Be wary of comprehensive plans and other government overreach

Editor:

I would like to sound the alarm about a couple of things that are coming our way that freedom and liberty lovers who enjoy being left alone from persecution by their local governments need to pay attention to.

First, is the County is going to be pushing taking over codes enforcement? Bad, bad idea. Takes it out of control of your local town and puts it in their control. If you got a grievance you have to go to the county which might as well be as well be Albany. They will hand pick who they want to violate and run roughshod on your property rights. Imagine having a type of code officer like Murray has with the power and resources of the county behind him. Pay close attention, attend the public hearings – you have a lot to lose.

The next thing to pay even more attention to if you live there is the Western Orleans County Comprehensive Plan. If you remember there was a group of us that tried to warn the public back in 2002 that this living document was going to take away every aspect of your property rights. It was sold as the spirit of cooperation. What it did was give the Towns and Villages the teeth they were so desperately seeking to control the few violators and put fear in the rest that they had to tow the line or be hauled into court for violations. You used to be able to do things with and on your property that are now outright prohibited, require a special use permit or permit. Your property that you pay taxes on, to put it plain, simply belongs to your Town or Village. You have willingly surrendered that to your government.

What the comprehensive plan is, is big city central planning taken from the United Nations, gated communities, radical environmental groups and no world experience academics with the group think disorder. This is then pushed down to the local level all over the country with shiny golden carrots of taxpayer funded grants and what politician can resist grant money. Your local municipalities then pick people hopefully with common sense to go over all this and come up with a plan that in most cases would never be acceptable to the general public that has no idea that its even happening until it’s too late, but mostly acceptable to the elected officials.

I ask the people of Ridgeway and Shelby who are really ruled over tyrannically. Are you more free now since the spirit of cooperation was set into law? Were things better when each town had a simple zoning code? If you didn’t like what one town imposed you could move to a more free one or gather your pitch forks and give them hell. The powers that be want all the zoning to be uniform to avoid criticisms that they are overreaching on their citizens. So we got this living document that really – if you have a town board that wants to impose its will on its people or change the rules on the fly – it’s really a pretty dangerous document. So you have to not only think about who can use it now but who may have the power to use it in the future. This 400 or so page document will be available soon but insist on seeing the whole document not the little 10 or so page document that they will probably provide with all the rosy things that will come from this update.

Pay attention because what few property rights you have left will probably be taken away in this now insane age of green space, bike paths, uniformity, carbon footprints and bogus climate change fear-mongering. Attend the public hearings and remember how we were lied to by a consultant who claimed over and over that there are no laws imposed in this. No, just the tools to take away of your property rights.

This should be shot down in every town. Like it was the last time. How many more of your natural rights are you going to continue to give up. Government is force. You need to be its check and balance. Or be its slave.

Paul Lauricella

Lyndonville