Archive: Opinions

When I was growing up in the 50's, there was a woods nearby called "Irving's Woods." Why it was called this, and who owned it was unknown to us kids. It wasn't a "park" or a "preserve" and had no purpose in the town that we knew of — just acres of wood with a couple of streams that we explored and played in.

One noticeable aspect in this unplanned natural setting were the rubbish piles just inside the woods, behind the houses that backed onto it. At that time the town had a "dump" where residents could drive in, unload their unwanted articles, and drive off. However it was more convenient for residents around the woods to just drag them off their property, and back into the trees and brush, where they were out of sight and nobody cared.

This is the function of rural Tompkins County — a place where Ithaca and Cornell [and their affluent suburban appendages] can dump anything they don't want, out of sight, and have nobody care.

The new Lansing 2015 Land Use Ordinance restricts all "sexually oriented businesses" to operate "only within a rural agricultural district." While the reason for excluding them from the business and commercial districts of suburban south Lansing was never specifically mentioned, everybody knows why.

In a similar manner, in pursuing the County's efforts to make Ithaca a more affluent, "vibrant" mono-culture community where affordable housing is not wanted — just drag it across the border and dump it in another school tax district. The Tompkins County legislature's only plan for Lansing is to make Ithaca a better place to live in.

It's the same old self-serving rural dumping policy, with an added layer of hypocrisy for the new millennium.

Sincerely,

Doug Baird
Lansing, NY
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