WILLIAMSVILLE — By the time this column is printed, the voters in Newfane will have decided whether or not to jettison their zoning bylaws. I've read these bylaws, I've attended the public hearings, and I've voted. But whatever the outcome, the issue will not be settled; there will be discontent. Indeed, even more than the issue of zoning, what the zoning petition has exposed is a raw nerve of civic displeasure.
The events that brought the zoning issue to the forefront were undoubtedly complex - as events that involve humans often are - and my understanding of them is at most probably incomplete, as any single human's understanding often is.
But what I've gleaned from the meetings I've attended is twofold.
The first is that some residents believe that they ought to be able to do whatever they want with their property because they own it and pay taxes on it, and it's theirs. The second is that zoning bylaws, created by humans, are imperfect. Worse, it seems as if the enforcement of the bylaws has perhaps been unfairly applied.
In the first instance, there is the issue of property rights. To submit to any infringement on the use of one's property is seen as an infringement on one's freedom. If we lived in isolation, apart and indifferent to one another, we might be able to do whatever we want with our land, from conserving it, to polluting it, and everything in between. But the truth is, we live in community, and we live in a world of limited resources.
Because our resources are limited, we have laws protecting our groundwater, which means we have laws regulating our wastewater. And because we live in community, we have laws about how big those buildings can be and where they can be built.
In Newfane, the need to codify a set of community standards about what can be built and where was felt about 40 years ago. The town passed its first zoning bylaws in 1975. As times changed, so has the character of the town. Now, we have no dairy farms in Newfane, and many of the people who reside here do not work here. As the population has grown and changed, the zoning bylaws have been amended and accepted by the voters, most recently in 2008.
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Nevertheless, this summer, 87 voters signed a petition calling for the repeal of all zoning. From what I've observed, there are two main complaints: The rules are anti-business, and they have been unfairly applied.
I am not in a position to evaluate the first of these complaints, and I know there is truth to the second, which is the unfortunate outcome of human imperfection and personality conflict resulting in real and/or perceived injustice. Fed up, the petitioners have brought our civic imperfections and dysfunction to light. They have done us a favor.
As political theorists have quantified in recent research, controversy is what engages people; civic engagement is highest when important issues are at stake. In Newfane, people have come out - twice - on weeknights, to speak out and listen to one another on the pros and cons of zoning, and they have come out a third time, to vote.
At these forums, the real underlying issue of the moment has been revealed - and it's not zoning, but governance.
Town government, including zoning, takes place in open meetings - meetings that are notoriously poorly attended. In truth, there have been years when Newfane has been pressed to find people willing to stand for office and run the meetings.
Holding public office takes time and commitment, but it also takes a certain amount of courage and belief in the civic process, because even more than consuming time, it is thankless. Public servants must be inured to listening to complaints more often than praise, since it's also human nature to complain.
Perhaps it's also due to the drop in civic engagement that there is less understanding about how government works. The petitioners advocating for repealing the zoning bylaws may have believed repeal was their only recourse; they may not have realized that other methods to remedy their complaints existed, such as amending the ordinances, instituting some mechanism for oversight in their application, attending meetings, and even serving on the Planning Commission or Development Review Board.
One Newfane resident who signed the petition has said at the subsequent hearings that he attended all the planning meetings that led up to the most recent revision of the bylaws, but that no one listened. He has said this numerous times, and each time, someone else in town has explained that being heard is not the same as getting one's way.
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Now - whether Newfane voters have upheld their zoning bylaws or repealed them - there will be a discontented minority.
And it's possible that another petition will be circulated, another round of hearings will be held, and another vote will take place. We could embark on an endless series of petitions, hearings, and decisions. We could see-saw from one extreme to another ad infinitum, and at a fair bit of expense of both taxpayer money and human endeavor.
Or we could do what we humans do best, albeit imperfectly: We could roll up our sleeves to tackle the difficult task of figuring out how best to live together.
To do so, we must speak up, and we must listen. We undoubtedly need to compromise, because to live together fairly and peaceably, we all have to give up a little of our individual freedom in order to advance the common good.