Every time one looks more closely at these ballot questions, the more complicated they become.
I don't think I could ever imagine being against a fund to support wildlife and trails, but when you put in the context of creating yet another bureaucratic office and taking money from other worthwhile causes (health care, education, housing) for a redundant category of spending, well, then it makes you have to think.
Yes, and the Trustees of the Reservations in my experience are a sort of wealthy-people-oriented organization, too. Like you said, it's hard to be against conservation of nature but something is quite off about how it's done with this Trustees model.
That's a good point and implies that perhaps the underlying motivation is to move the decision-making on environmental spending away from our duly elected representatives and senators to a more exclusive group who can better influence the 15 members of this committee.
Thank you very much for explaining these. I want to voice opposition to the sales tax increase to fund the Trustees. I have seen them to be harmful to people such as when they kicked Flying Deer out of Bartholomew's Cobble, and they tend to be very bourgoisie types who end up taking land out of circulation so the price of land goes up, and the last thing we need is to shovel them money from higher sales tax. I say this as a person who loves nature, loves the woods, loves to hike and be outside with my kids. This is a bad model for conservation, run by and for the wealthy, as with most things in this country whose whole system is by and for the wealthy. How about actually having the courage to face General Electric and force them to clean up the Housatonic River for real instead of taking a fraction of the PCBs out and piling it all in Lee, to save them a couple hundred million dollars, while breaking our county, hurting and dividing the people, and leaving the river toxic anyway.
This is very helpful.
Every time one looks more closely at these ballot questions, the more complicated they become.
I don't think I could ever imagine being against a fund to support wildlife and trails, but when you put in the context of creating yet another bureaucratic office and taking money from other worthwhile causes (health care, education, housing) for a redundant category of spending, well, then it makes you have to think.
Yes, and the Trustees of the Reservations in my experience are a sort of wealthy-people-oriented organization, too. Like you said, it's hard to be against conservation of nature but something is quite off about how it's done with this Trustees model.
That's a good point and implies that perhaps the underlying motivation is to move the decision-making on environmental spending away from our duly elected representatives and senators to a more exclusive group who can better influence the 15 members of this committee.
Thank you very much for explaining these. I want to voice opposition to the sales tax increase to fund the Trustees. I have seen them to be harmful to people such as when they kicked Flying Deer out of Bartholomew's Cobble, and they tend to be very bourgoisie types who end up taking land out of circulation so the price of land goes up, and the last thing we need is to shovel them money from higher sales tax. I say this as a person who loves nature, loves the woods, loves to hike and be outside with my kids. This is a bad model for conservation, run by and for the wealthy, as with most things in this country whose whole system is by and for the wealthy. How about actually having the courage to face General Electric and force them to clean up the Housatonic River for real instead of taking a fraction of the PCBs out and piling it all in Lee, to save them a couple hundred million dollars, while breaking our county, hurting and dividing the people, and leaving the river toxic anyway.