think you nailed it. There is no contradiction. What I'm not getting is how anyone is helped by this. If there is no carrot on the table, why would climbers rise up and pressure Gardiner to mod their zoning laws and restore the value to the landowners? As noted elsewhere..

Yeah Aya we've been down that road before. Collective punishment and all that. Not saying that I don't feel that's the case, just that we've heard it before. And, hmm, the landowner's voice is pretty absent from this discussion, all I hear is Kent, so we can't read too much into what this particular landowner is thinking. But we can try anyway: it's really a power struggle between StR, FOS (the Annie O'Neill/Zimmerman dynamic duo) so the landowners are sending a personal message to them, like: see what your tactics have wrought. Are climbers caught in the crossfire between the two sides? Well the ridgeside landowners were caught in the crossfire between Bradley and the rest of the world.

Gonna be a cold weekend, I was gonna go to Rumney with Ed and his gang, thoughts are turning towards the Gunks as an alternative...

This might help an eensy bit as a general background?
http://home.earthlink.net/~gripnow/index.html

(The above is from rc.com)

I'd like to hear more about this lawsuit. To date I think we've only been told about some Quit Claim-type action by the Preserve (IIRC) many years ago re. a parcel on Clove Rd. If FOS is being a bully more recently, it can only help inform the discussion to provide some details. I am not aware of any formal tie the GCC has to the FOS, so maybe there's an opportunity to weigh in on this suit. Maybe just a letter, or possibly an Amicus filing in the relevant court.

Mike - check the above link.

Long story short, the Wustrau suit is already over, the Wustraus won of course as the FOS should have known they would.

Many of you are saying that what Kent and company really wants is the ability to subdivide and conquer (the ridge). Despite your claims, he has consistently given a different and very clear message that you are choosing to ignore.

What he (and presumably the people he represents) would have liked is for the GCC and/or the Preserve to have worked together with climbers and other interested land-preservation partners to buy up the easements on the affected land at a fair market price. Thus insuring that the land is not developed, but sharing the burden of that across all the interested parties.

I mean, I don't like the fact that this is what it's come to either, but mischaracterizing and demonizing Kent's position does nothing to improve the situation.

GO

Not sure if I'd say they were being a bully, exactly. Between Aya's link and a read of the appellate court's decision (In the Matter of Friends of the Shawangunks, Inc., Appellant v Zoning Board of Appeals of Town of Gardiner et al., Respondents, 56 A.D.3d 883, 867 N.Y.S.2d 238 (Nov. 2008)), it seems like the Wustraus sought and received a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals to pave a previously unpaved 3200 foot driveway so that they could more easily hike and picnic on the property (it doesn't seem like there was a house there), and FOS fought it.

Now, it's not cheap to pave a half-mile of driveway -- especially if all you want to do is picnic. So this suggests two things: a) they're not eating catfood; and b) they just might have had (and still have) more in mind than just accessing the property for picnicking purposes (again, not that there's anything wrong with that). But I can see why FOS might have seen this as step one towards subdividing.

Also, it seems to have been conceded that the driveway would have been banned by the ridge protection regulations, absent the variance. So again, I can see why FOS might have thought that fighting the variance was necessary to prevent the regulations from being undermined.

He stated (in one of the three threads) that he's acting on behalf of the Wustaru's and orchestrated the closing of their land.

Well what do you expect? Do you think the landowners want their names and phone numbers written up on the internet, so well meaning people like you, and maybe some not so well meaning people could all knock on their doors individually?

Like it or not, the GCC is the only climber organization in the region, and obviously the communication between Kent and that organization failed utterly to resolve their issues. Both, of course, blame the other.

Clearly the only way for those who really care to get involved and help out would be (would have been?) to get involved with the GCC, and try to set it on a course that works better with landowners.

Or form another organization to try to take its place. Is there anything in the Access Fund's charter that says that only one organization can represent a region? If the GCC doesn't work, and a new organization does, well then the GCC would just slowly die out, right?

I'm not saying that should happen, I'm just trying to broaden the horizon a little.

GO