Here we go again!?. I’ll let you choose your punctuation. Maybe you’ve been reading this series with a yawn (then the period is for you); or an eye roll (you can take the question mark); or with some sense of excitement to hear that there are concrete steps Geneva could take to improve our collective situation. (we are the exclamation-point people!)
Yes, I have spent two months of columns trying to re-educate the public about Geneva’s comprehensive plan. In the same way that my classroom teaching is not about inventing my own philosophy, these columns are not about me making up my own ideas for community development. The document already exists, produced by experts, and we’d all be better off just taking the time to read and understand it.
I remain completely confused about why elected officials won’t learn the foundational material for governing and why we, as taxpayers, are content to let them just fly by the seat of their pants. How much longer should we let the guys in office poke around blindly, guided by “a gut feeling” rather than facts?
The short-term rental ordinance that finally made it through the last Council is now on hold because the current members got heat from their friends and family who are in the short-term rental business. A young homeowner in Ward 6 who has been working with neighbors to improve recreation and food access was defeated by someone who didn’t bother to respond to the newspaper’s questions about why he was running.
The comprehensive plan warned us where Geneva was headed if “business as usual” continued, and, lo and behold, we’re here! Yet some people (including those who can command a front-page series of complaints in the Finger Lakes Times) wonder why things happened this way.
None of these guys will take seriously the answers right in front of them. Why? Because someone else wrote them? Because someone “not from around here” dared to suggest that “business as usual” is making the tax rate go up, housing affordability go down, zombie properties remain empty, and infrastructure crumble? Are they ignoring the plan because the plan calls out their bad ideas like building on the lakefront, subsidizing a corporate-coffee-traffic-nightmare in a food desert, or putting in a money-losing-marina?
Unfortunately, in Geneva the old boys club wants what it wants, where and when it wants it — and anyone who dares to question if it serves the public good is treated like an enemy of the state. So the same people doing the same kinds of projects, regardless of failures or missteps in the past, will continue to be welcomed with open arms while new faces, voices, and ideas will be ignored or stonewalled — unless and until we taxpayers start holding our elected officials accountable.
What can we ask our elected officials to do right now to start righting the ship?
Step one would be to stop actively trying to sink us. To this end, let’s demand that they end their “magical thinking” where an expensive-to-maintain marina and tax-free hotels and condos on the lakefront are pitched as the only things that will save us. The projects don’t pencil out, no matter how many local developers want to convince us otherwise. Does it improve their bottom line? Sure. But the taxpayers’? No. It would be nice if Council could focus on serving the taxpayers instead of just campaign donors.
Next, we should stop allowing a small group of people to spend precious, limited public resources on whims that aren’t aligned with a sound economic development strategy. Downtown property owners using LDC resources to pull weeds from their front yards is ridiculous. LDC stands for Local Development Corp., not Landscaping Downtown Caucus. Likewise with the BID, IDA, and GHA. Each agency has a mission that is supposed to be in service to sound community development.
How is that being measured and who is actually tracking the “accomplishments?” Are the business climate, tax base, and affordable housing conditions in this city on the rise? If you ask city councilors, most will say “no” (on this we can agree!), yet they will reappoint the same people, appropriate the same amount of money, tolerate the same stagnation. It doesn’t make sense, and yet they persist.
The final installment in this series, coming in two weeks, will detail concrete steps City Council could take to improve the City’s prospects. However, those steps assume that they are willing to stop the bad practices that haven’t served us well, and start thinking clearly and strategically about Geneva’s future. Given the waffling in these first few months of the year, they are definitely going to need our help with that.
Jackie Augustine lives with her three children in Geneva, where she served on City Council for 16 years. An ethics instructor at Keuka College, she serves on many local boards and is founder of BluePrint Geneva. “Doing the Write Thing” appears every other Tuesday. Email her at writethingcolumn@gmail.com.
DOING THE WRITE THING: Part 4: Next Steps
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19.03.2024
Here we go again!?. I’ll let you choose your punctuation. Maybe you’ve been reading this series with a yawn (then the period is for you); or an eye roll (you can take the question mark); or with some sense of excitement to hear that there are concrete steps Geneva could take to improve our collective situation. (we are the exclamation-point people!)
Yes, I have spent two months of columns trying to re-educate the public about Geneva’s comprehensive plan. In the same way that my classroom teaching is not about inventing my own philosophy, these columns are not about me making up my own ideas for community development. The document already exists, produced by experts, and we’d all be better off just taking the time to read and understand it.
I remain completely confused about why elected officials won’t learn the foundational material for governing and why we, as taxpayers, are content to let them just fly by the seat of their pants. How much longer should we let the guys in office poke around blindly, guided by “a gut feeling” rather than facts?
The short-term rental ordinance that finally made it through the last Council is now on hold because the current members got heat from their friends and family who are in the........
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