Is it really radical to ask your town board to represent you?

To the editor:

As the Democratic candidate for Town of Windham supervisor in this election, I feel it is important that I make my views clear to the voting public concerning the Windham Mountain Club’s planned further expansion into Windham’s hospitality market.

It is time for Windham’s Town Board to have a voice that is willing to stand up to the forces of gentrification that are attempting to homogenize our community and transform it into a superficial brand for only the most elite—all while extracting its surplus value and ultimately leaving behind a rotting carcass once the process of speculative capitalism has run its course.

The Windham Mountain Club is already presenting this Boutique Hotel as a fait accompli, with a projected completion date of 2028. This brazen act appears to disregard the entire approval process and suggests that the private equity driving WMC’s decision-making views Windham’s Planning Board as little more than its own personal approval board—one that will rubber-stamp whatever project is placed before it and then present that project to the community as being in the community’s best interest.

This is certainly unsettling, to say the least, for members of our community who already operate within an overcrowded hospitality market—one that is also contending with an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 fewer daily visitors during peak skiing periods each winter.

The only solution to this problem is to change the makeup of our Town Board—to put individuals in place, such as myself, who aren’t afraid to welcome the “hate” of the class of people Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously referred to as the “Economic Royalists.” This is the class of people who use money and business influence to lock out their competition through monopolistic business strategies and influence the political system in their favor. These same forces can subvert the normal democratic processes outlined in our founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and do operate at the local municipal level as well.

If our community is going to thrive in the 21st century, we must accept that Windham needs different leadership—leadership that recognizes resources like our ski slope as sources of collective value generation within our community.

Our community is made up of many stakeholders—consumers, employees, residents, local businesses, and the Town itself—all of whom contribute to the creation of that overall value. In this sense, value is not created by any single private entity operating in isolation; it is created collectively through the relationships, resources, labor, infrastructure, and economic activity of the community as a whole. This is how I define Public Value Generation.

This stands in sharp contrast to our present TOWN BOARD, which has no clearly defined concept of Public Value Generation—a Town Board that refuses to stand up to the forces of gentrification in our community and support the development of a strong, sustainable local economy.

We need to ask ourselves a very simple question: Is our current administration giving us—the average residents of Windham—the “Best Bang for Our Buck”? Are we actually getting everything we deserve from the development taking place in our community?

Statements like this, I understand, threaten the status quo of development in Windham. I understand that those who see themselves as being in the middle of the road might find these statements difficult to reconcile with their own self-identification as “moderates.” I understand that. But the question of what is moderate and what is radical is largely a matter of perspective. In 1776, the concept of self-rule through democratic government by non-elites was considered radical, yet today, we in the democratic West would consider that the bare minimum required for democracy to exist.

So, I ask you now: Is it really radical to ask your own Town Board to represent you—the full-time residents of this community—in a manner that ensures the continuation of your community? Is it radical to want to see our community grow and become economically viable for all residents? Is it radical to wish to see our Main Street thrive? Is it radical to want to reduce the impacts of income inequality and rampant gentrification that are currently reshaping our community?

If you believe these goals to be moderate—perhaps you’re a radical, too. And if you don’t, perhaps you have to ask yourself: Why aren’t you?

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Connor R. Exum

Windham, NY

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The views expressed in letters to the editor are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Porcupine Soup.