Island Guardian

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Our Islands and the Sea

ig_Lincoln_Bormann-1 (30k image)
By Lincoln Bormann

“The biosphere…is essentially continuous in space, a single interwoven web of life covering the surface of our planet.” – Marston Bates, The Forest and the Sea

The Land Bank has always viewed the sea through the prism of human eyes. Everyone wants to see the water without obstruction, as though they had burst through the underbrush into the open and discovered the coastline. The sea has been something to take in, to savor without consuming. Part of our job has been to preserve some part of this feeling.

As we learn more about the connection between the land and water though, we start to think beyond this. Instead of being a vantage point, property becomes defined in terms of its ecological characteristics. Is there an intermittent stream? Does it connect to other conserved properties? Is it forested or prairie, degraded or in good condition? More and more, the emphasis changes toward extending or restoring physical and biological linkages, just as human infrastructure connects us to different places.

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You Gotta Love ‘Em

By Ray Bigler

You gotta love those Spin Doctors.

Now that our County Council has hired their own Spin Doctor I guess we have officially reached the big leagues (or at least we are pretending that we have).

The most recent spin comes from the Prosecutors office, specifically the Stormwater Funding Ordinance. The issue is and has always been about the method that was chosen to fund the Stormwater Utility, not the Utility itself.

Therefore, referendum 2007-1 will ask for a vote of the citizens to repeal the entire Ordinance so that we can send it back to the County Council to rethink the funding vehicle. That is the purpose and the intent of this referendum, nothing more.

The Prosecutors Office has consistently tried to link this issue of funding as a GMA mandate from the state. There is nothing in the States mandate that requires the County to charge the taxpayers a fee/tax to fund this Ordinance.
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