Supporting ordinance is only conscionable choiceAn Open Letter to the Cherry Valley Town Board. In the near future you will consider the enactment of a Wind Turbine Ordinance forwarded to you with the unanimous support of your Planning Board, professional engineers and legal counsel. At stake, in addition to the wellbeing of our community, is your integrity as public servants, and the integrity and intent of the public-comment law. A long and lengthy process is at an end. I now ask you to respect the fact that at every step in this process, those of us in the community who have lent our support to the proposed wind ordinance have far outnumbered its opponents. At the last hearing on the matter, more than 50 people spoke in favor of the ordinance while the single speaker opposed was David Little of Reunion Power. From the very beginning, letters to you in favor of the ordinance have run an average of 4 to 1 against the opposing view. Be reminded of the words of Supervisor Garretson, when he noted that the ordinance does not prevent wind turbines in Cherry Valley. It simply puts the interests of the community, and particularly the resident homeowners on East Hill, before the interests of Reunion Power and their self-serving allies. Reunion Power is not the only game in town. Do not listen to their empty threats. Indeed, in attempting to divide neighbor from neighbor, they have not played a very good game. Too often their behavior has presumed they are co-equal partners in your deliberations. They are not entitled to nor do they deserve such consideration. They have fouled out. In July, when you decided against a proposed one-year moratorium on major development, after the community spoke almost 5 to 1 in favor, you gave great weight to a last minute, out of bounds, submission of a petition. That petition remains unchecked to this day. It contains a significant number of non-resident signatures, duplications, and unidentifiable signatures. In response to your decision, in four days, the supporters of the moratorium gathered significantly more valid signatures. But it was too late to permit a reversal of your decision. In order to avoid a similar debacle, the supervisor explicitly asked that during the current debate over the wind ordinance all opinions be expressed in a thoughtful and informed manner through the submission of letters to the board. Once again, supporters of both the moratorium and ordinance respected the outlines of the debate. Once again, opponents submitted a petition of dubious integrity. Its ambiguous language and the manner in which it was distributed and then presented was opportunistic and violated the most rudimentary protocols attached to the gathering of a petition. If you again feel the need to give credence to such documents, you must afford both sides the same consideration. I can promise you supporters of the ordinance are prepared to double the number of signatures produced by its opponents. And you must allow yourselves the time to critically examine and evaluate the respective nature and worth of the competing petitions. But this debate is not a numbers game, nor is it a referendum. A transformation of our landscape as massive and permanent as Reunion Power proposes should not go forward without some reasonable consensus within the community. You know that consensus is absent. You know through your own eyes and ears that Reunion Power’s “silent majority” does not exist in Cherry Valley. Hold them to their promise that “We will not stay where we are not wanted.” Yes, there are people of integrity in our town who favor a wind project of the dimensions proposed by Reunion Power. But that number is shrinking. That is why I have always felt that Cherry Valley’s own best ally in this struggle would have been a peaceful, open dialogue under the aegis of an extended moratorium. That is why Reunion Power fought so hard to defeat the proposal. They know, as we all know, it is time and the light of day that best kills bad ideas. Let us go forward. Let us heed the growing call for a community generated and owned alternative energy project in scale and keeping with the historic nature of our town. Let us find a worthy consensus. Let us heed the words of Tom Garretson when he calls the proposed ordinance “the right law at the right time, a law that will allow us to develop that type of project that is right for the town of Cherry Valley.” I appeal to your best instincts. I fervently hope you will support the wind ordinance as submitted. I believe to do otherwise would be unconscionable. Andrew Minnig Cherry Valley
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