SamPratt.com

PHOTO: Berkshires.org

Issues often seem to come in bunches in rural towns. The Town of Ghent, which had been struggling in recent years with the Molinari gravel mine project, also now has a controversy over motocross racing at Meadowgreens, which has gone forward despite decisions reaffirming that such uses are not permitted by the zoning code. (The Town’s code was adopted, by the way, some 40 years ago, when there was nary a weekender in Ghent; but that hasn’t stopped some from playing the usual us vs. them cards.)

Meanwhile, a separate group called Protect Ghent has sprung up to address another pressing issue: a proposal by New York State Electric and Gas (NYSEG) to string a high-voltage power line on high towers across the Town. The proposed zig-zag route would run through farms owned by longtime residents, past historic resources, and through several large landholdings such as Francis Greenburger’s Art Omi.

Protect Ghent has posted a handy Google Map showing NYSEG’s proposed route, which would involve clearcutting a 50-to-150-foot swath from east to west, and potentially placing one or more substations on private property. An obvious question arises: Why not take the most direct route possible, to impact the fewest neighbors?

The answer would appear to involve a bit of regulatory sleight-of-hand. By law, if such lines are shorter than 10 miles, local towns gain some oversight of the project, and thus the ability to modify or prevent the line from going through at all. But if they are longer than 10 miles, the central permitting responsibility lies instead with New York’s Public Service Commission (PSC). Protect Ghent says it has a low-voltage alternative, and has hired attorney Bill Hurst to represent their interests following an organizational meeting several weeks ago.

This confluence of controversies in Ghent got me thinking about how issues often seem to crop up in bunches in our towns. If your town has a racetrack issue, you’ve probably also got a mining issue. If you have a cement plant issue, you probably also have a corruption issue—and a tax assessment issue, and an open government issue, and about seven other issues.

I tend to doubt that some bad karma, or mystic aligning of dark stars, accounts for issues coming all at once in small towns. The reality is that every place has its problems. But many short-term or institutionalized local problems stay under the radar until people mobilize to do something about one of them.

Once citizens get activated on on thing, they start to notice all the other things that are amiss, from ingrained problems with their local government, to proposals which appear quietly in the legal notices. They learn how zoning and planning regulations work (or don’t work). They educate themselves about their State’s open meetings laws and freedom of information acts. They put their local reps’ numbers on speed dial, and encourage neighbors to attend meetings. 

Soon enough, they realize that politics is often at the root of the problem. So then they start registering new people to vote, explaining to existing voters why it’s so crucial to turn up at the polls, and demonstrating to everyone why it’s essential to pay attention to what happens in Town Hall.

They often also begin asking more fundamental questions: How did these issues arise in the first place? What safeguards and tools do we have? And where do we want to go in the future—both to prevent further controversies, and to take responsibility for bettering the places we live in.

Some of these converging issues may involve compatible groups, or competing ones. But one set of citizens’ willingness (or proven ability) to make progress on one issue tends to inspires others to be less apathetic about their own.

But it’s that first issue which turns on people’s radar, and makes everyone realize how little real adult supervision there is most places. If you want to live in a safe, healthy, vibrant community, the burden of responsibility falls as much or more on “ordinary” citizens than on local government or big name institutions, both of which are often the last to recognize a problem as it develops.

(In the case of the massive, coal-fired new industrial city proposed in the late 90s by St. Lawrence Cement, pretty much every “major” institution in the region, from local government and development agencies, from the Chamber of Commerce to the Business Council, from the Columbia Land Conservancy to Scenic Hudson, either ignored the problem or even cheerleaded for the project for several years, until grassroots citizens forced everyone to reconsider through sustained, tenacious research and organizing.)

Hudson 3rd Ward Supervisor Ellen Thurston has been known to say that Hudson’s slogan should be: We’ve Got Issues! There’s a general sense among some residents that Hudson is more troubled or turbulent than other municipalities in the area. But if you turn over a rock most anywhere in the County, you’re going to find some worms. Taghkanic was an epicenter of problems for several years, from the Wilzing Racing Manor to Republican vote suppression antics to the Berry Pond mining proposal. Right now in Ghent, a lot of the same rocks are starting to get pried up.