put them together into action.  There have been many reasons to wait and see... but waiting and seeing is going to be the downfall of the township.  Everyone seems to want Lansing to maintain its rural charm, but that's not going to happen unless a unified plan for development is put together and starts to actually happen soon.  A southern half of Lansing that becomes a suburb is not the endgame.  Once the south is filled, the north will become a suburb.  No more rural township.

Some focussed planning and enforcement could change that and preserve the town we love.  I am not talking about the comprehensive plan update.  That is a general road map for the direction of the town.  I am talking about a serious look at zoning and some actual activity in the town center.  A planner should be hired to map out the center based on what is known now, the RFP and the responses to the RFP that the Town has.  Then town officials should actively seek out and encourage developers to realize that specific vision.

Without that the rural character of Lansing is doomed.  It may already be doomed, but it is certainly doomed if nobody does something about it.  Soon.

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