2009 opinion piece ~ Just the Facts

Watertown Times
opinion piece
TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 2009
Link to article

What a mess we have in Cape Vincent. The wind developers are knocking on the door, and we do not have a wind power zoning law to control what they do once we let them in the door. It was all created by the ineptitude of our town supervisor, Tom Rienbeck.

He likes to blame the Wind Power Ethics Group for the town board's failure to pass a new law, but let's look at the facts. On Aug. 28, 2006, the town board discussed the cost of an Environmental Impact Study (EIS). By state law, an EIS would be required before the proposed amended zoning law could be passed.

Rienbeck and another councilman voted to discontinue the process, one councilman voted against the resolution, and two members abstained because of their conflicts-of-interest. Despite the fact that Rienbeck did not get a majority vote on his resolution, he simply stopped the effort of amending the zoning law, leaving the residents vulnerable to the whims of the wind developers. WPEG had absolutely nothing to do with that decision.

The absurdity of his decision is that the annual PILOT payment the town would receive from the wind developer would pay for the EIS several times over. What a travesty. All of this information is clearly documented in the published town board meeting notes of Aug. 28, 2006.

Our supervisor pulled off another expensive blunder. He recently appointed an advisory committee and spent over $15,000 of taxpayers' money to draft another wind power amendment to the existing zoning law.

Rienbeck did this knowing full well the WPEG would not turn a blind eye to the board voting on wind power issues by board members with conflicts of interest. Rienbeck became infuriated when WPEG published a newspaper ad showing all of the town officials with conflicts-of-interest.

I honestly believe he thought the board could sneak the vote through and deal with the aftermath later. Why would he try such a thing? Rienbeck knows that the town board is required to vote on the Final Environmental Impact Study when it is submitted by the wind developers. If the board were allowed to vote on the wind law without a challenge, the board could subsequently vote on the FEIS despite their continued conflicts of interest.

Fortunately, there are residents of Cape Vincent who are not going to sit back and allow these town officials to perform their duties in such an unethical manner.

Tom Gormel

Cape Vincent