Even though I am undeniably a dark horse to fill one of the three vacancies on the County Planning Commission [here is a LINK to my original post], it seemed prudent to see how the Commission is doing today. So I attended a meeting on December 13.
Right now, the County Planning Commission is so dominated by like-minded members that there appears to be a groupthink phenomenon in effect.
The lack of concern over the pending Rural Element litigation was eerily conspicuous. The agenda of the meeting was primarily about the business of the Commission in 2013. And the plans seemed to be predicated on the notion that the County will prevail on appeal of the Rural Element litigation.
There was no meaningful discussion of the matter of what the Commission will do, or how it will effect the workload of the Commission in 2013, if the County does not prevail in this litigation. There was some mention about the great skill of the legal firm that the County has hired to handle the litigation. And then they just went on with the coming year as if the Rural Element was going to be little more than a footnote in 2013.
The Commission is also dominated by members of the Ag community.
There is nothing, in and of itself, that is problematic about this. Farmers are an important voice on the Commission, and need to be full participants in land use decisions in the County. And an absence of advocates for the farm community serving on the Planning Commission would present a significant and insurmountable problem for land use.
But, most of the citizens in the County are not farmers. They're just not.
Since most of the citizens in the County are not farmers, it would seem that the burden falls to the farming community to explain their situation to the majority of non-farmers living in the County.
But that's not how it is with the current County Planning Commission.
With the current Planning Commission, it seems that most (if not all) land use issues are going to be seen from the point of view of a farmer. This goes a long way in placing the manner in which the current Planning Commission is handling business into context, including the cloud of Invalidity that hangs like a humid burrito fart over the Rural Element of the County Comprehensive Plan.
One of the members of the audience, who was clearly and proudly a farmer, spoke before the Commission about the matter of forestry management. He opined that he saw forestry as just another form of farming. Kind of like corn, only bigger and with a longer harvest cycle.
Many a head nodded on the Planning Commission in response to this sentiment.
The problem with this sensibility can be summed up with the well worn saying that "to a man with a hammer, all problems tend to look like a nail."
To a farmer, land-use issues tend to look like... farming issues.
And many of them are. But many of them are... uh... not.
All land use issues in the County are not solvable by saying WWFD (What Would Farmers Do?).
The majority of Whatcom County residents, the overwhelming majority of residents, who don't farm... and don't have a first-hand understanding of farming... simply can't be expected to do some sort of cultural Vulcan Mind Meld with the Ag Community when land use decisions are made.
If the majority of the County Council were required to be farmers, and the majority of the members of the Growth Management Hearings Board were required to be farmers. And if the Governor were required to be a farmer... and if the majority of State Legislators were required to be farmers... this could work.
In a more perfect world, maybe this is how things should be.
But that's not the way it is.
It has been a long time since this country has been a rural nation.
To put this in perspective... the first five Presidents of the United States were professional farmers. Since then there have been... wait for it... THREE Presidents who managed farms before assuming public office. And the last one was Jimmy Carter.
Land use decisions from the County level to the State level are going to have to pass muster with folks who are not farmers. Because most of the people living in the state (and the nation) aren't farmers.
As a practical matter, I can't spend more time walking around in someone else's shoes than I spend walking around in my own shoes. No one can. Which is the most fundamental reason that you don't populate a deliberative body like the Planning Commission with only a sliver of the local spectrum of interests.
A group of like-minded farmers and developers make up the biggest and most coherent voting block on the Commission. So, the work product that leaves the Commission and heads to the County Council for a vote is going to be representative of the sensibilities of (some) farmers and developers, and pretty much no one else.
The current County Planning Commission seems to not reflect the population of Whatcom County at-large. It doesn't even seem to represent the population of Whatcom County farmers and developers at-large.
(Most people in the county aren't developers, either.)
More to the point, the open and repeated hostility towards environmental concerns I witnessed at the December 13 meeting was such that, as one of the few environmentally leaning citizens at the meeting, I didn't say much. I rose to compliment and thank Commissioner John Lesow for his work (since his stint on the Commission is coming to an end). After I said my niceties, I shut the hell up. And anyone who knows me personally, knows that is atypical of me. I heard a lot of hippie punching at that meeting, and that was a festive low-key meeting. There was no issue of contention being deliberated at the meeting.
I assert that the County Planning Commission is a group that is not equipped to reliably create an atmosphere where a dissenting citizen could get a fair hearing. They might be able to make an effort to give a dissenter a fair hearing, if they make an Herculean effort. And even if the Commission could bring its reflexive hippie-punching ways in check, the fact of the matter is that an environmentalist trying to persuade this group about anything would be rhetorically kicking water uphill. It would be a complete waste of time.
And, as a result, dissenting citizens aren't going to the Planning Commission to
The only meaningful remedy will be to bring more diverse voices to the Planning Commission.
I am a long shot to get appointed to the County Planning Commission. This Commission's current membership is not some happy accident or serendipitous convergence of random events. This is the County Planning Commission that the County Council mindfully assembled over the past four years.
But I aim to get as many votes from the County Council as I can on January 15th.
I need every willing spirit available to attend that meeting and speak in Open Session in favor of my appointment.
The Council responds quite well to a relatively significant turnout of citizens who petition them in person. I can't say that it works absolutely every time it is tried, but the track record of motivated and attending citizens requesting a specific action from the Council is impressive.
You will know it is time to act when you see the Nerd Signal in the sky.
'Nerd out.
No comments:
Post a Comment