Who owns the property rights to our common ground?

Fragile.

The word applies to our relationship with the land where we live, the business partners we have and how we deal with each other.

Since I saw a picture of the Cuyahoga River on fire in my Weekly Reader in the fourth grade, I've been a believer in protecting the environment. We all should have the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water and have safe food. I believe these things are all essential to the pursuit of happiness, and we are abundantly blessed here to have those things now. That is our common ground whether we own large amounts of property or a little or none; whether we own a business or are employed or jobless; whether we are conservative by nature or we are liberal or we are apathetic; whether we were born here or if we chose to live here or if we are just passing through for a little while, we all need to have those three essential things in order to survive anything else.

That is our common ground.

So who owns the rights to this common ground?

The idea that drilling in the Marcellus shale, and its accompanying practice, hydrofracking, could happen here, galvanized several county residents to learn more about what it meant, how it affected areas where drilling has already begun and to oppose it. It also prompted the county commission to look at its options, which are three: a moratorium, an ordinance and a resolution, which are respectively, not possible, not palatable and toothless.

The commission has shown some leadership in this area, believing residents here all wanted those three things-clean air, clean water and safe food-our common ground to exist above all else. I thought they did their "due diligence," and they operated in public, which is what they're supposed to do.

I'm flabbergasted after two grueling county commission meetings where county residents blasted county commissioners for presenting two possible ways to curtail the peripheral effects of drilling in the Marcellus shale and hydrofracking and a commissioner over-reacted to a question and had a county resident escorted out of a meeting by law enforcement.
Have mercy. What have we become?

Allow me to take these events separately.

The county commission has been, and rightly so, addressing different aspects of drilling in the Marcellus shale. They've been elected by the residents of this county to lead, and they have been. They're exploring their options.

An ordinance goes hand-in-hand with zoning. That word plugs the ears of lots of people. They are against it. Against it. Against it. They say it over and over. Against it. Okay, fine. This is the United States of America. Everyone is allowed to have an opinion, voice it passionately and be heard by their government. It's a right I've chosen to defend to the end, although the oath I took was a private one, but that's in part two of this piece. Lots of business owners showed up last Tuesday to say they were against a proposed draft ordinance that enumerated the overly-restrictive measures the county commission could take.
Could. That's different than would.

Commissioners needed to hear lots of things at those meetings. They weren't about to pass that ordinance in its original form. Commissioners know they can't go from zero to draconian in a couple of weeks. The reason they needed it to begin with was to have a starting point, a blanket ordinance that they could cherry-pick so that they could have a dialogue with the community about what might be needed to protect our water, our air, perhaps our roads and, ultimately, our way of life.
They got hammered.

It is not in my nature to defend the county commission. It's not my job to be their newsletter or their public relations person. But defend them on this issue I must because they were doing the right thing.

They could have looked at that ordinance in a secret session with an attorney, but it wasn't the right thing to do, so they let it go public so they could get some feedback. They got it all right. They got the statements about property rights, which are sacred. They got the statements about keeping our businesses going, which is vital. They got the statements about the ordinance being too over-reaching, which is true.

Some of the speakers were very measured and thoughtful, others were more strident, some were out of line altogether, intimating that if you weren't born here, or you don't own land here, you get less of a vote in the outcome of the discussion.

Really?

The Supreme Court of the United States has said that corporations have the same rights as people. That means Snowshoe Mountain Resort, which owns 11,000 acres gets just about all the votes. I own some land, but less than one percent of that. So the resort gets how many times my vote? That's what the original war for our freedom was fought about, in part, that all of us get an equal vote, rich and poor. As poor as we are here in the grand scale of monetary things, surely we don't want to go in that direction.

It's this kind of meeting that drives government officials into secret sessions because they don't like getting hammered. This kind of meeting is what keeps lots and lots of people from putting their names on ballots. Somebody should give commissioners some credit for putting themselves in front of the firing squad of public opinion, not once, but twice last week.

Zoning is merely a tool some communities use to both restrict and enhance their areas. Local zoning ordinances can restrict things like how close a structure can be to a property line or how close to a school or hospital a business can construct something that would create a large amount of noise. Those restrictions can enhance a community because they say to prospective property owners that their investment will be protected from certain things that could decrease property values. They also give businesses guidelines to follow. Zoning is merely a form of planning, agreed upon by a community and based on that community's needs.

For instance, I might hold my property rights sacred, but I don't want my neighbors doing something on their property that affects my property values. Do you? Zoning ordinances attempt to predict the "what ifs?" in a community and are enacted accordingly.

Before you pick up the phone to call me and give me hell, this is merely an observation, not an out-and-out endorsement of zoning. If I look at the issue without emotion, I tend to see both good and bad in it, as I do most things. The balancing act for me is to be able to tell if there is more good than bad, more right than wrong, then try to choose my course wisely.

I'd like to be more educated on zoning before I decide it would be atrocious and put me out of business, or if it's the greatest thing since sliced bread and will bring us all great fortune. I don't think either thing is true; my guess is the reality is somewhere in the middle.

Highland County has had zoning for decades. Why did they do it? How did they do it? What has worked? What hasn't? What have they changed? What would they like to change? Is the outcome worth it? What have they restricted? What have they allowed?

I could see some fine people with some fine minds in that audience and I wondered what it would be like to have them discuss all the issues facing us today with the same passion they showed in opposing this proposed draft ordinance. Surely, some of our problems could be solved if the best business minds we have could work together.

But back to the county commission. If they were in pursuit of doing the right thing, learning about their options, being open to the public, gathering feedback from residents on Tuesday, they reversed their course on Thursday.

It is not in my nature to defend Norman Alderman, either. But he is a resident of this county and his voice, however shrill and grating it may be to county commissioners, should be respectfully heard, his question should have been answered.

Alderman and I have, for a couple of years now, had a truce. And that could change before I finish writing this piece, but even if we had stood in the street screaming at each other yesterday, today I would still say that he had the right to speak in a public meeting to address his government. My private oath to be a defender of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America includes the rights of those with whom I disagree. Because to deny the rights of one undermines the rights of all.

If I was frustrated by some of the comments at Tuesday's meeting, I was even more frustrated by the thought that if I had asked a question, the county commission would have had me escorted out the door by law enforcement.

That was over the top, and although Norman Alderman has a tendency to be over the top himself on occasion, he didn't deserve that treatment at that time. I can defend the commission in its pursuit of information, but I cannot defend their abrupt termination of someone else's pursuit of information, even if he's the guy who gets under their skin the most. They owe him an apology and a public one, at that.

So, who owns the property rights to our common ground? Whose voice should be heard the most?

The loudest? The richest? The most landed? The natives? That can't be correct.

The answer is we share the rights, but we also share the responsibility. And we may now enjoy an abundance of clean air, clean water and safe food, but that balance is fragile, and it will be more so in the future, even if drilling in the Marcellus shale never happens here.

All of us have a stake in the future of our community. I think that means we owe it to each other to be engaged fully in our local governmental process, but we need to do it with respect for those we elect and for each other. I think that means our government needs to be tolerant of those who are critical of them. I think that means we have to compromise to ensure that our own rights don't infringe on our neighbors' because we don't want theirs to infringe on ours. I think that means we may have to cede some ground on certain issues to protect our water, because water is the game changer of the future. More than fossil fuels, more than property, more than even food sources, clean drinking water will be the valuable commodity of the future.

I think that means we're going to have to work hard to just maintain our fragile balance here in the Birthplace of Rivers.