Archive: Opinions

I'll bet real estate agents really hate election season.  I was driving along Triphammer Road the other day, and I saw 'Vote Ed LaVigne', 'Vote Kathy Miller', 'Vote Connie Wilcox', 'Vote Katrina Binkewicz', 'For Sale - Audrey Edelman /RealtyUSA'... for a minute there I thought Audrey Edelman was running for something.  By the time I thought to look to see the house that was for sale I was a half mile away!

Now that the signs will be going away, it's time for acrimony to follow it.  There has been too much of that mucking up our town government of late, and it's time to stop and get down to the business of the Town.  That is the beauty of elections -- they bring the promise of a new start.  Unfortunately that promise is rarely realized.  When the dust settles after an election, we've seen time after time that legislators at all levels of government get back to business as usual.

The problem for the Town of Lansing is that the current state of business as usual isn't working.  The board has become too party-centric and less Lansing-centric.  The philosophical and personality clashes between the current supervisor and the newly elected one have contributed to Lansing staggering around with no clear direction.  Now the makeup of the board is changing, and whether you agree with the collective philosophy of the new board and the personal philosophy of the new supervisor or not, a respectful, procedurally cohesive board is going to be better for the Town.

The nasty little secret part that nobody will talk about in public has to do with what goes on behind closed doors, with what one did to another or said or plotted.  You hear this a bit at Republican or Democratic events, because people feel comfortable talking more freely among their own.  But out in public our legislators and candidates have been more polite.  Except when their conflicts explode in Town Board meetings.  I have to think these outbursts are just a little piece of what's really going on, between the rumblings I hear about just because I live here and the deadlock I see in our government.  You need a whole mountain that has severe indigestion before you see the lava spewing out of the top.

I know every board member to some extent, and I like them.   But some of them are Coke and some are Mentos.  And you know what happens when you drop a Mento into a glass of Coke.  (If you don't, see the video below.)


For the first half decade I covered Lansing School Board news, the boards each year were like a highly dysfunctional family.  Some members would gang up on others, while one frequently undermined collective decisions of the board as a whole.  It was a mess.  But the school board members realized they had a problem, and they attended counseling sessions and made changes to their procedures.

I have to tell you that as a journalist I sometimes wish they hadn't, because their meetings routinely run like clockwork now.  They're almost boring.  Sure they still disagree from time to time, but they do so with respect and then vote their conscience, and stand by the collective vote as individuals and as a cohesive group.  Yeah, that stinks for me, because controversial news means more readers, or, at least, more for me to write about.  But it's great for Lansing, because they focus on the work of navigating very trying times and daunting challenges like not bankrupting taxpayers with ridiculously high tax rises if the power plant can't remain open.

Maybe it's time for the Town Board to take a page from the School Board's book.  In the past few years town board members I have asked about this problem have more or less denied that there is a problem.  But you see it in many of the public board meetings.  You hear about it behind closed doors.  And I've heard enough people in and out of the government talk about the problem to know that I'm not crazy and just making it up.

So while it pains me to say it, the Town Board should do whatever it takes to make my job more difficult.  Counseling, training, retreats, workshops, discussions devoted to making the working of the Town Board better... any or all of that.

After all, we just had an election.  It's time for a new beginning.

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