Sorry to report that Tuesday night Whatcom County Council, under the cover of a carefully couched palm-greasing grant funded by the EPA, gave the go-ahead to Planning and Development to implement the natural resources marketplace (NRM).  In fairness, council couldn't resist.  The grant was slathered with bait and buzzwords:   ag, watershed, restoration, pilot project, "plan to plan."   For their sins, they got a plaque and a big "smile for the camera" photo-op on the spot, from one of the NRM's prime Seattle backers.

WE hope citizens step up to the plate and watch this like hawks.   How?   There's information at the tail-end of this post.

The Excavator raised alerts about the NRM in August of last year and then again in October.   Although we narrowly escaped a county opt-in to the Ruckelshaus process that had the NRM buried seamlessly within, there was never much question that the "marketplace" proponents would continue to beat on their missionary drum.

Until now the "Natural Resources Marketplace Working Group" met well beyond the scrutiny of the public.   Now the rogues gallery of control obsessives led by city-living Farm Friends will reconvene quickly.  They've posted a new official "crew," but don't be fooled.    Task 1.7 of the implementation plan calls for "Facilitation of and participation in the RC [review committee], discussions with existing working groups, committees, and organizations on regular basis throughout the Task period where progress is discussed and stakeholder input is received (24 additional contacts and est. 20 meetings)."   As happens so often, advocates and cherry-picked proponents will pave our world with more policy and regulation.   This time they're taking the game to a whole new level.

Government management of persons through the use of their private property is all the rage in the planning-ecology universe.   The NRM report (Page 20 of the PDF is much easier to see) illustrates the kind of  command and control debit-and-credit utopian world this group envisions:

Just this month, a fresh set of global alarm predictions and recommendations was trotted out by global environment alarmists.   See the "solution" they offer?   It's a dead ringer for the NRM.

OECD RELEASES "ENVIRONMENTAL OUTLOOK TO 2050: THE CONSEQUENCES OF INACTION"
Earlier this month, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released an analysis entitled, "The OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050" which poses the question "What will the next four decades bring?" Based on joint modeling by the OECD and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), it looks forward to the year 2050 to predict what demographic and economic trends might mean for the environment if the world does not adopt more ambitious green policies. It also looks at what policies could change that picture for the better. The analysis focuses on four areas: climate change, biodiversity, freshwater and health impacts of pollution.

The report projects that despite the recent recession, the global economy could nearly quadruple by 2050. Rising living standards will be accompanied by ever growing demands for energy, food and natural resources, and more pollution. The costs of inaction could be colossal, both in economic and human terms. Without new policies, the report suggests that:

The report concludes that these projections highlight the urgent need for new thinking. Failing that, the erosion of the world's environmental capital will increase the risk of irreversible changes that could jeopardize two centuries of rising living standards. Well-designed policies to tackle environmental problems can also help to address other environmental challenges, and contribute to growth and development. Tackling local air pollution contributes not only to cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but also to reducing the economic burden of chronic and costly health problems. Moreover, climate policies help protect biodiversity, for example by reducing emissions from deforestation.

To avert the future painted by the "Environmental Outlook to 2050,"the report recommends a cocktail of policy solutions: using environmental taxes and emissions trading schemes to make pollution more costly than greener alternatives; valuing and pricing natural assets and ecosystem services like clean air, water and biodiversity for their true worth; removing environmentally harmful subsidies to fossil fuels or wasteful irrigation schemes; and, encouraging green innovation by making polluting production and consumption modes more expensive while providing public support for basic research and development (R&D).

Read the key facts and figures from the "Environmental Outlook to 2050" here.   The report itself is available here.

Worth fighting?   WE report, you decide - but decide soon.   This is upon us.   The first step would be getting your name or group added to the "interested party" list at Planning - probably by e-mailing Samya Lutz:  [email protected]

Last Thursday evening the Planning Commision decided  to accept more written comments from citizens about changes to the Whatcom County (GMA driven) Comprehensive Plan and zoning "Rural Element."  Our March 20 blog post offered some background and concerns about this.

There is no question that the role of "planning" has reached a critical tipping point.   Like never before, PDS is proposing to literally decide where citizens are "permitted" to live based on population.   And, other changes will increase government micro-management of how property is used when (and if) folks get permission to build or otherwise use their land in the unincorporated county.

On March 23rd Gary Davis, the PDS staff contact for this project, wrote:

"Following last night's public hearing, the Planning Commission voted to hold the written record open until 5:00 p.m. April 11.  This will allow the public to continue to submit written comments before the April 12 work session.  That work session is scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. in the County Council Chambers, 311 Grand, Bellingham."

Mr. Davis has offered to field questions and direct comments.   While we're sure he's willing to do that (his number is 676-6707 ext. 50246), we hope you also send your ideas and opinions directly to the Planning Commission(ers).   Comments can be written and dropped off or mailed to:   5280 Northwest Drive, Bellingham, WA 98226.

Or, e-mail the commissioners at [email protected]

A great deal of personal freedom is at stake.   Review the Planning and Development memo, the comp plan edits, and the zoning edits.   Then let the Planning Commission know what you think.   The clock is ticking.

If you can possibly make it, also attend that April 12th "work session."   Citizens won't be permitted to address the Commission during the session (it's not a "public hearing"), but the Commission needs to see how many people are aware of, and concerned about, what's at stake.

If at all possible, ATTEND the Planning Commission meeting Thursday evening, March 22 at 6:30 pm in County Council Chambers, 311 Grand, Bellingham.   It could be a long sit.  By all accounts this is the one and only public hearing on some pretty serious business.

We think this is so serious that failing to raise strong outcry of “NO!” may leave us in chains for years.  “Chains” sound dramatic for a planning issue?   Folks, it’s not strong enough.

If you don’t live in a rural area you may think this isn’t your problem.   But believe us – it is.  This is so big, so ugly, it will affect everybody.

The Whatcom County Comprehensive Plan "Rural Element" establishes a growth plan for the distribution of population across the whole county – apportioned between cities and rural areas.  The plan is to direct (through various mechanisms) 85% of all growth to urban areas – cities and urban growth areas.  How that number was reached is too elaborate to describe here, but twenty-four points of “invalidity” findings were made by the Growth Management Hearings Board (GMHB) with patent disrespect for citizens' freedom to live where they prefer.   And this round of Comprehensive Plan changes will penalize everyone who doesn’t “get with the program.”

Why did the GMHB make these Comprehensive Plan findings?   Rabid opponents of rural growth – no, let’s speak frankly here, rabid opponents of rural USE – filed suits against the County, taking their complaints to a board of governor-appointees. Futurewise, Jean Melious, David Stalheim, and Wendy Harris simply couldn’t bear the idea that the rural population might use the land as it’s zoned.

The GMHB now demands that the county must expand protections to rural character (rolling conditions as much as possible back to 1990) by “containing or otherwise controlling” rural development in line with population projections.   Now the Planning Department is proposing an oppressive scheme that will take hold if it goes unchallenged.

What’s really new, really nasty, is something referred to in planning circles as "permit metering."   If this becomes a “policy option” Planning & Development may deny property owners permits to build on rural land -- not because building will do any tangible harm.  Permits could be denied if rural population growth doesn’t suit the county’s plan for any given year.

Of course WE already know that nobody has any right to build anywhere in Whatcom County – that requires permission.  No such “right” has existed here for years.  An application to build must pass through an elaborate obstacle course of regulations and “criteria” to assure that building (or activity) does no harm.  And zoning determines what kind of use is permitted in different places.   Zoning ordinances set density, how many houses per acre and so on.   But keeping density within limits isn’t enough for these control freaks.

The idea is to meter-out the use of private property over the course of time.   Why?  Some folks think this will keep more of the hoot in “Hooterville.”   They say this will keep the countryside more scenic, though we can’t imagine how.   More rustic?   Heaven help the poor folks who want to use their land to meet their own needs when they desire.

This new level of control over time is a leap beyond building regulations and zoning.   Do you still think WE exaggerate?   Read on.

The March 6 Planning and Development staff memorandum (here, Pages 5-6) describes this as "tracking" and "monitoring."   Dancing on the head of a pin, it says

"...rural monitoring would entail tracking development activity to make sure the number of residential units permitted in rural areas does not allow for population growth exceeding one year's worth of the 21-year projection for the rural areas."

"Population growth" – did you catch that?   Now that's an interesting term to use to meter out “one year’s worth” of permits.  Population is only counted every ten years by the federal census.  This tracking and monitoring - it would be based on what?   Estimates?   How?   By whom?   This talks about limiting new permits – but how does that apply to the number of people?  How do they propose to count us? Under what authority?

The proposed Comprehensive Plan change to Policy 2DD says:

“Annually monitor residential development activity in rural areas and compare that data with the adopted population growth projection for the rural areas. If it is apparent that rural growth is occurring at a significantly higher rate than adopted projections, the County shall take action to address the discrepancy. Actions may include: changing the allocation of the projected population growth, changing rural zoning or densities, limiting rural permit issuance, working with cities to foster appropriate growth in Urban Growth Areas through annexation or extension of utilities, or working with cities to reduce the difference in impact fees between the cities and the rural areas.”

We didn’t imagine this.

City folks – although this is the “Rural Element,” better ask what's meant by "cities to reduce the difference in impact fees."   Give up improvements?   Forego services?   Isn't that the purpose of impact fees?    Another point:  Should one level of government impose on another like that, to suit its own goals?   If WE editors were mayors or city council people, we’d find this mighty troubling.

There’s more nasty business – more “boot to the neck” for the greater good, for our health and welfare.

This edit expands "open space" requirements and other regulations to further reduce  impervious surface in rural to 20%.   Ever heard of that (pervious-impervious)?   Impervious surfaces are what "water doesn't soak into," like buildings and sidewalks, paved driveways, decks, garages, chicken coops, doghouses - you name it.  Even LAWNS are considered “impervious” according to the stormwater gendarmes nowadays.   "Undeveloped" buffers have been a passive taking of private property for years, if you've followed that subject, but this goes way beyond buffers.

And the edits require more clamping-down to “protect” the Lake Whatcom watershed – even though the condition of the lake is far from certain, and WRIA 1 has jumped the tracks.

Just yesterday Futurewise launched an e-mail blast encouraging its supporters to flood the Planning Commission with letters demanding even tighter controls (check it out) – like a further reduction of impervious surfaces to 10%, and not letting folks clear more than 35% vegetation from their rural lots.   Imagine being told that you have to let the weeds grow wild on 65% of YOUR land.  This is the kind of command and control these people want in our day-to-day lives, to have over others' private property.

There's too much to cover here in one spot.  If you want to know more, check the county webpage.   It's loaded with all the latest details.   And you’re having trouble finding details there, hit CONTACT above and send a question to the Vator.   The editors will try to direct readers toward information before the Thursday hearing – but we’re all scrambling.   There are only a couple of days to look through these drafts and prepare for Thursday.

BUT even if you don’t feel completely prepared, PLEASE DO GO to the Planning Commission session on Thursday.  Don’t be shy, step up to the microphone and make a point if you think something must be said.   Can you imagine – this plan could be on us for the next twenty years, and we have one evening to speak out.  There’s something very wrong about that, too.

It’s one thing to live with the "Growth Management Act," but this is not about growth management or sprawl any more.  Like that Futurewise e-mail says, their real goals are governance, control, and limits.

If this “legislation” is adopted the way it’s written now, we will all be in a world of hurt.

WE’ve just had a look at next Tuesday's Whatcom County Council agenda, and we think folks should know about one of the items pending approval.

County government has been in overdrive, expanding for years by “partnering” with private non-profits.   We’ve noticed that in the last six months they've punched the hyperdrive button, making massive “non-departmental” contract awards and disgorging long-held reserves and grant funds.  What’s disconcerting is that most of this spending doesn’t show up in the county’s actual budget.

What caught our eye is “agenda bill” AB2012-112, slated for approval March 13.  What a gauzy, typical Whatcom County case of opportunism.

As WE predicted, the Community Energy Challenge “energy efficiency loan” experiment was a dismal failure.   It left hundreds of thousands of dollars of unspent grant money in the county coffers.   This award will spend-out nearly $200,000 of grant leftovers for more of the same even though the original plan flopped.   This will only extend the CEC farce.  Page-down to the “statement of work” that begins at Page 12.   Then look at the compensation section, Exhibit B on PDF Page 13 (you may need to open AB 2012-112 again - it's worth the trouble).

This says that the Opportunity Council will use $114,889 of this $198,095 to “provide services” and “pay CEC incentives” (giveaways) of $83,196 to who knows whom.   What's striking is the scale of the service budget; comparatively speaking, the expenses for staff and overhead are 138% of  the tangible work.

The Opportunity Council already gets roughly $24 million each year for programs, from 40 + different agencies.  WE’ve tried to obtain Opportunity Council “recipient lists” in the past to find out what its overhead is and where the recipient award money actually goes, but no soap.  For all the claims made in this paperwork that spending will be accountable, Opportunity Council doesn’t willingly open it's books or divulge details about recipients to the public.  If this were real government work, we could find out what really goes on, but public disclosure laws don’t apply to private NGO’s (government "partners").

This isn't the only NGO that mopped-up on Community Energy Challenge leftovers.  Sustainable Connections scored $212,994 of unspent funds too, just a couple of weeks ago.  WE found that buried in a routine funding bill (see these pages of AB 2012-090), and it makes the same vague “we’ll put the money to work” promises.   Maybe "750" audits were conducted - perhaps they'd provide a list of names and addresses for the public to see andverify.  (Doubt that will ever happen.)

The responsible thing for the County to do would be return the money to the federal government, right?   Right.  If you checked-out the Community Energy Challenge page, you know this was “stimulus” money from the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act).   Everybody knows we have a serious debt crisis, borrowing vast amounts of money from China, and local government simply doesn't care.   We'll never know what good came of the $4,503,000.00 that the federal Department of Energy dumped.   But at its rosiest, even if it had succeeded, it had 72% overhead built-in.

Is county government capable of self restraint?   Largesse seems to be a satisfying temptation for officials who want to believe they’re doing something substantial and good for the community.  They don't seem to grasp that grants feeding fiascos like this are not “free” to us, the public.  County must stop blessing chronic institutional failure and waste.   We simply can't afford it.

What a rum deal for the “partners” that have burgeoned into growth industries based on subsidy, no matter how little they achieve.  Vague promises are made, cash is shoveled through the general fund from massive state and federal grants, and the public debt mushrooms.  Despite outlandish overhead, zero transparency, and poor performance, the NGO's will file glowing reports on schedule and head straight back to the trough for more.

Cruise through agendas and "past action taken" when you can, and see how bad this has become.

Although WE focus on bringing local issues to light, a number of readers have requested space to stump for their favorite candidates.   The GOP caucuses will be held this coming Saturday March 3, and the Democrat caucuses will be April 15.    (Tax Day, was that deliberate?)  If you want to lay down a little screed click on the "Comments" link above, then scroll down and "Leave A Reply."   Our Posting Rules allow you to use your favorite nickname.

Here's your chance to share what sold you on whom-ever, what's wrong with the other jerk, or what you think of the whole sordid process.   We'll approve everything short of "gratuitous profanity and ad-hominem attacks."    So stomp away, though being brief and to the point is probably best.