Governor Cuomos is turning New York into an Agenda 21/ICLEI paradise. Not everyone is going along with him. Westchester County just bowed out – lucky Westchester!
Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, a fiscal conservative, terminated ICLEI — Local Governments for Sustainability when their paid membership came to an end. Four years ago, Westchester enthusiastically joined ICLEI’s Climate Action Plan, which is the brainchild of UN Marxists.
Astorino believes that Westchester can protect the environment without outside influences.
Unfortunately, Suffolk County, Long Island has chosen a different path.
Long Island seems to have a death-by-spending wish. They even went beyond Cuomo’s costly plan for new ICLEI roadways.
The Suffolk County Legislature voted last Tuesday to adopt Long Island’s first county-wide Complete Streets policy. The policy requires that all roads – not just those receiving state or federal funds as is mandated by the New York State Complete Streets legislation that went into effect in February 2012 – consider the safe accommodation of bicyclists, pedestrians, transit users and motorists alike.
The local government is manufacturing a crisis to do this. They are pretending Suffolk County has the most dangerous streets in the nation and that complete streets are necessary.
Redoing every street is going to be extremely expensive at a time when the economy is poor and Suffolk homeowners pay some of the highest residential taxes in the nation. Suffolk County also has a huge budget deficit of over $300 million.
Complete Streets is the brainchild of UN ICLEI. The complete streets will all lead to train and bus stations where there will eventually be high rises and mixed use communities to house the peons.
They want all of Long Island to look like Queens with its stack ‘em and pack ‘em towns. They also want us out of our cars and onto trains, buses and bicycles. We will be able to walk too of course.
Suffolk County, Long island has been buying up land, sometimes with TDR transfers, and changing zoning laws to mixed use so they can implement this plan.
TDR schemes are interesting.
TDR’s work as follows:
- Favored developers purchase land through TDR’s (Transfer Development Rights).
- The person whose land was purchased using a TDR keeps it until they die.
- The property transfers to the government or some shell historic foundation upon death. Inherited property becomes a thing of the past under this system but with ever-rising inheritance taxes, it might as well.
- The developers who bought the property generally give the purchased land to the government in exchange for property by a railroad station which developers will then use for high rise development.
- The government uses the more picturesque property for open spaces or they give it to developers for mixed use zoning complexes.
Suffolk is also building bicycle paths which lead to train stations at great cost. They are overpaying and no one is minding the store.
Suffolk County has the same spending problem as the rest of the nation. We also seem to think the UN’s ideas are something we should abide by.
Read about Long Island ICLEI here.
Brookhaven Town, part of Suffolk County, also signed on. The former Brookhaven Town Supervisor, Mark Lesko, now works for Accelerate Long Island, a company which stands to profit big time from ICLEI projects.
A few years ago I was at a meeting where Mr. Lesko spoke while he was still Supervisor. He said that he would decide which contractors would get the construction projects as opposed to relying on the bidding process.
This ICLEI Climate Action Plan is more about crony corporatism than it is about saving the environment or even the UN.
Recent Comments