The evening of 2025-07-21 was a meeting of the Honeoye Falls Board of Trustees.
Early in the meeting Mr Strasser commented on the traffic situation on West Main. While I’ll agree with the concern, I don’t think we would like living in a world where our every action is monitored and penalties applied automatically. Well, some of us don’t want to live in that world.
I can still recall a time when it was entirely likely a gathering of people would NOT have any cameras present. Now there are almost certainly more cameras then people at any given gathering (mostly because cell phones come with two as a standard feature). Which isn’t directly an issue. No, the problems comes into play when data collection rolls out at scale.
Rick (Mayor) inadvertently illustrated my concern. Apparently the County is deploying cameras for finding burglars? Not clear on the details, but the important part is these cameras are not for catching speeders. Yet the idea of also doing that was brought up, since the data is being gathered. And that is the problem.
Once data is gathered, it becomes almost inevitable that it will be used in ways not originally expected. For good, yes. But also for bad. So the only sure protection is to stop the data from being collected in the first place. Perhaps by, oh I don’t know, requiring a search warrant for each instance of data gathering. That such is impractical at scale may well be the entire point of the right protected by the 4th amendment.
Not that long ago Rotary park playground was closed for replacement. Efforts were taken to expedite the process, and tonight was the Public Hearing to use Reserves to pay the bill. From the sounds of it, the project is all done and the playground is available for use.
Harry Allen park project continues, and progress is being made. While I didn’t hear a firm date, I got the impression it might be open again in as little as two weeks. We’ll see.
And unfortunately, the village website was compromised. Although, from the description, it sounded more like the DNS provider then the website itself. But that’s a technicality. The important part is the issue got resolved. Which is how these things go. The unfortunate reality is website are under attack constantly. And the attacker only has to get ‘lucky’ once. While the defender has to get it right all the time. So the ability to recover is essential. And that was managed. Good job.
There was discussion (but no action) on indigenous peoples day and taking down the totem pole at the park of that name. As the two are tangentially connected, they were discussed together. I have no real opinion on this either way. But it does have me wondering: Are we a people? And if so, what makes us a people? I would like to think we are Americans. And we are that because of shared beliefs, customs, etc. Holidays are part of that. And items like a totem pole could be too. But if we don’t know why we are a people, and what keeps us a people, odds are we won’t be one for long. And that is what concerns me when I hear about taking things down and add/removing/changing holidays.
As an aside, I was born here (America, but also upstate New York). My family goes back multiple generations here (I don’t know the exact number, but it’s 3+). Would I qualify as indigenous? If not, how many generations would it take for my descendants to? If never, how is indigenous decided? Because, as some are fond to point out, we are all immigrants. If indigenous isn’t measured by time frame, but location, then we are all indigenous of wherever those first people were. Everything since has been conquerors and colonizers.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the July 21, 2025 meeting of the Honeoye Falls Board of Trustees.