You’ll read this week of a ?zzled end to what could have been a case study for land preservation in the Capital District.
A proposal for the Town of Ballston to purchase the Cappiello Farm property died on the vine last week. What this staid indecision from the Town Board shows us, unfortunately, is the necessity of having leaders in leadership roles.
Whether the land deal before Ballston was a good or bad idea is very much a matter of opinion. What’s true is the Cappiello’s real estate agent told us the property was sold for more than four times what the family was seeking from the town. No matter your opinion of the sale, you would have to be particularly thick to not see 272 acres of undeveloped land off of Route 50 and adjacent to Ballston Lake for the price of a few McMansions as a good deal.
But there is truthfully nothing wrong with the town’s decision not to pursue the purchase. At the end of the day governments are faced with deciding to pursue works that are to the bene?t and conforming to the will of the people. Giving a pass on a land deal — even a good land deal — is something the members of the Town Board have the power to do and still hold their heads high.
But that is not what happened in Ballston. This deal was not passed up because of ?scal constraints, ideological differences or even old-fashioned partisan gridlock. No, from what we can gather, the reasoning was there just wasn’t enough time to make a measured decision on this thorny issue. Rather than sticking its neck out, Ballston’s Town Board divorced itself from responsibility.
How many weeks and months would constitute enough time to consider this, we wonder? The offer did not pop up overnight. And if leaders were suddenly faced with an ultimatum, they should have done what they are paid to do and made the best decision possible, not shrug and shirk the blame for not doing their homework.
Supervisor Patti Southworth did put forward a resolution that would presumably have kept things alive, but it was not a resolution cementing the town’s position. She called for a November public referendum on the issue — which we are sad to say is exactly the sort of “don’t hold me responsible” attitude that brought about this ignominius end. It’s an action, just not the right one.
Now there is renewed concern among the people of Burnt Hills that the Cappiello property will be developed as housing or a strip mall. The family’s real estate agent tells us the buyer has no such aspirations, and that’s quite nice, but it says nothing about whether the property will be chopped up or if desires will change sometime in the future.
Of course, pretty much any project on the Cappiello property would have to come at least to the town’s Planning Board, and possibly to the Town Board if a drastic zoning change is required. We hope members of the board will remember recent events if they ?nd themselves staring at such a proposal, and that members of the public will be able to keep those unwilling to take a stand from sitting at the Town Board table.