Saratoga Says No to Environmental Extremism

I submitted this piece to the Lincoln Eagle this morning. 

Saratoga Says No to Environmental Extremism

Mitchell Langbert

David Chew, a Saratoga freedom fighter, has flung himself into the Agenda 21 maelstrom, and he aims to show Kingston citizens how to resist Mayor Gallo's assaults on your freedom, which include Gallo's Block by Blockheads program and his comprehensive plan now discussed in City Hall under the chairmanship of Alderman at Large James Noble.  

Chew says that, like Saratoga's comprehensive plans, Gallo's comprehensive plan links with Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Cleaner Greener Communities regionalization scheme.  Gov. Cuomo's scheme, which he has funded through the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to the tune of $100 million, aims to force you to drive a smaller car and live in a smaller home.  It aims to end the American tradition of electing the officials who govern you, replacing local democracy with regional soviets.  

Chew believes that Saratoga County is a microcosm of what is happening nationally, including in Kingston.  With just under 27,000 in population, Saratoga Springs is about the same size as Kingston.  Just as, under Alderman Noble's leadership, Kingston is discussing adoption of a comprehensive plan linked to the Cleaner Greener Communities program, so has Saratoga Springs adopted one, and Saratoga County is following with its own.   

Chew says that Saratoga Springs has commissioned a 15-member comprehensive planning committee to review and update the city’s present plan.  The Saratoga Springs Comprehensive Planning Committee is stacked with insiders with extremist environmentalist agendas.  A third of the planning committee seats have gone to members of a radical environmental organization, Sustainable Saratoga.   “Sustainable Saratoga submitted an 11-page position paper that contained extreme ideas that are receiving undue attention from the paid consulting firm and the CPC members," Chew says. 

Chew says that another organization, Saratoga Preserving Land and Nature (PLAN), has had undue influence in the comprehensive planning process.  Saratoga PLAN is the local affiliate of the national Land Trust Alliance, and it has an organization member sitting on the comprehensive plan committee. The land trust is in the business of working with federal agencies offering grants and land restriction programs tied to crippling conservation easement contracts, sale of private property development rights, and the acquisition of lands for land-use-management purposes.  The land trusts' stock-in-trade is environmental extremism.   

Alderman Noble's son, Steve Noble, is chair of the Kingston Land Trust, which is listed as a local land trust on the website of the national Land Trust Alliance, the same national organization to which Saratoga Springs PLAN belongs.  As well, Julie Noble is on the comprehensive planning board along with Alderman Noble.  Julie bills herself as an environmental educator.  The Lincoln Eagle has called Alderman Noble for comment.

Chew points out that Saratoga's politicians are increasingly overt about transfer of home rule and local power to regional authorities.  In our region the regional soviet to whom Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Gallo aim to transfer political power is Engage Mid-Hudson; in the Capital Region Cuomo's soviet is called the Sustainable Capital Region. Both key off Agenda 21.  In the Capital Region, "The politicians, including 23 town supervisors, are talking openly of transferring power. The corruption is overt; the message has been reiterated in their minds for many years," says Chew.   

On July 11 and July 15 Chew led two groups of local freedom fighters to comprehensive planning meetings.  On July 11, 25 to 30 local freedom fighters showed up at the comprehensive plan meeting, overwhelming the mere dozen of green insiders.  On July 15 four local freedom fighters appeared, but given that ten green insiders were again present, the freedom fighters constituted nearly a third of those present.  

John Anthony has proposed a sustainable freedom pledge that he suggests all city planners and members of comprehensive plan committees sign.  To make a sustainable freedom pledge, elected officials make a public commitment to maintaining private property rights--the source of your standard of living.  Is Mayor Gallo willing to defend your right to live in your home? 

Some of the members of the Kingston Comprehensive Plan Committee who should sign a sustainable freedom oath are as follows:  James Noble, Julie Noble, Suzanne Cahill, Kyla Haber, Alderwoman Deborah Brown, Alderwoman Mary Ann Mills, Dennis Doyle, Kevin Gilfeather, Toni Roser, Ralph Swenson, Michael Schupp, and Judith Hansen.