I sympathized with Autumn Ridge homeowners whose homes were flooded last August when they came to Wednesday's Town Board meeting for solutions to a neighborhood-wide program.  My basement was flooded when I lived on Ridge Road and the telephone company destroyed a drain that left my just re-finished basement covered in inches of water, and then mold.  It was expensive, disgusting and a health hazard.  Did I mention expensive?

My current house has a long bowl-like driveway with the house and the street at high points leading to a bowl shape with a yard at the center low point.  The yard has been flooded for a number of years to the point where I can no longer mow it without my lawn tractor sinking into the mud.  I am told the yard can probably be repaired, but my insurance doesn't cover it, and you know how that goes.

Autumn Ridge is more than one house with severe flooding.  Any viable solution is going to involve digging on multiple adjoining properties.  So arguably it could be a municipal problem to solve.  But all the properties impacted by the flooding are private.  So it is not too much of a leap to ask if the Town does end up spending all Lansing taxpayers' money to fix Autumn Ridge, maybe they could come here and fix my yard, too?

That is the crux of the problem.  If the Town (pardon the pun) opens that floodgate, how can it ever close it?  When you add some neighbors not wanting town employees on their properties to the quagmire you have a real conundrum.

Lansing has already spent over $7,000 on Autumn Ridge, mostly for an engineering evaluation.  Will taxpayers ever get that money back?  Should they?

After all, we pay school taxes whether or not we have children in the schools.  Society has agreed that paying for schools is valuable in general, because children are our future and education is a value that we, as a society, value highly.

The question is, what else rises to that bar?  Things like affordable health care and welfare and food stamps are considered by some to be handouts and by others to be rights.  Flood relief is considered to be worthy in some cases.  But does Autumn Ridge belong in the same bucket as New Orleans?  At some point tax money is limited, even if need is not.

At this stage it appears that the legal issues will prevent the Town from doing a lot, and if there is a solution it will have to be a private one.  But I don't think the issue is close to being resolved.  It will be interesting to see what the final solution is, or even if there is one, and if the neighborhood can band together to find a common solution.

And really, Highway guys, if you have a spare couple of hours, feel free to fix my yard.

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