From the Common Sense Alliance
To help shoreline owners review the County’s more than 300 page Shoreline Inventory and Characterization Report (“Inventory & Characterization”) and an extensive number of maps prepared by its’ contractors, the Common Sense Alliance recently circulated a comment form prepared by our attorney, Sandy Mackie, and a step-by-step set of instructions to subscribers stating how to review the County’s Inventory & Characterization. The documents were also made available in an article on our website (www.commonsensealliance.net) to anyone who wanted to use them.
These materials accurately advised that the County had established a deadline for submission of public comments regarding the Inventory & Characterization of private property and that the Inventory & Characterization is intended to establish the baseline conditions for purposes of future “no net loss” under shoreline regulations.
Our objective was and remains providing accurate information regarding the CAO and SMP processes to enable property owners to take appropriate steps to have their voices heard regarding these matters affecting our community.
We believe that effective public participation is critical and should be promoted to assure the accuracy of the information upon which planning under the Shoreline Management Act and “no net loss” analysis affecting our shoreline regulations will be conducted. We stand by our efforts to assist our neighbors with this challenging review and the identification of errors in the draft Inventory & Characterization.
We do not believe that these materials included any misrepresentations or inaccurate information and we did our best to make the tedious process of reviewing the Inventory & Characterization manageable for our shoreline neighbors.
Amen, and thanks, CSA! Your efforts helped immensely in guiding us through the project of updating/correcting our own files. Special thanks also to Leith Templin, our local “Paul Revere.” And I’m hopeful that the brief “Hoax” kerfuffle is not symptomatic of an adversarial attitude; we’re all in this together, and the “no net loss” goal is noble. . . even if we did lose a weekend in preparing our own packet!