So, the tax was defeated, by rather definitive margin too.
About 65 percent of all voters cast their votes against the proposed $540,000 tax levy. The vote count was 3,091 against and 1,679 for the tax, according to unofficial results from the ICSD.
I can't say I'm surprised by this. I only started paying attention during the last few days, but it was clear at that point that the dominant narrative was that the tax was not needed as direly as the library posited. Both local newspapers editorialized (here and here) against the tax, using separate, but confidently reasonsed arguments. The opposition made a louder argument in the press, and the library never sufficiently argued its position and reasoning for new tax. Whether the tax was needed or not, the impression created by the coverage was that it was extraneous and mysterious.
I never really came to a decision as to how I was going to vote on it, and to be fully honest, I didn't vote because I legitimately could not tell for myself what the right decision was. Thus my inertia, which I concede and know is not a good an example to be setting as someone who argues for active citizen participation in elections and governance. So, I fucked up and didn't vote. However, when I reflect on it now, I'm sure that at that moment in the booth when I would have had to make my final decision, my gut impulse would have swayed me to vote against the tax.
Perhaps the reason that I feel so odd about my opinion on this is not because of the merits of that decision and the fact that I would have voted against an increase of library resources at the cost of increased taxes, but because it means my decision aligned with the political goal/aim of Joe Brennan, a Republican in ICR who's sense of ethics caused another member of ICR to quit the club in protest over Brennan's potential leadership. Though in Joe's defense, I do have to say that the person who quit has a peculiar system of ethics. Conversations with him about relationships and the death penalty tend to contradict.
But yeah, I don't mind ending up at the same principled point (albeit from different direcetions and paths) with conservatives whose reasoning and moral base I can empathize with, but for some reason I have never been able to find an empathetic point with Mr. Brennan's arguments. That's not to say that he is someone who is beyond empathy. I've just never been able to find it when talking politics with him. He's very much in the vein of a Ken Mehlman where he so naturally spins for a political party's talking points, and yes all political parties spin talking points, that you hardly ever get the feeling he is struggling with the principles involved rather than just how to win political power.
So that's one of the places where my tension over this vote comes from.
I also think I am reflexively weary of the media manipulation when two people from the same ultimate source are labeled as being from different organizations and representing different points of view. Such as this:
Opponents of the tax said they were surprised with the results.
“I have never been so happy about being so wrong,” said Mark Finkelstein, the vice chairman of the Tompkins County Republican Committee. “I think it shows enough is enough. Perhaps this is some sort of turning point, and the taxpayers are saying ‘There is a limit.'”
Joe Brennan, the leader of the Students Against the Library Tax, said: “The voters of the Ithaca City School District have spoken, and hopefully this failed idea of a library tax is truly laid to rest in the history books.”
Ok, Finkelstein and Brennan are both cogs in local Republican party machinery. From what I understand of the Ithaca College Republicans through the infomral conversations I have with much of the leadership of, whom I have taken various classes with, Brennan is the person in the campus group who is most closely tied to Finkelstein and the local GOP. No where in the coverage of Students Aganist the Library Tax was it mentioned that it was comprised solely of members of the Ithaca College Republicans (as far as I can tell). I believe Brennan even goes on Finkelstein's cable access show regularly. Clever, strategic media outreach by the Repubs and a poor contextual job by the local media.
So yeah, that's that. I suppose this experience could be called my first foray into the world of being a lurker on local politics.
- Glitter
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