Another Voice / Development
George Grasser: Planning board foes condemn our region to decline
In each of the last two months a nationally recognized authority on the economic benefits of regional collaboration has come to Buffalo and made a public statement critical of our elected officials.
David Rusk, former mayor of Albuquerque, said our local officials were “isolated” because they did not learn what was happening elsewhere in the United States about working together as a region. William H. Hudnut III, former mayor of Indianapolis, called our elected officials “oblivious” to regional initiatives elsewhere, said they “do not understand the increasingly competitive nature of our global economy” and urged them to “wake up.” Hudnut said “business as usual will not work” and “is a prescription for continued decline.”
Based on the recent failure of the Erie County Legislature to override the veto of an uninformed Erie County executive on a law to create an Erie County Planning Board, the criticisms are clearly justified.
The three Republican legislators who voted against the planning board played “lemming politics,” blindly supporting the county executive’s misrepresentations. Among the reasons cited by the three Democratic legislators who did not back the law was the opposition from Erie County’s Association of Local Governments—town and village supervisors. All of these county and local officials fit the “isolated” and “oblivious” characterizations of Rusk and Hudnut.
These county and local officials have prevented Erie County from having a public forum to assess and resolve issues that affect multiple municipalities, issues such as housing and servicing an aging population, responding to changing demographics, addressing the high cost of maintaining our infrastructure and dealing with the growing problem of abandoned houses and vacant retail and industrial properties.
These officials have also precluded local municipalities from the opportunity to receive planning advice from a geographically-balanced planning board with members required to be well-informed on land use, development and environmental issues. The result of these benefits would be better decisions with a positive long-term impact on the future of our county.
The nine county legislators who supported the proposed board should be commended. They recognized that by failing to plan on a regional level, our legacy of sprawl without growth will continue and we will remain behind the many other regions that are addressing regional issues with regional planning.
Those county and local officials who voted against the board have to “wake up.” We, as a community, also have to “wake up” by encouraging and supporting elected officials who transcend politics and parochialism for the benefit of the entire community.
George Grasser is the president of Partners for a Livable Western New York, an organization with a mission to improve land use and the built environment in Western New York communities. He was a lead drafter of the law to create an Erie County Planning Board.
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