The Tompkins County Planning Department is undertaking a planning effort called the Vital Communities Initiative.  Integral to this effort are the seven Draft Development and Preservation Principles, which are intended to help develop a shared vision of future growth and development in Tompkins County and to assist County and local governments and private and non-profit entities in their future planning efforts.  In presentations to over 35 municipal and civic boards, groups, and organizations, staff have received and incorporated extensive comments on these Principles. 

If you would like to discuss this Initiative in greater detail or comment on the Principles, please attend the upcoming Vital Communities public meeting to be held on Thursday, April 11th at 7pm in the Beverly Livesay Conference Room (in the Tompkins County Human Services Building, 320 West State Street).  Or contact the Tompkins County Planning Department by regular mail (121 E. Court St., Ithaca, NY), telephone [(607) 274-5560], email (E-mail us) or the Internet (www.tompkins-co.org/planning/vci/).

This column addresses the relevance of the Vital Communities Initiative to rural towns and is written by Don Barber, Town of Caroline Supervisor.

As a life long resident of Tompkins County, I see that we are moving away from a landscape dominated by agriculture and community-oriented economic centers.   The Vital Communities Initiative recognizes this shift in land use patterns in the County and is a way for us to work together to respond to these changes.  The Vital Communities Initiative is, in part, an effort to address two of the trends I see in the County: increased automobile usage and increasing population in the rural areas of the County.   First, we have become increasingly dependent on automobiles for nearly every aspect of our lives.  This mobility has disastrous consequences for our communities because it undermines the interdependence of residents and their reliance on each other for basic day-to-day necessities.   This interdependence was the glue that held our towns and hamlets together until the 1950s.  Now, we travel outside our Towns to shop, to socialize, and to work.  This mobility has undermined local small businesses, because it allows mega corporations, located in other communities, to successfully compete for our purchases.  The economies of scale achieved by large stores make their pricing attractive so we willingly travel outside of our community to make our purchases.  The unintended consequence is that we lose our local shops, the profits that they would have invested locally, and our sense of interdependence called community.

The second local trend that we are experiencing is steady growth in rural population.  We can see the incremental change when we visit our childhood communities and count the number of new houses and businesses.  This population growth puts us closer to our neighbors than we were a generation ago.  Being closer means that our actions more directly affect our neighbors.  These actions may also impact the collective environment of our neighborhood through pollution of air, water, sight, or sound. 
 

I believe future land use in the rural areas of Tompkins County will: 1) consist primarily of residential development with some farming and a few small commercial establishments that don’t require water and sewer infrastructure; 2) be based on the cost of land and its location (neighborhood, proximity to work, recreation opportunities, etc.); 3) require that agricultural land uses remain vibrant through communities making a conscious decision to purchase locally grown produce supporting legislative efforts such as Right to Farm Laws, and supporting  agricultural property tax and fire tax exemptions; and 4) be based on enhancing small scale commercial development through the free enterprise system.

In support of these four assertions, I submit that: 1) the needs of land buyers and key factors in real estate decisions are: location and proximity to public water, sewer, highways, and high-speed telecommunication; 2) most commercial and industrial development is inhibited without public water and sewer; 3) rural towns typically don’t have public water and sewer; and 4) large scale industrial/commercial development is unlikely to happen in rural areas unless there is a conscious decision to spend the money to create additional infrastructure.

Each community is different, as each individual is different.  What might be right for the Town of Caroline might not be the right for other rural areas in Tompkins County.  We need to appreciate and embrace these differences.  Rural land use policy should celebrate diversity.  We also need to recognize that our municipal boundaries do not really separate us.  Just as our individual actions affect our neighbors, our municipal actions also affect our neighboring towns and villages.  So we must look beyond our municipal borders.  Efforts such as the County Planning Departments Vital Community Initiative are important because they allow us to work together to ensure that the rural charm and neighborly character that attracted us to our communities will be preserved.  As Tompkins County residents, we all need to discuss our future, what it will look like, and how we will get there.  I urge everyone in Tompkins County to participate in planning efforts within your community and at the County level.  It’s your future that is being discussed.