A RESPONSE TO JARED RODRIGUEZ’S “RECONNECTING ROCKLAND”

Smart Growth is Not What it Seems

By Lynn Teger, Teger Commercial LLC

What I cherish most about the good old days is the innocence and the freedoms once enjoyed. Taxes were low. People could keep more of their hard earned money. Mothers were able to stay home to raise a family.

Keeping more of our money gave us freedom of choice and the wherewithal to be creative and make our dreams reality. Americans worked hard to be able to afford single-family homes.

So why did our historic downtowns begin to suffer? Answer: Price and availability of product. This is what made it worth the drive to shop elsewhere. A free-market system is based on competition. Historic downtowns could not compete.

However, our downtowns have not been ignored. In fact: Just the opposite. In the past 10 years there has been a significant push to redevelop our downtown areas. “Sustainable living communities” as they are now referred to, are not new.

In order for our downtowns and the rest of our economy to flourish, we need to be able to keep more of our money. Keeping more of our money is the true definition of “sustainability,” however, the “Smart Growth” program, developed by the American Planning Association, has its own definition.

Smart Growth is another name for “United Nations Agenda 21,” a global agenda being implemented in our local communities under the guise of saving the environment. It is a plan to control every town, city, state and county through land use by using the environment to promote a political agenda.

UN Agenda 21, a global treaty signed by George H. Bush, was never ratified by the Senate. Instead, pushed through via executive order, President Clinton created the President’s Counsel on Sustainability, and gave the American Planning Association millions of dollars to create a plan on how to push UN Agenda 21 into our local communities.

By calling it Smart Growth, Americans would not know that United Nations policies were being implemented in our own backyards. This accounts for why, when I ask local politicians about Agenda 21, they have no idea to what I am referring.

The “Smart Growth” program consists of two components: sustainable living communities and the Wildlands Project. Federal taxpayer dollars funneled through HUD, incentivizes developers to create sustainable living communities, while the Wildlands Project, under the guise of saving wildlife, is for the purpose of making approximately 2/3 of the United States “uninhabitable.”

Some products that are “unsustainable” according to Agenda 21 are: single occupancy vehicles; single family homes; lawns; recreational vehicles; appliances– all the things that American citizens have come to hold dear.

The definition of “sustainable” is now: “Bikeable, walkable communities with compact housing.”

If you think this is unbelievable, read the Town of Clarkstown’s resolution permitting them to become a member of the International Counsel of Local Environmental Initiatives (“ICLEI”) which contains this exact language. Zoning laws, originally created to protect the homeowner from having certain types of uses next to their living areas are now being used to restrict our freedom.

UN Agenda 21 says that, “All environmental disputes are in accordance with the UN Charter” elevating the environment over the rights of man; while the US Constitution protects our right to private property.

UN Agenda 21 is a direct violation of one of our most important rights: The right to private property under the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution.

The writer has been a commercial real estate broker specializing in Rockland County since 1994.

  Agenda 21, Haverstraw, rockland county, Stony Point