Proposed Compact over Comprehensive Plan

To the Editor:

(Brookfield, NY – July 2013) As Brookfield’s comprehensive planning committee prepares to submit its plan thus far to the rest of our local government, I felt it would be helpful to offer my thoughts in the hope of generating discussion on a matter, which, despite its momentous importance to the people of Brookfield, has remained something of a mystery to many of us.

I believe there are some major problems with the committee’s plan. First, a comprehensive plan is supposedly composed of public input, yet this plan has been assembled with little direct public participation, and the input that has been received has been somewhat filtered.

For example, the committee’s survey listed 156 supporters of wind power and 15 opposed. Yet the plan discourages wind farms because they supposedly do not fit well with the township’s “character.”

Considering that the “will of the people” is continually cited as the basis for this plan, such a discrepancy between the expressed “will of the people” and the plan is inexcusable.

Second, proponents of this plan have demonstrated either astonishing ignorance of the law or downright dishonesty. I was told that such plans are not law and should not be viewed as such; however, New York’s comprehensive plan law is very clear that a comprehensive plan is legally binding and that future laws must be written with the plan in mind.

Also, I was accused by the committee members of falsely associating zoning and private property restrictions with a comprehensive plan. Yet this plan, written by these same committee members, now specifically references land use regulation as necessary to Brookfield’s future. The plan explains this land use regulation further:

“This is necessary to protect the residents, the Town, its tax base and the environment. Without effective locally controlled regulation of land use, growth will occur in an indiscriminate and haphazard manner, marring natural beauty, diminishing historical character, straining local resources or polluting the environment.”

We don’t need an appointed committee to control how we use our land. The plan speaks very favorably of Brookfield’s current state of development, while overlooking the fact that our current development is the result of individual initiative – not government dictation.

While public input is certainly an essential part of our local government, a comprehensive plan is not. The passage of the committee’s plan would saddle the town board with a multitude of new challenges. Most notably, passage of a plan which says that “It is necessary to create land use regulations in order to insure orderly development and growth, to avoid the destruction of the environment, and to prevent future liabilities to the Town” is a liability in itself.

Central planning and zoning involve complex legal issues and, as many towns have discovered, often result in extensive litigation. Rather than calling for local environmental laws targeting specific, measurable issues, the plan says that heavy industries should be regulated by the planning board, which is a non-elected board and lacks the resources to effectively handle that task. In sum, our town government would be pushed to grow larger, more powerful and more expensive.

In the appendices at the end of the plan, there appears a letter from a couple who moved here from Long Island. It describes beautifully some of the joys of living in Brookfield – farm animals, good neighbors, wild open spaces and room to live free. This rural character is what we all wish to preserve. I believe that this is the basic hope of my friends on the comprehensive planning committee. Yet to preserve Brookfield’s character in the future, we must look at what has preserved it throughout the 218 years of Brookfield’s history as a township.

It was not central planning and land use regulation; to this day, our town remains unburdened by zoning. It was not the assistance and involvement of our local government – to the best of my knowledge, Brookfield spends the least money and offers the fewest services of any township in the area. It was not aid from New York state and the federal government – many of the funding programs currently available are relatively recent additions.

The thing that produced our quality of life here in Brookfield is the same thing that made possible the quality of life enjoyed here in the United States of America: the freedom of the individual men and women who make up this great country of ours. The object of government here is the preservation of individual liberty, which results in collective well-being.

Comprehensive planning is in direct conflict with this American philosophy of limited government. We Brookfielders have long enjoyed our freedom. We would never surrender it to some foreign tyrant, and we’re not about to surrender it to some overreaching government.

I therefore propose that the committee’s comprehensive plan should not be adopted. Rather, the useful information compiled in it regarding Brookfield’s history, geology, aquifers, historic monuments, rural character, recreation, emergency services, fire districts and current laws should be published as a Brookfield guidebook, and the committee should become a non-governmental association with no authority under Section 272. This way, its informational benefits can be preserved without undermining our local freedoms.

I do agree that our town government needs guidance for the future. I put forth the following:

The Brookfield Compact

We citizens of the great township of Brookfield, New York, hereby establish this statement of mission for our local government.

Recognizing that the object of government here in America is the preservation of individual liberty, thereby ensuring collective well-being, we state that the foremost purpose of Brookfield’s government is, in all of its operations, to preserve the rights and freedoms of its citizens. With that purpose as our highest priority, we further establish the following as legitimate functions of our town government:

To fund and maintain the Brookfield town court as a center of civil justice.

To maintain and preserve the township’s roads as means of travel.

To fund our volunteer fire districts.

To enact sound, reasonable laws that preserve our rights and freedoms.

Recognizing that the involvement of citizens and non-governmental organizations is a far more effective means of addressing concerns than increasing the size and scope of government, the policy of Brookfield’s government will be to add new committees only when authorized to do so by a legally binding public vote.

Joshua Haar, Brookfield