Madison Matters

As you know, the Madison Town Board has introduced a moratorium bill for consideration. This bill has not been enacted into law yet. Click here to read the draft moratorium.

Your efforts and support will be crucial to getting this law passed. The next step toward passing the moratorium is the Public Hearing on Monday, June 11 at 7:00 pm at Madison Central School. Please come and bring your neighbors and friends. It is VERY important.

Madison Matters will meet on Tuesday, June 5 at 7 pm at the Masonic Hall on Rte 12B to discuss the public hearing and what we, as individuals, need to do to show our support for the law. Please make every effort to attend. This law will be the culmination of all that we have  been working for. We must do everything possible to see that it passes. Once the law is passed, the really hard work of amending the special permit law and adopting a land use plan begins.

Madison Matters filed a report with the Madison County Sheriff’s Department on Wednesday, May 30th on behalf of everyone who had a yard sign or large plywood handpainted mural sign stolen over the weekend. Thank you to everyone who responded with reports on missing signs and information. The Deputy accepted the report. There will be an ongoing investigation of this incident of theft/vandalism and trespass. Please email Pamela Fuller at saddlesoarsfarm@gmail.com if you hear of any other leads that we can provide the deputy.

by David Sims, ThomasNet News, May 18, 2012

Not that long ago, we noted that the wind power industry has not fulfilled the lofty expectations it generated or met the claims of its more zealous advocates. Expectations and government subsidies are the only sure things that wind farms are creating.

As we wrote in March, a recent report from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, titled “Why Is Wind Power So Expensive: An Economic Analysis,” authored by Dr. Gordon Hughes, professor of economics at the University of Edinburgh, found that in Britain –  which is as heavily invested in wind power as any other place — wind farms are “almost entirely subsidized by a complex yet hidden regime of feed-in tariffs, tax cuts and preferential tax credits.”

Subsidies are what allow the American wind power industry to exist, as well. If they had to survive based on their efficiency, power generating usefulness or other concerns, there would be far fewer wind farms and far more eagles, hawks and other birds alive today.

Big Wind Thanks You for Your Contributions
It appears Americans are fed up with subsidizing the corporate interests behind Big Wind. Recent news reports indicate that concerned citizens are applying political pressure to stop the government from doling out millions of their dollars to a technology that’s never going to be able to exist without handouts or produce cheaper electricity.

And, in fact, as the news reports indicated, concerned citizens did manage to get a few of the more obviously wasteful spending projects scuttled.

After smelling salts were administered to the lobbyists and their paymasters who ensure that millions of taxpayer dollars are sluiced off to the correct wind power corporate interests, with the assistance of their pocketed politicians, “a shocked American Wind Energy Association and its allies,” according to news reports, “began even more aggressive recruiting of well-connected Democrat and Republican political operatives and cosponsors” and stepped up their influence-spreading around state legislatures “to maintain mandates, subsidies, feed-in tariffs, renewable energy credits and other ‘temporary’ ratepayer and taxpayer obligations.”

Click here to read the entire article

About forty people attended the Town Board Meeting. Once again, the meeting was moved to the firehouse in order to accommodate the crowd. We handed Supervisor Bono 97 more signatures in favor of a moratorium.

Supervisor Bono introduced a draft moratorium law that he received from Town Attorney Getman earlier in the day. The draft law is posted on the Maps & Documents page of this website and it will also be posted on the Town’s website.

The proposed law would enact a twelve month moratorium on applications for permits to construct Wind Power Facilities in the Town of Madison so that the Town can (i) review and amend the existing Special Permit Regulations, (ii) prepare and adopt a land use plan that creates an appropriate balance among the competing interests inherent in industrial, commercial, residential and agricultural land use, (iii) adopt a Comprehensive Plan, as well as such other regulations as the Town Board may deem necessary.

Now that the Town Board has introduced the proposed law, the next step in the process of considering and enacting it is to schedule a public hearing about the proposed law. The Board has tentatively scheduled the public hearing for June 7. Please check this website for updated information. This is a crucial hearing and we must attend in large numbers.

The purpose of the public hearing is to give the public the opportunity to speak in support of or against the entire law or certain aspects of the law. This is NOT a public hearing to further comment upon the proposed wind turbine project. Madison Matters will schedule a meeting of the entire group before the public hearing in order to review the proposed law and discuss the nature of comments to be delivered at the public hearing.

All of this is very good news, indeed. While we all wish that the process could move more quickly, we can be proud of our efforts to date and be thankful that our Town representatives are being responsive.

Click here to read the Draft Moratorium.

You may also be interested in this publication from the state “Adopting Local Laws in New York State.” It is posted on the Maps & Documents page as well.