I went to the Town Board (in NY State a town is a division of a county, not a municipality) at the November meeting to tell them that I thought we should have a citizens' commission on Peak Oil. Over the past five years, I had come to at least one of the monthly Board meetings each year to tell them we had to start talking about Peak Oil. But I never before offered anything specific to do. At the November meeting, I left each of the Board members with the 8-page synopsis of Richard Heinberg's The Party's Over. A week before the December meeting, I wrote them a letter and said I would come to the meeting and ask them to authorize a Citizens' Commission, told them it wouldn't cost anything and they would have no obligation to follow our advice. With that letter I included a copy of Rob Hopkins article on the Kinsale Energy Descent Plan and a copy of the Tompkins County Relocalization Project outline. I didn't show them the resolution until the day of the meeting and, frankly, didn't think of writing one myself until a couple of days ahead of time. I realized, however, that I needed to make this as simple as possible for them and as advantageous as possible for us. So I wrote a resolution that had a bit of an argument and proposed some action. It really has no binding legal force but, for the local citizens, it will I hope give us a little more credibility and legitimacy.

It was approved last Tuesday, December 6. The following morning, I sent out a press release to all the local papers and radio stations. I have a very extensive press list because we run a theatre here in the summers. So far, I'm only aware of one radio station that interviewed me for the morning news but I'll be watching out for the newspapers. My object in sending out the press release was not to blow my own horn but to encourage other communities to go and do likewise.

You should understand that the Town of Franklin is an economically depressed, very rural area, with quite low population density. The Town probably has a population of around 2,600. Within the Town lies the Village of Franklin with a population of about 425. Until about 20 years ago, just about everyone's work was connected in one way or another with dairy farming or, if it wasn't, they had grown up in it. Now there are fewer farmers (but still quite a bit of milk being produced) but there are many who still have skills that will be useful post-PO.

- Gene Marner