The Secret Cornell

Government in Tompkins County is very careful about the wording of official documents – they present a façade of whole community participation; while their Cornell backed planners use a “Greater Good” wrapping to muffle the sound of rural people being beaten into submission.

The once rural town of Lansing is no longer a place where neighborly attitudes are infused in a first-name group of town officials: rural residents must appeal to a stone faced tribunal of Cornell incomers – who at every pause turn to the Town’s lawyer: for the legality of their denial.

“Participation” is a word that is only used in conjunction with existing programs that are thoroughly under government control. “Input” is the preferred descriptor for resident involvement in planning and oversight — defining residents as contributors to those who act: and never those with the ability to act in the decision making process.

It’s telling that Cornell’s Design Connect used “participation” more times in presenting their “Form Based Codes,” than in all the other Comp Plan sections combined — never once revealing that this authoritarian planning tool will strip residents of all meaningful zoning participation and power.

The Town of Lansing’s recent 312 page Comprehensive Plan is a document for the subjugation of rural Lansing — lengthily propagandizing the policies and burdens of Cornell’s Urban Colonialism as “the way we all must live.”