Nerditorial: The Case of the Yew Street Irregulars

Colonel Ross still wore an expression which showed the poor opinion which he had formed of my companion's ability, but I saw by the inspector's face that his attention had been keenly aroused.
"You consider that to be important?" he [Inspector Gregory] asked.
"Exceedingly so."
"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur Conan Doyle, from Silver Blaze

[This is a follow-up to a previous post about the Yew Street UGA.]

Hey, look what I found... the original draft of the Yew Street UGA ordinance as written by the not-elected-to-a-damn-thing folks at Belcher Swanson, a private law firm working for private interests who want to develop in the Yew Street Reserve UGA.

What a marvelous coincidence!

The Belcher Swanson draft. July 15, 2010.

This is the draft introduced in Council. September 28, 2010.

At first glance, it appears that AB2010-054e is nothing but a cut and paste of the Belcher Swanson draft.

And there are uncanny similarities.

Interestingly enough, however, there are some meaningful differences between the two drafts.

It doesn't suffice to simply say that Belcher Swanson wrote the ordinance draft language for AB2010-054e.

The B.S. draft cite specific population figures and specific changes to those figures. All direct and numerically precise references to the change in population projections have been removed and replaced with much less specific language.

This is the strangest change to me, and the only change I'll be highlighting here. (there is no substitute for inspecting this information yourself.)

Here is a comparative sample to convey my point...

The Belcher Swanson draft:

Fact #6
The Whatcom County Council finds that the addition of the Yew Street Reserve UGA to the Bellingham UGA will result in an additional 1936 people and the growth projections for Bellingham must be adjusted accordingly.


Fact #7
The Whatcom County Council finds that approximately 450 acres of land encompass the Yew Street Reserve UGA proposed for conversion to UGA status. Of that, approximately 140 acres is already developed to urban densities or owned by the City of Bellingham. The remaining 360 acres to be developed can accommodate approximately 1936 people.

That's specific, if nothing else.

In AB2010-054e, those facts don't appear at all, and the closest thing to a replacement is this:

Fact #5
The Whatcom County Council finds that an error occurred in the calculations relating to the existing population in Bellingham and its UGA. The error resulted in a miscalculation of the amount of land needed to accommodate the projected population for the City in 2009. Addition of the Yew Street Reserve Area will help correct the error.

So, from a precise adjustment of growth projections to no direct mention of any actual size of a changed population growth projection.

If AB2010-054e is read literally, as introduced before the Council, the County will be increasing the size of the UGA in Whatcom County without increasing the population growth projection.

The County will be predicting the same number of people will move into Whatcom County's UGAs, but Whatcom County will be setting aside more land for that same projected population to develop.

This is contrary to the original B.S. draft finding of fact that insists that if more UGA is going to be used, then the population projection has to be adjusted accordingly. Apparently, it is the opinion of Belcher Swanson that the County can't just increase the size of the UGAs themselves without also increasing the projected population that the County expects to inhabit the UGAs.

Whoever edited the document that became the September 28, 2010 draft of AB2010-054e appears to strongly disagree with Belcher Swansons' command of the facts regarding this UGA expansion.

It's not clear from these two drafts who made such a clear change in editorial perspective. It might have been Ms. Kershner. It might have been Mr. Knutzen. Perhaps it was someone else entirely.

It would be nice to know who it was.

And it would be nice to know who on the Council concurs with this fact so found.

The game's afoot!