Island Guardian

Tuesday, February 26th

Hit Men

What do fascism, Nazism, socialism, communism, and liberalism all have in common? The supremacy of the state and society over the individual is at the core of these political philosophies. The leaders of these movements always know what is best for the rest of society. In some cases they feel the use of force is justified in order for the state to achieve the end result of domination over the weaker individual.

History gives us many examples of unscrupulous tyrants who have eradicated a class, or ethnic group, or species, in order to purge out enemies of the state and create their own vision of a utopian society. Success is achieved when overwhelming force puts the rebels down.

What follows is the true story of a planned mass annihilation by the rising forces of the new eco-fascists. We all know who the enemies of these green goose-stepping fascists are. Some of you know the poor heartbreaking story of their intended victims. The rebels.

They left the old world to start a new and free colony here. They dreamed of someplace where the sunrise was bright, the earth was soft, and the digging was easy. They sought a dry place, and a flat prairie so they could keep a watchful eye out for approaching enemies. They needed a place where not many trees grew that could give cover to perching assassins. They dreamed of a place where the wind pruned the grasses and wildflowers so that tender new shoots of grass were ever abundant. This place by the sea was more than they hoped for. It became their home.

Thus the rabbits came to the San Juan Island prairie in the 1880’s. Over time the gene pool grew more diverse as captive pet rabbits broke free of their prison-like hutches to join the growing colony. The population flourished. Rabbits were hunted and exported from the island. Some years saw the slaughter and export of 50-80 thousand rabbits to nearby markets. Still the bunnies humped and thrived.

Fox were imported to try and control the herds. Birds of prey such as owls, hawks, falcon, osprey and eagles ate their fill of the cute little cottontails. But despite the many predators they have stubbornly hung on to life and continued to blissfully breed and multiply. They have yet to meet the most dangerous predator yet; the master race of eco-fascist hit men hired by the U.S. Government.

Armed with guns, shovels, leg-hold traps, scent hounds, ground-penetrating radar, and “best available science” these professional hit men will soon receive orders to carry out this shocking eradication plan. They want to destroy the hopes and dreams of one species for the good of the many. They know what is best for the island ecosystem and their idea of a utopian green society does not include all those pesky rabbits. They plan to snuff out their lives for the crime of colonizing the wild prairies at the southern tip of San Juan Island. These guys just can’t let nature go wild!

What’s up Doc? How did the bunnies strike out? According to National Park Officials they are causing damage to the archeological and cultural resources of American Camp. A rare and unusual prairie exists here. The rabbits are destroying it. Strike one.

The National Park Service would like to restore and protect this prairie by re-establishing rare plants and native grasses and allowing the natural processes to take over. Even though the rabbits were here well before their home was declared a “park” they are apparently not natural enough. Swing and a miss, strike two.

This exceptional grass and dune habitat is also important for the Island Marble Butterfly. This species is threatened and is being considered for placement on the endangered species list. Rabbits are not endangered. Strike three, you’re outta there rabbits!

First it was the Pig War. Now American Camp will once again be the battlefield in another war over animals. Bullets will fly. Burrows will be backfilled. Fences will be erected to prevent re-colonization. The bunnies must be sacrificed in order to save the once wild prairie habitat for an endangered butterfly that spends half of its life as an ugly caterpillar.

Will this plan work? I have my questions. What is to stop someone from tossing a pair of bunny newlyweds over the park fence to start over? When did fences become part of the “natural” landscape of a prairie anyway?

Has anyone ever successfully fenced out rabbits? I have a garden and I admit I have failed at this. Believe me, I have tried. I think it has to do with the gate. So, how will the park staff keep their gate closed when there are hundreds of visitors every day?

Doesn’t backfilling rabbit burrows in an archeological area and shooting guns in a National Park violate just about every law? Can the public get permission to hunt rabbits too or do the jack-booted Green Special Forces get to have all the fun?

Will the eco-fascists target me next? Stay tuned.

[link]

Monday, February 18th

Nannies

Mothers used to teach common sense about conserving resources. My mom did. She said things like, “Close the door! Were you born in a barn? Turn off the light when you leave the room, don’t drive when you can walk, don’t waste good water, try to be efficient.” I admit I’m a bit out of touch, but did everything change since I was a kid? Did mothers really forget how to teach the basics?

I guess so. Acting as our mommy substitutes the Council decided to make common sense mandatory so they passed the bold “declaration for climate change”. But do they really believe they can make the weather better if we follow their rules and behave?

They have instructed all county employees to turn off the lights when leaving their cubicles for the night. It’s the law now to only use those swirling florescent light bulbs. (They do save electricity but disposal of the burnt out bulbs is real nasty for the environment.) Some people complain that the light from these things hurts their eyes. That’s too bad. The law is the law. Someone will have to police all the county buildings to monitor compliance. Resistance to nanny rule is futile.

The document is chock full of instructions and requirements for county employees to follow. Never mind that the Charter expressly forbids the Council to “give orders to or direct employees or other elected officials”. They still feel the need to do this.

I can appreciate their good intentions for making up these silly rules. In their continuing effort to act globally and ignore people locally, they passed this just in time to avert worldwide global warming and avoid a deadly plague from disease-carrying insects. (I’m not making up the part about the insects

The declaration contains more than just unenforceable rules and ill-advised orders to employees. There is also a lot of expensive policy in it. I wonder if the Council considered the cost to bring all county buildings up to U.S. Green Building Energy and Environmental Design standards? Who will they hire and how much will it cost to create an inventory of all greenhouse gas emissions in the County? (Don’t forget to compute cow farts) The taxpayers are also required to shell out for composting and reuse centers at all solid waste facilities. But why would they worry about a trivial thing like money when they are saving the planet from certain destruction?

We all want to reduce vehicle emissions. But does the Council know what kind of a signal they are sending to the State Ferry people when they imply that people should not bring motorized vehicles to the islands? I’m sure the DOT would be more than happy to accommodate us by reducing our number of car ferries. The way it’s going that’s a real possibility.

Do they intend to provide island-wide mini-bus service at taxpayer expense? They made a pledge to support this in the document. Have they done a cost analysis of the effectiveness of switching the fleet of County vehicles to hybrids? I thought electric car batteries wore out shortly after the warranty expired. Anyway these are mere pixels of concern in the big digital picture.

Do you remember the old saying, “When Styrofoam containers are outlawed only outlaws will use Styrofoam containers”. Well they made a rule against Styrofoam containers too. If you attend any county activity like a hearing, a meeting, or a reception and you are drinking hot coffee from a Styrofoam cup you are disobeying the rules. You can forget about bringing those cup-o-noodles in your lunch bag. And don’t forget to recycle! It’s the law now. If you toss something in the wrong wastebasket your job could be on the line.

Of course it depends on how much of a stickler for the rules our Administrator will be. I’m sure he will take these new rules seriously. After all it is a legal resolution from our lawmakers. And they are hands on their hips furrowed-brow serious about protecting the planet from changing weather.

Do you remember just a few months ago that changes in Earth’s temperature were referred to as “global warming.”? If you are an attentive person you know they call it “climate change” now.

Isn’t it interesting how meaningless some words can be? Take the phrases “climate change” and “laws”. When you use them indifferently or haphazardly you dilute their meaning. People don’t take them seriously. For instance it seems silly to pass unenforceable laws that people ignore. It can potentially break down respect for serious laws.

And “climate change” for crying out loud, includes everything that happens. Climate change is what we used to call the weather report. “Cloudy with sunny periods today, look for the climate to change tomorrow.” Just like harebrained rules, a term that refers to every damn thing that happens has no meaning.

It just seems weird to create a list of rules about basic things your mother should’ve taught you. Labeling this as some great attempt to save the planet is nonsense. Calling it necessary to prevent the climate from changing is just foolish. Get serious. There are real local issues that you could focus on. We can’t afford nanny rule.

[link]

Wednesday, February 13th

Part Three: Sustainable

Sustainable Growth must include pragmatic planning for economic growth without destroying the ecological balance of our Islands.

Economic Growth
We suffer today from planning that has caused some fundamental problems with regard to sustainable growth. We need to be willing to solve some problems by simply stopping what we have been doing to create them instead of coming up with new programs that ignore the fundamental issues. We should reexamine the underlying policies in the existing Comprehensive Plan that have been proven to fail.

To address the first point, it is a fact that we have an economy lacking in steady year-round employment at good wages. If we do nothing to encourage economic opportunities and continue to raise our cost of living we make this County unsustainable and unaffordable for most working families. In fact, we may destroy the very social diversity we all cherish.

The solution to social diversity is not for government to build “affordable housing”. Government subsidized housing should be part of a much broader plan to diversify our economy. We have inadequate living wage jobs in the private sector. Until we change the failed planning policies that created this problem it makes no sense to talk about building subsidized housing. Inviting workers into an economic environment that is failing to provide high-quality jobs creates the “plantation effect” where we actually subsidize employers that need workers but can’t pay them adequately and lay them off in the winter. In order to have a sustainable economy we need policies that encourage business and attract investment.

Our past planning efforts have discouraged economic development by failing to provide adequate Rural General Use areas for business development and added too many restrictions on commercial enterprises in activity centers. We maintain policies that discourage commercial use of the shoreline and limit population density in designated urban areas. Instead of planning for future growth and prosperity in these areas we are planning for failure. Limiting business activity by strict zoning and burdensome regulation has discouraged investment and created an atmosphere of litigation for those who dare try locate here for the purpose of doing any kind of business.

Because we are a community of islands, future business development would have been naturally shoreline based. What did we do to plan for this likelihood? Instead of adopting policies that encouraged commercial use while protecting the ecological balance of our near-shore areas we limited new construction or made it nearly impossible to develop. If residential or commercial property existed historically on the shoreline we wrote policies that required it to stay the same and if it fell into disrepair we said it should not be rebuilt.

Today permits to maintain or build shoreline structures are extremely hard to obtain, expensive, and too much of a risk for most entrepreneurs. We have essentially denied commercial access to the shoreline by regulations that restrict most commercial and recreational activity; prohibit docks, ramps, bulkheads, stairs, and marinas. We have harassed existing businesses on or over the water and discouraged all but a very few aquaculture activities.

Do we want to be a strictly residential community like Nantucket, Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard, or Jackson Hole, or do we want to encourage investment and job creation? What kinds of opportunities really exist for businesses that are not already restricted? The answers to these questions make a huge difference in any discussion about sustainable growth. If we further restrict business opportunities or simply do nothing it is inevitable that we will end up like the above communities.

Ideas for a sustainable economy may include such things as promoting agriculture, subsidizing farmers markets, encouraging local food production and consumption, paving the way for non-polluting vehicles, encouraging green building, renewable energy production, composting, recycling, etc. These are all good ideas but our economy needs to be reality based. Have any of these activities proven to actually support sustainable economic growth without government subsidy?

Government involvement in business usually means tax it, regulate it, subsidize it, or hire government workers to do it. This should be resolutely resisted. The County is already the biggest employer in this Island economy. This has proven to be unsustainable.

The best idea should be to adopt policies that encourage entrepreneurs to invest in these sustainable ideas with their own capital, pass legislation that makes their vision possible, then get out of their way. Government must resist the temptation to get mixed up in business. That is the real challenge.

[link]

Sunday, February 10th

Part Two: Sustainable

Population growth cannot be sustained without addressing the issue of affordability.

Affordability
It is people not just the natural surroundings that distinguish and characterize a place. The prescription we’ve swallowed for protecting the natural environment first, and the people last, has had a nasty side effect. We are seeing our social environment crumble beneath our feet. Fewer taxes and less regulation are proven solutions that can bring us back into balance once again.

We got out of balance when we started down the road to protect the environment by limiting housing alternatives, reducing density, and preserving buildable land until we choked out the very social diversity we once cherished. Our demographics show an aging population with more deaths than births, fewer people living here year around, declining school enrollment, and the exodus of working families. If we keep going in this direction we will destroy the very things that attracted many of us to the Islands to begin with.

The ability for many people to afford to live here has been greatly diminished. It happened so fast that it took many of us by surprise. Those whose income is derived from retirement or investments outside the community are rapidly replacing people who once had the ability to live and work in the islands. Many of them simply could not find adequate year-around employment or couldn’t afford the taxes anymore.

Our community is now burdened with oppressive regulations that dramatically increase the cost of building even modest homes. We suffer from shortsighted planning which has failed to provide enough land where affordable lots and homes are permitted. We need to address this barrier to affordability first.

The “law of supply and demand” is a significant factor in higher housing costs. New regulations and “feel good” programs have helped create a situation where demand has exceeded supply. Our irrational fear of growth produced the down zoning that recently took more than 15,000 potential parcels off the map. If the supply of buildable land is restricted in the face of growing demand the price will go up. This result has been demonstrated to be true beyond a doubt.

The complexity of processing a permit has significantly increased the cost just to apply for one. Regulations on land that slopes or contains a wetland or is near water require engineering and environmental studies that can be very expensive. The cost of compliance and permits for designing and building septic systems have dramatically increased in the last 10 years. Water availability permits and the cost of drilling and registering a new well has increased exponentially because of regulation. Many of these restrictions on new development were put in place to discourage growth. Instead these restrictions fundamentally changed who could afford to live here and who could not.

Delays and uncertainty in permitting also add to the costs for new construction. Applicants are forced to pay interest on construction loans when permits are delayed. Restrictive building codes add time to construction and increase costs. After years of wrangling over the Comprehensive Plan in order to streamline permitting, and after adding more each year to the budget for staff, the process remains slow, expensive and uncertain.

The Land Bank and other programs that take buildable parcels out of the inventory and extinguish development rights on other parcels adds significantly to the price of the remaining available land. I have supported these programs wholeheartedly but recognizing when these programs have reached the point where they can do more harm than good is crucial.

There are many examples where these programs have changed the dynamics of communities and made them unaffordable to all but the very wealthy. We may have reached that point. More than half the land in our county is set aside in tax deferred status. The remaining parcels are taxed more to offset the tax shortfall. It is important to remember that under such programs the unintended consequence is the artificial scarcity of buildable land, which drives up taxes, land prices, housing prices, and drives out our longtime friends and neighbors.

Future sustainable growth of the economy in San Juan County will require a healthy building industry that provides houses for the natural migration of people who choose to relocate in the islands. This predictable population growth is essential to the growth of our economy, it is an important source of new construction tax revenue, and provides future property tax revenue. Construction is one of the few industries that provide year-round living wage jobs. If we continue to hinder and over-regulate this industry our economy will suffer and we will be forced to find additional revenue by raising other taxes and fees thus exacerbating our affordability crisis.

Can any barriers to affordability be taken down? Absolutely. We can bring back balance by repealing policies that are failing. We can support working families by supporting childcare resources and other family services. We must encourage businesses that create jobs, and abolish regulations that add unnecessarily to housing costs. These should be priorities for affordable and sustainable growth.

Next
Part 3: Economic Growth (shameless teaser)
We suffer today from planning that has caused some fundamental problems with regard to sustainable growth. We need to be willing to solve some problems by simply stopping what we have been doing to create them instead of coming up with new programs that ignore the fundamental issues.

[link]

Thursday, February 7th

Part One: Sustainable

This is my first column of 2008. I have been in a humorless slump since last Christmas. The reason for my lack of production is pain. I have discovered that nothing extinguishes “funny” more than pain. Sure, it’s funny when someone falls down and rips the crotch out of their pants. But it is not funny to the faller if both legs are in casts for 8 weeks. I just got one cast off and will be in the other one for several more weeks. I predict that my sense of humor will improve with the healing of my feet.

The following column was inspired by the Council’s request for opinions on “Sustainable Growth”. I must warn my faithful readers that this column is not intended to be funny (some may laugh). It is so long that I divided it into three parts. It is also probably not what the Council had in mind when they asked for opinions on the subject. As usual, they might not like what I have to say at all. Here goes.

Part 1:
Sustainable Growth must include pragmatic planning for population growth, economic growth, and growth of government. These three things are inevitable and must be anticipated in a reasonable way. The question is how can government use existing resources to promote a healthy economic and social environment for citizens without destroying the ecological balance of our Islands?

If this is indeed the question then I have several ideas for the future based on specific demonstrable principles. I will try to explain these 3 assertions one at a time:
1. The current trend of government growth is unsustainable and destructive.
2. Population growth cannot be sustained without addressing the issue of affordability.
3. Real economic growth is essential to sustain future population growth.

Unsustainable Government Growth
The incredible growth of government we have seen over the past few years is not sustainable. We know higher taxes make it difficult for many people to live here but we keep raising them anyway. We are faced with skyrocketing property taxes that give us the highest per capita tax paid in Washington by almost 2 to 1 over second place King County in a State that ranks 4th in the U.S. for the highest taxes. The evidence to support this is clear.

Too much spending is the real problem. Taking every increase in property taxes and looking for more money to spend through REET taxes, grants, sales tax, and added fees destroys business and future investment and raises the cost of living for everyone in the Islands.

The Council has been creative in seeking new ways to spend more money. The storm water fee is a good example. New careers in consulting, communications (spin), facilitating, coordinating, etc. have been created out of no urgent need. This growth in government is creating the “bow wave” of spending that threatens to destroy affordability and sustainability in our beautiful County.

Grants are the fertilizer that grows big government. No grant to date has ever offset any overall spending. Our annual budgets increase dramatically each year regardless of how many grants we get. All these grants have exclusively been used to grow government. We need to stop this insatiable desire to spend, tax, and grow government now. Less spending means lower property taxes, more productivity, people with more of their hard-earned money to spend, and a more sustainable quality of life for everyone.

Our unbridled spending has already fundamentally and unnaturally shifted the social dynamic in the Islands. It is changing who can afford to live here and who cannot. If this trend of government growth continues unabated we will choke out and destroy the very social diversity we all cherish.

Next
Part 2: Affordability (shameless teaser)
It is people not just our beautiful natural surroundings that distinguish and characterize a place. The prescription we’ve swallowed for protecting the natural environment first, and people last, has had a nasty side effect. We are watching our social environment crumble underneath our feet.

[link]