What is With the Trumansburg Free Press and Water District 5?
Doug Austic’s plan for a Water District 5 has been stopped, and the Trumansburg Free Press is miffed.
I admit: I don’t get it. Just what is going on with the people at the Trumansburg Free Press that they’re so worked up in favor of Doug Austic’s plan for a new water district in Ulysses?
In general, the opinions of Ulysses residents about the Water District 5 proposal have been mixed. Some have been strongly for it, but at least as many have been strongly opposed. Plenty of others have been somewhere in between. The Trumansburg Free Press’s reporting and editorializing has not reflected that balance. Even off the editorial page, the bias has been easy to see.
Now, the editor writes a ridiculously slanted post mortem of Doug Austic’s vision for Water District 5, proclaiming that there was “nothing political about” the Water District 5 proposal, and blasting politicians for not agreeing to a Water District 5 plan because “politics have no business in a small town”.
This attack on politics is itself a piece of political spin. Politics is very important in this “small town”. What would Trumansburg and Ulysses be without politics? Politics is the art of persuasion in the public sphere. A small town without politics is a small town without democracy.
The opinion starts with the presumption that Water District 5 was “a water district that the town needed.” That’s a presumption that many people in Ulysses strongly disagree with.
The issue of water and development in Ulysses will come up again, probably sooner than later. I hope that the staff at the Free Press treat the matter with a less politically-motivated eye in the next round.
There are so many problems with this post about the water district I’m not sure where to start. I guess I should take a moment to define an editorial for you. You wrote, “Now, the editor writes a ridiculously slanted post mortem of Doug Austic’s vision for Water District 5…†That’s the thing about newspaper editors though; they’re supposed to write slanted things on the editorial page. Ever read the op-eds in the New York Times? They’re all slanted. That’s the point of an editorial.
Second, what is this nonsense about, “A small town without politics is a small town without democracy?†Politics and politicians undermine democracy with their partisan, self-centered attitudes about even the most basic of human needs, like water. Ulysses board members have been playing politics simply because certain board members dislike each other while residents throughout the Town of Ulysses deal with deteriorating water quality and face rate increases.
You ask, “What would Trumansburg and Ulysses be without politics?†Maybe it would be a town and a village with high quality water for all of its residents, not just a select few. And maybe, just maybe it could be a place where tasks are accomplished by the local officials who were elected to serve the people not their own egos.
Stacey, editorials are for slanted writing, it’s true, but the problem with the coverage from the Free Press is that their news articles have offered as much of a slant as their editorials.
I’d like to know how you think it would be possible for Trumansburg and Ulysses to have meaningful elections without politics being involved.
I’ll give you a good example of what happens when politics are removed from elections. Last time around, Doug Austic got the endorsement for Supervisor from both the Republicans and the Democrats. The result was that the voters had no choice but to vote for Doug Austic or to vote for no one at all.
Many people have found Doug Austic’s tenure as Supervisor to be one marked by egotism and arrogance – quite the opposite of what you claim a politics-free Ulysses would deliver.
living here for 62 years,i find this blog a slam at people trying to do there job. do you realy think don ellis will have less egotism and arrogance than doug austic? i reall don’t think so. don has showed his colors on the sidewalk progect.
Better late than never…. I am very interested in the “public water in Ulysses” issue, ever since the late ’80s, when I served on a “Water Committee” with then-Board-member Carolyn Duddleston, where we surveyed the town about drinking-water quantity and quality issues. I was also interested in it when I served on the Comprehensive Plan committee, and also when I was on the Town Planning Board. I became more technically knowledgeable about these kind of issues when I earned a masters degree in City and Regional Planning at Cornell (although I am still no expert, I hasten to add). The proposed water district 5 was poorly planned and amatuerishly designed, with insufficient public and Board member input, and rigged to try to include as many low-income households as possible, in order to qualify for cheaper funding from the State. Had it been approved, I had every intention of suing the town, and would doubtless have won my lawsuit, as I have been carefully keeping documentation on town activities around water for a number of years.
If and when additional water services are planned in Ulysses, they should be planned and designed to be as fair as possible to all town residents, and to abide by state laws– which will also have the advantage of making them defensible in court. Whether or not the incomes of the persons in the proposed district average to an “average household income” that makes the project eligible for NYS “hardship” funding should be something that is determined after the appropriate district is planned and designed– not a driving parameter of the design of the district. Ulysses, you see, is not basically a poverty-stricken place, so, why should we try to qualify for that kind of aid? It is our STATE taxes we are talking about, too, you know… you would not want another town dishonestly taking advantage of a program like that in that way, I am sure.