We need better ideas for North East – we can do better, let’s give it a try.
North East has a lot in common with towns all over the USA, struggling to deal with a slow economy, with many residents hit hard by unemployment or underemployment and with some businesses just getting by, it’s easy to be frustrated, to run out of ideas and to think this “new normal” will last forever. Some people start hoping for change and begin waiting for something, … anything, that offers them hope. That’s understandable, but very dangerous because there’s always someone with a plan for a quick buck, “Just do this and you’ll get rich. It’s easy money. You deserve it. Don’t worry about your neighbors, they’ll get over it, besides, who are they to tell you what you can do,” … and that’s how you sell gigantic wind turbines to landowners.
Why not work together, instead?
These wind turbines are a way for a few individuals in North East to make some money, we understand that, everyone needs to make money to survive, but the downsides to those turbines are many and the benefits go to only those few while creating no long term growth for North East. Maybe there’s a better way.
If 5 or 6 landowners get together to come up with ideas, they might come up with a half dozen and choose one, like 500 foot tall industrial wind turbines. It may not be a good idea, but they didn’t have much to work with. Now, what if you get 5 or 6 thousand people from our whole community and ask every one of them to come up with a few really good ideas to grow North East, to build up the entire area and help local businesses succeed, what might happen? We might get 15 or 20 thousand ideas to choose from. There would certainly be a lot of duplication, some would be impractical and some just wouldn’t work, … but we might get a lot of good ones and there may be some real gems in there, too. The odds are in our favor, isn’t it worth a shot?
Control your destiny or someone else will.
~ Jack Welch – former CEO of General Electric
Let’s make our own decisions and control our own future
If we wanted wind developers from Texas telling us what to do, we would move to Texas. If we want to grow North East, who do you think knows more about North East, the residents that live here like we do, who care about our home town, or someone that flies in to sell us their big plans and then leaves? We think we should decide.
Let’s start right now and come up with better ideas. Instead of turning farms into electric utility companies, let’s see if we can come up with more ways to help the farms evolve for the changing realities of the 21st century. Let’s see if we can do the same for every business in North East and everyone else that lives here, too.
We can create our own opportunities, but it’s hard work
We all have to change, the world of 30 or 40 years ago is gone and it isn’t coming back, but that just means the opportunities are different today, it doesn’t mean there aren’t any.
At a recent township meeting, several residents joked about the Internet, “can’t believe everything you read” and comments like that, which was really unfortunate since the Internet can be an enormous opportunity. North East is no longer confined by geography, we can take advantage of resources from all over the world to build our local economy. We can generate ideas, add to our knowledge and communicate world wide. Anyone can literally sell to a global market. How is that bad?
Forget the turbines, grow North East
There aren’t enough people in the North East area to support everyone else here, even when we try to buy as much locally as possible, but we can all work together to come up with ideas and businesses that are world class. We can work together to bring customers here from everywhere, from tourists who visit our wineries to customers world wide who will buy the products we create and sell, not just farm products, … any products.
We can live here and still trade with the world, we don’t have to accept bizarre “solutions” like industrial wind turbines that create problems for everyone. We can do better. Let’s not destroy the scenic beauty of North East and cripple our future, instead, let’s work together to come up with better ideas and better solutions.
There are a lot of us here that want everyone in the area to succeed and grow. Let’s stop these turbines and instead, grow North East!