The last time we had a verified Crowning Moment of Awesome [LINK] from Councilor Weimer was when he took his dogs for a walk up on Cherry Point and discovered a couple of miles of unpermitted road created by SSA Marine.
Good times...
And then, on January 15th, (and in Council Chambers no less) Mr Weimer performed his latest CMoA.
I was there. And you weren't.
(Not to rub it in but... Ha. Ha.)
The Council was contemplating modifying the moratorium on land use development of small lots in the Lake Whatcom Watershed.
Up to this point, the moratorium applied to development on all lots smaller than 5 acres in the Watershed.
Mr Crawford introduced a modified moratorium that allowed for small lots to be developed under specific circumstances, including the requirement that the lots be "clustered".
Long story short... it's a moratorium on developing small lots in the watershed... that allows small lots to be developed in the watershed.
Besides the fact that this "moratorium" on small lot development actually allowed for small lots to be developed in the watershed... which in and of itself was a really really bad idea... the modified moratorium provided no mechanism to require that such development control phosphorus run-off in the Watershed.
The preamble of the Ordinance (the part that has no legal effect) did include some langauge describing some phosphorus control requirements that the Council was likely to pass in the future.
I'll repeat that... the moratorium didn't impose any requirements on keeping phosphorus under control in the watershed for the new development it would allow... but that was okay because (according to the preamble) the Council was probably going to impose some phosphorus control requirements in the future... you know... some day.
This was sufficienct concern from enough of the Councilors to threaten the passage of this "moratorium".
Then Carl got the floor...
he moved an amendment to the moratorium as follows:
...so long as all such development on lots created through such divisions and lot line adjustments provide a stormwater plan to be approved by County PDS that shows such development will provide no increase in runoff of phosphorus beyond what would be expected from a natural forested condition.
Carl just took the preamble promise of future phosphorus run-off regulation and placed it in the ordinance...where it would have the effect of law and would take effect when the moratorium passed. As in... immediately.
And the Council needed a few moments for that amendment to sink in...
Councilor Crawford took the floor next...
what Councilmember Weimer has done is given me a taste of my own medicine...
in terms of the cart before the horse...
because what we are saying is we are going to adopt an ordinance that presumes that that standard is adopted...
and I have so much as admitted that that's probably where we're headed anyway tonight...
so, I guess there is a big part of me that's saying... no harm, no foul... sure... why not...
and there's a little tiny part of me going... is that really reflective of this future ordinance that we haven't yet adopted...
it is reflective of my understanding of where we're headed...
There was some brief deliberation in further support of Carl's amendment.
Then the amendment passed unanimously (6-0).
And then the modified moratorium passed unanimously (6-0).
I can't remember the last time a motion made by Carl Weimer got passed with unanimous support, but the Council swallowed Carl's medicine pretty quickly.
And that, folks, is a Crowing Moment of Awesome.
Courtesy of Carl Weimer.
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