If you won't keep up, then your elected duty obligates you to step aside.

Before the Chautauqua was "born", the internal combustible engine was regarded as too unreliable to have any future--steam wasn't quite cutting it as a source of power for this type of engine. With the discovery in the late 1800's of a chemical that was much more powerful than even dynamite--naptha, the future of the internal combustible engine became explosively clear.
However, that future was as a work engine.

At about the same time, the founders of the PA Chautauqua were outlining the characteristics of this community and providing future leaders with a job description. However, for the founders, the thought of every Chautauqua homeowner owning and operating--within Chautauqua boundaries, their own private internal combustible engines was unfathomable. So, when creating the Chautauqua, was it really possible for the community's founders to account for or address leafblowers, lawnmowers, sand-rakers, pressure washers, etc?1 Put this way, probably not.

Neither could the founders predict that amplified sound would become so prevalent and powerful, as the first audio amplifier was not invented until 1906. 2 They could never have predicted that today's Chautauqua-ites would be exposed to a daily cacophony of car stereos, personal listening devices, home stereos, televisions, amplified live music.

And, even though Faraday invented the electric motor in the mid-1830's, the Chautuaqua founders probably also never suspected that each of us here would be subject to the constant hum of the electric motors of our--and our neighbors', air conditioners, refrigerators, furnaces, garage door openers, hard-drives, generators, or blowers and deflators for amusement-park inflatables.3

In social terms, with the incorporation of the Chautauqua many, many decades ago, it probably is redundant to say that they also never would have predicted that christians--even catholics and mennonites would be urging their faithful to support the inclusion of LGBTQ individuals in marriage, in ordination, and in the loving community of christian fellowship within their church. Yet, that is exactly the society that we live in today4,5

Even though it was really difficult to predict the future characteristics of this community and its inhabitants, the founders still provided a way for us to address the changing technological, social, and local characteristics of the times. It assigned our elected representatives the responsibility of protecting the health and welfare of the community. This is the function of local government, of state government, and of federal government, across the board.

Granted, it does take time for our leaders to keep up with social and technological changes. For example, as a nation, we didn't recognize the need to protect the quality of common resources, such as water and air, until the 1940's. That's not so long ago, considering that we have been an organized representational form of government since 1776 and we have been dumping pollutants into our air and water since the industrial revolution, which also began in the late 1700's. You have to ask yourself "why did it take so long to formally acknowledge that you shouldn't poop where you eat"? or that you shouldn't throw your refuse and pollutants into the public resources (air and water) that we suck into our lungs and pile into our bellies? In any event, now we know that we have to protect those things that are essential to our health.

So, I have been asking myself how long it will take for us to formally acknowledge that our common resources, like air, can be violated by more than just contaminating it with exhaust, runoff, fossil fuels, biohazards, etc. But this resource can be violated in other physical ways as well. And, how long will it take for our leaders to recognize that it is their responsibility to protect us by keeping up with the times and making the necessary adjustments. So, if we invent things that are just relatively new ways of contaminating that resource we require to remain healthy, that means leaders must do things to protect it.

This "go see what mom says" only to be told "go see what dad says" is a complete failure of elected officials to protect our general health and welfare. Boro Council and Chautauqua Board both have a responsibility to protect the physical quality of our air from contamination from the unfettered and unregulated operation of internal combustible engines, electric motors, or amplified sound. But now that they have their water authority, their sewage system, and their state-fuel-funded paved roads, neither body can seem to find anything better to do than to obsess about making new ordinances that target only one homeowner or another or that add another paved way or sign to our 87 acre site.

If they can't keep up or won't keep up with the times, then they should do the ethical thing and at least step aside. There are plenty of competent replacements around. Plenty.


Sources:
1 http://books.google.com/books?id=Zm0AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA13869#v=onepage&q=&f=false

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_amplifier

3 http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blfaraday.htm

4 http://www.pinkmenno.org

5 http://www.dignityusa.org