BETHEL — Town resident Barbara Lerner brought up concerns, which many local residents share, about the prospect of high-density development nearby at the Bethel Town Board meeting Wednesday, April 24. 

She read an essay by friend and author William Lobb about the loss of the farm where he grew up to high-density development, and introduced it stating, “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can learn from the lack of foresight of neighboring towns and counties. Now that the Comprehensive Plan process is moving ahead, we have an opportunity to direct future growth.”

“The last time the Code was updated was pre-Covid. Since then, our demographic(s) have changed…our natural resources are dwindling. Clean air is a finite, not infinite resource. The code should…incorporate the rules in the SEQR Handbook regarding cumulative impact and community character…. to reflect not only our current vision, but how we envision the future.”

Excerpts from the essay, “A Letter to my Daughter”, which relates memories of growing up on a farm, are presented here:

“Hold my hand child…Go back and be with me in that place now gone to mud and bulldozer tracks, and forever lost… Help me remember while I still can…I dreamed of the farm again, last night. You and me, we rode out of the little village and I saw the big snow-covered hill and the silhouette of the old barn was gone. As we approached, I saw the rubble and the collapse. I… cried and you held my hand and told me it would be all right. But you know I will never be all right again…I showed you rusted tools, shovels, and hoes and hay rakes, with sweat-stained wooden handles, with a reverence reserved for the most precious artifacts of a lost time.”

“Make this promise to me child, as I prepare to die, you’ll take my old, scarred, and worn out hands in yours, and you’ll whisper to me stories of that place, and all who made it my home…Remind me of oak trees, and bean trees and electric fences that stung me, and rusty old tractors, and sitting on her side porch looking out on the fields of grass, and Queen Ann’s Lace…and fresh eggs, and swimming in her mud holes.”

“In my last breaths, child, take me again to that place that is no more and leave me there. There is no other place for me to die.”