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When Connie Wilcox threw her hat into the ring for Lansing Town Supervisor Tuesday she did Lansing voters a favor.  She gave Lansing voters a choice that will make this election season interesting and informative and plot the path to Lansing's future in clearly defined terms.  With no Republican candidate, the Democrats' candidate, Kathy Miller, might have been the only Town Supervisor candidate in November.  Now there will be two candidates with distinctly different approaches to the challenges facing the town.  So the election will be as much a referendum on how voters see its future as a vote for an individual.

Both candidates are worthy.  Both are intelligent and capable.  Both have stepped up to serve the community in a variety of different ways and over a long period of time.  They agree on many of the issues facing the town, but I think they will prove to have very different plans for dealing with them.  They certainly have distinctly different personal styles, but both are hard-working councilwomen who do a lot behind the scenes to learn about issues and figure out how best to proceed.

Both say that protecting Lansing from possible harm because of hydrofracking is the number one issue facing the town today.  The next most important issue is probably the development of a town center.  At first I thought those should be reversed, because building a town center is building a future, while the other is protecting the town from an alternative one.  Now I think they are both about building Lansing's future in equally important ways.

Lansing has been slow to do much about fracking.  At the Democratic caucus both women said they thought Lansing was behind the fracking curve, but they also had very different approaches to doing something about it.  Miller wanted more action sooner to respond to the State within looming deadlines, while Wilcox favored a contemplative approach that will result in local laws and regulations that will be lawsuit-proof.

As the campaign season progresses I think other differences in approach will emerge.  When Wilcox officially announced her candidacy Tuesday she said Miller is connected with special interests within the town that would make Miller more prone to taxing and spending.  I expect Miller will respond to that as the campaigns heat up over the next few months, and the debate will present more choice as to what and how Lansing wants to pay for things that are important to its townspeople.

Miller currently chairs the Town Center Committee, and Wilcox the Ag Land Protection committee.  The mandates of those two committees are entwined -- creating a town center will protect agricultural land by funneling development into a central location, protecting agricultural land to the north.  They represent Lansing's heritage and most of all, its future.  In Lansing we shouldn't have one without the other, so in a way that makes these two women the yin and yang of the community.

Each candidate has certainly championed local 'quality of life' programs in the past.  How they intend to support such programs and what methods they come up with to fund them could very well be the differentiating issue in the election.  What we will see, I hope, will be two visions of our future and voters will choose the one they want.

That makes this election important, in my view, because it gives voters an active voice in choosing the future they want, and that will provide a road map for all our town legislators, if not a mandate.  It will be a great way for residents to chart their own future.  With two good choices like these, Lansing can't lose.

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