[Capr-announce] I-933 . . . Government needs to work with property owners to protect the environment

[Rodney McFarland]

This message is one of a series about the Property Fairness Initiative to
address concerns raised
by the initiative's opponents. We hope that you find this information
useful.

If you find this helps you understand I-933 better, please feel free to
share it with your friends and neighbors. 

Please visit www.supporting933.org <http://www.supporting933.org/>  for
previous essays, property owner stories, and more!

 

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With just a few days to go before election day, recent polling indicates
that more than 10% of the voters in Washington have not yet decided how they
are going to cast their votes for the Property Fairness Initiative.

We need your help in getting in touch with all of those folks and talking
about why I-933 is good for Washington, good for their families, and good
for our future.

I-933's opponents tell us that the initiative will gut environmental
protections.  We think that assertion is way over the top.

Most environmental protections were already in place before 1996, and will
not be affected by enacting I-933.  It's during the last ten years that the
galloping goalposts of ever-increasing restrictions on how private property
may be used that have brought us well past the point of reasonable
environmental protection and into preservation for preservation's sake.
Many of the  more recent regulations fail to improve environmental quality,
but they do impose severe restrictions on property owners' ability to
appropriately use and enjoy their property.  Most of the regulations place
disproportionate burdens on rural property owners, but there are also
restrictions on the use of urban properties that go well beyond being
reasonable.

Do we really want to see every shoreline setback managed as fish and
wildlife habitat conservation areas?  Is it really necessary to provide
buffers hundreds of feet wide around wetlands when buffers of less than
fifty feet will provide all the protective functions needed by the wetland
ecosystem?  Is there really a scientific rationale for 1200 foot wide
wildlife corridors in a county where less than ten percent of the land is
available for human habitation?

Many of the land use regulations we have today reflect government's distrust
of the individual property owner.  Government officials seem to feel that we
can't be trusted to take care of what we own, and that they must therefore
regulate the use of our private property to keep us from making a mess of
things.  I-933 is our message back to them that we are quite capable of
providing the best stewardship of the property we have purchased and worked
so hard to maintain.  

The only way we can keep our property value is to take good care of it.
When government tells us what we are and are not allowed to do with our own
property, we lose a large share of our motivation to do a good job.  Tell us
we are not allowed to do anything with 65% of a rural parcel, and that we
need a permit to remove Himalayan blackberry bushes, and what do you think
is going to happen?

Work with us, help us develop the tools and management plans, and we
property owners will provide much better stewardship of our property than
government can ever require us to.  Nobody has better reason to take the
best possible care of property than the person who owns that property.  As
property owners, we care a lot more about our place on the landscape than
anyone who works in an agency office somewhere miles away.  

We've learned that a parcel in a county where 65% of a rural parcel of more
than five acres must be left in native vegetation sold for $44,000.  Before
the critical areas ordinance with that provision went into effect, the
parcel would have sold for more than $200,000.  That ordinance took at least
$156,000 in property value away from the previous owner.  We don't think
that's fair.

The Property Fairness Initiative has a list of provisions that require our
government officials to not only demonstrate that there is a problem to be
solved, but also to consider providing alternative solutions to the problem
that do not require regulation of our private property.  We think that's
fair.  We think most Washingtonians would agree, if they knew more about
I-933.

So, please, in these final days before the election is over, talk to your
friends, neighbors, and coworkers about I-933 and why it is so important
that we get together and vote YES on I-933!

Remember, at least one in every ten voters has still not decided which way
to vote on I-933.  They need the information we can provide to them.  We can
also still change the minds of at least some of those who had decided to
vote the other way, too.

The only way we can convince the undecided, and persuade some of our
opponents to vote YES is to get out and talk with them, or pick up the phone
and give them a call.

Please feel free to forward this message to your friends and neighbors.  We
all need to do all we can to get the Property Fairness Initiative over the
line and through the goalposts.  Let's not stop working until the polls
close next Tuesday!



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Please join us in voting YES for I-933

If you wish to be added to or removed from this email list, please send your
request to messenger at supporting933.org.


  

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