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P.O. Box 75, Stony Creek, New York 12878 - 518/696-5748 Founded 1994 The right to own private property is a fundamental American freedom that guarantees personal liberty and promotes economic prosperity. Website: www.prfamerica.org
Dear Friend: Once again, I’ve come to you personally to ask your generous support for the work of the Property Rights Foundation of America, Inc. PRFA has devoted more effort to stop preservation-oriented land use planning than on any other issue. As the years go by, our stance is being starkly validated. The impact of preservation zoning is disastrous for the future of the local communities. Especially noxious is top-down regional land use control for the purpose of landscape preservation. It comes in many guises, one being watershed protection. A few days ago, I received an e-mail from a man whose business is located in the Catskill Mountain area in Delaware County, New York. His e-mail had a sense of urgency. Much of this county is within a region subject to preservation measures to supposedly assure pure water flow to New York City’s system of reservoirs in the Catskills. In an attempt to counteract the radical preservation onslaught which brought a greatly expanded threat to the future of the communities in this area during the mid nineties, I had analyzed a voluminous proposed legal document and summarized my conclusions as concisely as humanly possible. PRFA had published and circulated the results of my analysis. But the local political leadership didn’t take my views seriously. Instead, in exchange for grants and local “benefits,” they foolishly caved in to the demands of the City and the radical environmentalists. They are now reaping the rewards as, predictably, their prime development land is being acquired for “open space” and any significant ability to build is being curtailed by the City’s regulatory power. Furthermore, at the present time, the region is being hit with a new wave of even stricter proposals that the local leadership apparently have little concept of how to counteract. Part of this businessman’s letter, which was sent to a local official with a copy to me, stated:
Receiving a communication from this experienced businessman who connects preservation-oriented land policies to a regional population decline, and sees first-hand how the decline is cutting into the ability to conduct business, drives home again the importance of the work that you and I are doing together through PRFA. It is easy for local officials to put their heads in the sand and exchange some of the life’s blood of the communities that they represent for a superficial, short-lived infusion of “aid” that is irrelevant to the long-term future of the communities. It is our job, together, to point out the inescapable true future impact of preservation-oriented land use planning. But our work to expose the future impact of radical land use planning is only possible as a result of the support of our generous contributors. So, as I opened this letter, once again I’d like to personally ask you to contribute to the work of the Property Rights Foundation of America, Inc., as generously as possible. Our efforts depend on and greatly need your financial support.
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