"I'd rather be here than anywhere else. To me this is home, and it is wonderful to be here. This is as close to a Norman Rockwell moment as you can imagine. It makes you proud to be a citizen of this town, this state, this nation."
-- Governor Eliot Spitzer speaking at Memorial Day
celebrations in Pine Plains
"Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it."
-- Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
"Please let's not frame this as another 'us vs. them' issue. We are all 'us.'"
-- Enid Futterman of Claverack (in a letter to The Independent on efforts to disrupt support for a state-owned rail trail in Columbia County).
“Local governments in New York State have a wide swathe of authority to invent techniques needed to encourage appropriate uses of the land.”
-- Professor John Nolon
Pace University Land Use Law Center
For more on "impact fees" and other methods for containing the costs of growth, read the March, 2005 "Views From Gallatin" column entiitled Making An Impact.)
"We need to figure out what we want to have happen in the town and write the zoning regulations so it does happen."
--- Scott Chase, Pine Plains Town Zoning Commission
“Where it is clear that the existing physical and financial resources of the community are inadequate to furnish the essential services and facilities which a substantial increase in population requires, there is a rational basis for ‘phased growth.’”
The New York State Court of Appeals (1972)
For further details on phased growth initiatives, read the July 2004 "Views From Gallatin" column entitled The Pace of Growth.
