[Capr-announce] Fw: Cities Admit Guilt on I-933

[laurel at sage1.com]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Rodney McFarland 
To: laurel at sage1.com 
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2006 10:10 AM
Subject: FW: Cities Admit Guilt on I-933


 

 


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From: Chuck Wennerlind [mailto:cwennerlind at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2006 9:16 AM
To: Rodney McFarland
Subject: Cities Admit Guilt on I-933

 

Cities Admit Guilt on I-933

 

    Many area city officials are saying "I-933 would cost them too much."  I-933 addresses who pays the cost of regulations on property, not what the regulations cost. Thus city officials are actually admitting that cities are not paying their fair share for environmental protection and have no intention to do so. They want struggling rural land owners and farmers to continue to pick up the slack for them.  After all, cities are exempt from the most restrictive regulations. Why worry about compensation since someone else is bearing the cost for you.

    But what would happen if a Judge ruled tomorrow that the CAO (Critical Areas Ordinance) must be applied equally to all areas of the county, including the cities?  Imagine Seattle not being able to allow building within 350 feet of a waterway (i.e. Lake Washington, Puget Sound, Creeks etc..) and requiring every lot to be two-thirds native vegetation.  Extremely few permits could be issued under such restrictions and thus the city would soon die.

   Of course, the city officials would cry foul: "IT COSTS TOO MUCH - WE CAN'T AFORD IT."  And they would be right.   Since downtown Seattle properties are worth over twenty million dollars per acre, compared to  rural land values at under twenty thousand,  the cost to downtown residents would be over a thousand times as much as it is now for the rural part of the county.  Clearly city residents would not be able to afford it and would demand relief from the law.  Obviously if a regulation is too expensive for all to share, then it's clearly too much for one too bear alone. Yet city officials think it is acceptable for the rural land owners to bear the cost alone.  

    Today Seattle developers are not under such restrictions. Skyscrapers are going up in downtown Seattle, many of them new high rise condominiums. Nearly all of them use every square inch of their property.  Nothing is set aside for the environment. These high rise, high dollar condo developers are benefiting greatly from the loss of buildable lots in the rural areas caused by extensive environmental restrictions.  Why then are those profiting the most from environmental restrictions (including increased tax base for cities) not being asked to share the cost equally?  It is only fair that if regulations are not equally imposed on all property owners, then the cost imposed on the few should be shared by the many.  I-933 would help bring equality, sharing the real costs of the regulations equally with all who benefit from them. 

    Some city of Seattle officials are looking to state taxpayers to pay billions to rebuild the downtown seawall to protect the state's richest property owners from the environment.  Yet they are fully opposed to compensating struggling rural property owners for the taking of their property to protect the environment. And they think that's fair. Go figure.

 

Chuck Wennerlind

Carnation WA

 

 
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