What are the real “core issues?”
By Mark Cool, Falmouth Patch, falmouth.patch.com 15 April 2012
After attending Falmouth’s public assessment of the Consensus Building Report on Thursday night, I despair. The decided “core issues” are:
1) the health and well-being of residents
2) property value impact to abutters
3) community environmental goals
4) town financial impact.
It was argued by the facilitator that all these issues are equally valid. But clearly, a mandate to effect a sense of priority is necessary. One “core issue,” so crucial to our community’s integrity that, without its resolution being accomplished first, compromises Falmouth’s fundamental principles of ethics.
I despair because if we can’t work together and determine a priority, a few citizens stand to endure a diminished level of health protection enjoyed fully by non-impacted residents of Falmouth. A few citizens are expected to bear the burdens of a mistake unexpectedly made by the many.
I despair because consensus building means working together towards compromise. The reality of compromise will allow our community’s principles to be rewritten to include “second-class” citizenship. “Money” and “green” goals have been elevated to an equal stature as “citizen.” Fiduciary and environmental issues share equal consideration with citizens’ basic expectations and the right to have their health and welfare protected by their community.
A process such as this—which forces a second-class citizenship upon those unfortunates too close to turbines, all because it impacts too greatly other goals, or costs too much to afford equal protection for all—cannot be taken seriously. Not in the U.S.A.!
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/04/16/what-are-the-real-core-issues/