Turk 182.
How I learned Who Flew and Who Knew!
What people don’t fully seem to get about the current political fight over the allocation of the resources for a Sports Complex for the Little League is that this fight is about recapturing a lost birthright. There is a reason our town supervisor exclaimed to an outsider that it was “his town” because the reality is the locals feel unless you’re 5-6 generations deep into the town you really aren’t a local. I’m only a first generation born person of the town. I also went to school in West Hurley, NY to a Catholic School and I left for about 8 years to do other things including college in Louisville, KY at the University of Louisville. I’ve also never precisely had the same sort of Transplants/Out of Towner v. Local issues that some have.
While on the surface this political squabble looks like it is about a Town Park known as the Windham Path and a fight to save this liminal space from the trend of over building. In this case a Sports Complex for the Little League. However, in reality this a much deeper fight about who gets to control the resources of the town. As one astute person noted in the last Town Hall meeting (July 25th, 2024) “Change Is Coming”—it was meant as a dig at those of us who are fighting against the destruction of the Path but it is correct Change is Coming!
The fact that our local government has been totally unresponsive to our simple requests of actually forming a meaningful committee of volunteers from the community to study the growth of recreational facilities as prescribed in the Comprehensive Plan of 2022. Is a clear sign of the Town Board’s unwillingness to share power the population. One cannot help but see the relative similarities between this state of affairs and the one that caused the Birth of the Nation itself. The lack of meaningful representation in the British Parliament of our 13 colonies over 250 years ago spurred on the change that brought America into existence. And the lack of meaningful representation by the general population in our local town board smacks of the same injustice it did more than 250 years ago. Now, we don’t have to go the extreme action of revolution—because we have the power of the Ballot! It will only take the simple acts of enough people registering in the Town of Windham and voting either in Person or Absentee Ballot in 2025 to save this town from Oligarchy.
I am calling out the Second Home Owners and The People Who Are Transplants To Have Your Vote Count!
Here are the main issues at present:
1) Resource Allocation: Who gets to decide how our Public Resources are used in this town a small group of people with no regard for the future or a broad coalition of people that better represent the town’s population and wishes?
2) Town Maintenance: Currently our town has 68.1 miles of road that is takes care of out the 98.1 miles that are present in the town. As of July 2024 4.5 miles (6.61% of the total roads) of this 68.4 miles were in desperate need of repair. The town has funds for only 1.5 miles (2.2%) of roads to be repaired. We haven’t the man power to plow our roads completely this coming winter nor do we have man power to complete simple repair jobs. And yet somehow we are going to build and maintain a Sports Complex for the Little League?
3) Poverty: Our town has solved it’s poverty problem form 2020 with a simple solution make the town unaffordable to live in. In the Comprehensive Plan of Windham 2022 the property levels included 8.4 % of the total population living below the poverty line. This also included 6% of the population over the age of 60. Now, according to our new data from the Census those figures appear to be 3.1% total poverty of which 5% of the senior population is now in poverty from 2022. These figures are for a population of 1611 people [1663 was the population in 1980 ] in the town as of 2022. That’s a drop in 97 full time residents in a two year period. That’s 5.68% drop in population for a town that was already skewing towards older retirees and second home owners. This shows that our solution to poverty and raising home prices has been to sell out and move to cheaper locations.
4) Median Income: The data from the Town of Windham Comprehensive Plan 2022 also shows that 54.4% of the population that is at the median income level $55, 729.00 household income per year derive some of this income from Social Security. Meaning that only 45.6% of the economy is not retired or semi-retired! That is a clear cut problem for future growth in our humble little town of 1708 people (Census 2020). Things are getting more worrisome when you consider that in 2022 when the Census department report from 2022 the town’s population has dropped to 1611 people and the median house hold income rose to $70,774.00 Household Income with a median age of 46.6 years. This means that our population is not only skewing older but also becoming wealthy enough to substantially shift the median income figures in such away that it can obscure the fact that 33.3% of the population still live in households with median incomes below $50,000 (191 to be exact according to the Census data from 2022). Nearly a 1/3 of the town windham’s population is living in a condition of under employment. And this because of the sharp rise in people with incomes of $200,000+ 12.2% of the population or 196.5 people out of the total 1611. Remember that’s a 1/3rd of our town’s population living below the Median Income.
5) Lack True Housing Programs: In the Town’s comprehensive plan of 2022 [above] the policy for the town’s inability to create a local response is to offload these issues to the County and State. Often these solutions are poverty traps and only reinforce the mechanisms of a negative feed back loops that create these conditions in the first. One such issue usually are the requirements to obtain assistance are so low that they can only be achieved by being substantially below the poverty line in America. While Windham, currently doesn’t have the issues of a traditional poverty trap the fact that we’re embracing an economic model of extreme economic inequality based on a natural resource “snow” and tourism that is not as dependable as it once was sure will end with an economic collapse in the area.
The fact that out of the 2,360 homes in Windham 75.7% in 2022 were vacant a majority of the time tells us the type of community we are developing is not about long term residents. These types of communities tend to push their less desirable members to the outskirts of the region only to have them commute to work for low pay and few benefits.
6) Lack Of Long Term Employment: In the Comprehensive Plan of 2022 states that Windham needs the following: “The town needs more, and a steady amount, of full-time residents in order to survive and support local businesses year-round”[p31]. This is contrasted nicely with the fact that “Jobs in the hospitality and tourism industry tend to be low-paying and vulnerable to seasonal fluctuations. Encouraging more light industry in the form of low-impact boutique manufacturing could provide an alternative to the lower-paying and seasonal jobs provided through the tourism industry” [p31]. Also according to the Comprehensive plan our largest sector of employment is the Hospital/Tourism sector at 48.8% and the other major sectors “Retail” [29.8%] and “Service” [35.1%] all have significant overlapping meaning that Tourism is fundamentally the primary engine of this town’s economic growth.
The problem as the Town Board seems to be very clear is that our lovely little town is facing a problem with residents between the age 20-40 who are wish to support a family here. This problem will not be solved with Jobs— but Careers ones that are able to create fulfillment of the people who are in them.
What Can We Do About These Issues?
First we need more people who call themselves second home owners to embrace their role in the community. It is an important one. Currently your contributions to the community aren’t be respected. We need your vote and I need your vote in 2025— I’m starting my campaign now because I know how it is get recognized in a town that votes party line. I know I have to have better ideas, better plans, and a better logistical system for reaching the Board Community including Second Home Owners. So, I ask you know to start thinking about voting in the General Election in Windham in 2025. This is your town too.
More Democracy— our current system the town board appoints the planning board and the water board is made up of current town board members all perfectly legal by problematic. This problematic to me say the least I think for various reasons.. It promotes cronyism and circumvents the public’s right to be part of the democratic policies that should govern our town in these important areas. [Unfortunately NYS law hampers us a bit- but it is perfectly legal for the Town Board to be the planning committee and then create other committees including citizens committees to advise all of which would be in improvement in general democracy in the town. ]
Our first method of achieving this greater democracy in our Town is transparency. The first thing that has to happen is our town hall meetings have to available to all people to view via our cable channel or on some streaming service like Youtube. We need people to be able to see and hear our public discourse in a meaningful way. Our current online meeting minutes are problematic to say the least— they lack detail and clarity and it is absurd that you have to foil the digital recorded minutes—instead this should all be free public information that is accessible via the website for the town.
The next part of this plan is to change the venue of the town hall meetings. The current location Town Hall in Hensonville is cramped, hot, and not conducive to productive meeting. I suggest we use the new Senior Center building. We should also provide coffee and desert to those that attend. Democracy is important and our providing a few amenities to our citizenry is a great way to tell them we appreciate their willingness to be part of the process.
Alter the Town Charter— as far as I can tell there is no reason given the rules of Home Rule Municipalities we cannot change our town charter or amend it in such away that will create a more broad referendum process for the population to be part of. New York State does provide a relatively effective apparatus for referendum creation concerning local and state government referendums when it comes to structure and financing of local and state governments. I think we can clearly create a system of citizen advisory committees and referendum procedures that will not violate NYS State regulations. They might not be as elegant as I first envisioned but they will provide people with a real voice. In the town.
The Urban Development Planning and Housing Planning Council will have to be an advisory board to the town board that will take on the role of the planning board. It’s a change in roles but the Urban Planning and Housing Planning Board’s 7 members will be voted on by the population via a referendum of platforms i.e. you’ll vote a slate of people to become the next committee . There doesn’t seem to be any reason this would violate NYS law. After we’ve established new citizens’s council we can then let them do all the important tasks of looking at the development of the town and the housing issues. This council should provide real reports about land usage in the town. I will detail more information about this later on. However, suffice it to say the Planning Board will no longer have 10 minute meetings because they will have to develop real reports for the town board members to review and ratify at town board meetings.
The Economic Development Council will follow a similar pattern for the legal reasons but they will have a real say in the government. They will be tracking the economic data that the town requires for proper planning in the future. There is a reason why Data is ruling the world— no one can make a wise decisions based on faulty information. The town needs this data to make know if its plans are working. Just like a big business watches its quarterly sales and market growth we have to watch our little economy too. And the best part of this is we have a large pool of people with all the experience in the town already. All we have to do is engage with them and make them part of the process.
That’s big solution through town elected councils we can engage with second home owners who have knowledge and resources we might have ourselves. We need to not alienate these people but to embrace their expertise and their willingness to be part of the solutions.
Finally, the next solution is creating full employment in this town that brings up bottom 33.3% of our population from $50,000 and under households to $70-90,000 income households. This will require turning second home owners in the 30-40 year old bracket into full time residents and engaging with residents 19-29 and retaining them too. But it will also require an influx of new migrants in the 20-40 year bracket from other states and counties in the NYS. We must make Windham a place that inclusive and capable of sustaining a family which means careers not jobs. It’s going to be a tough job. We need to embrace our differences and build on varied strengths. It will require a change in the way town views government and it will require a massive effort by our Entire Town Second Home Owners , Transplants, and Locals.
NO ONE IS LEFT OUT IN THE NEW WINDHAM !
Rallying part time residents and new arrivals against the townies in the interests of protecting a park that actually appears to be an important community asset from predatory overdevelopment is interesting.