Town government should accommodate, not manipulate
Falmouth Enterprise, 26 July 2011
I await a meeting with the town consultant who is charged with evaluating the likelihood of consensus building on the topic of FALMOUTH’S WIND TURBINE(S) with effected residents. The Selectmen await their consultants determination of the cost associated with the scope of mitigation strategies. While waiting, we all should reflect on what has brought us to this point.
Town wind energy and cost saving were shaped by “visionaries” on the Energy Committee and from the Acting Town Manager’s office. They, with the aid of the town building inspector, were somehow able to divine the correct wind energy path that Falmouth citizens should follow (not withstanding the ‘wind turbine by-law regulation’).
Their idea and implementation contained no recognition that the concept of industrial turbines operating 1600’ from my residents may render my condition “unlivable”.
In other words, they adopted the idea that wind turbine(s) energy cost savings was going to aid the sustainability of the community. In doing so, they replaced the fundamental primary objective of how our way government is suppose to operate.
Without political correctness or wind proponent mumbo-jumbo, the town process clearly is summed up best by exposing a citizen (or a neighborhood of citizens) to town manipulated harm without due process. Had due process been exercised, it may have been recognized that industrial sized turbines do not belong in neighborhoods.
I will be asked to consensus build, the Selectmen will be asked to weight the costs of what is meant to accommodate the town’s vision of how people SHOULD LIVE with wind turbines rather than a system based on how a citizen WANTS TO LIVE safely, with good health and well being.
Will it ever be consider that the idea that town hall goals and means are thoroughly inconsistent with a free society, a societies built atop the foundation of the individual citizen? Will it ever be considered that the role of our town government is to accommodate a citizen’s expectation of health and well being rather than manipulate theses wishes?
Nevertheless, these are the fundamental question that needs to be debated. It is not about the environment or wind energy; it is about the role of government in a free society. Unfortunately, it is very unlikely that our advocates and representatives will ever engage in debate on that crucial issue of principle.
I wait for a call from the consensus builder agent, thinking the role of town government is to protect a constituent, not manage and control the harm beset them.
Mark J Cool
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/07/28/town-government-should-accommodate-not-manipulate/