Saturday, September 8, 10 a.m., Deer Harbor Community Club
— from Anne Marie Shanks —
The public is invited to participate in a September 8 meeting at 10 a.m. the Deer Harbor Community Club. Yes for Homes, a county-wide grassroots campaign supporting a ballot initiative in November to create a new Home Fund has organized this meeting. The campaign has invited Ryan Page, San Juan County Affordable Housing Coordinator, to present information about how the Home Fund works and how the funds will be used. Members of the Yes for Homes Campaign will be available to answer other questions that may arise.
Below is a little background information:
A few years ago the County Council tasked a work group with developing a strategic action plan to address the growing housing needs on the islands. That group was made up of stakeholders ranging from housing non-profits to business owners to county staff. One key they found to the solution was to create a dedicated local funding source. Without funding, the housing problem on our islands will only continue to grow.
After the County Council adopted the strategic action plan, they tasked the Housing Bank Commission (HBC) with developing a recommended local funding source. After months of deliberation that Commission recommended the creation of a county Home Fund, funded by a 0.5% Real Estate Excise Tax, along with a carefully crafted Administrative and Financial Plan for how those tax dollars are to be spent.
On May 22, the County Council voted to move the recommendation of the HBC forward to a vote of the people in November of 2018.
Home Fund revenue will come from a one-time tax paid at the time of a real estate sale. This is NOT an ongoing property tax. These funds will serve very-low, low and moderate-income households and those with special needs. The REET is the only source of funds available after a vote of the people that has the flexibility to serve moderate-income households. By voting YES for Homes, you will help our islands take a major step in ensuring communities that are fair and healthy for all.
How do you ensure communities are “healthy” for all when the habitat on which the communities depend for “health” are under assault by the very initiatives you support?
I left out the reference to “fair” in the last sentence deliberately to highlight and thereby demonstrate my point that our “natural” habitats, prerequisites for a healthy “human” community, are being sacrificed at the “low” altar of “politics.”
What is so difficult in understanding that a small island with a fragile ecosystem system under increasing attack from all sides of the political spectrum, if it could speak, would say:
“enough, already; please do not encourage, subsidize and therefore incentize an increase in my population given my limited size, scale and ability to support you and to provide you with a clean and healthy environment.”
More and more people means more and more garbage, more expansion, less open spaces, more whale watching, more material pollution, more light pollution, more noise pollution, more cars, more and more and more amd more…hello? it’s a small island, folks?
Why must the politics insist on this avenue of attack. Between the politics on the left and the greed on the right, this island will be torn physically apart in no time.
The somewhat appalling reality is that if you didn’t subsidize and incentivize this destruction, it may very well never happen and we may be able to restore harm already done and practice preservation and respect for the bio-diversity that provides us with our very lives.
After all, Orcas Island is not a beacon of job opportunities! It’s a small island sparsely populated that’s still barely clinging to a balanced relationship between humanity and habitat. Much destruction has alresdy occurred as has been well documented in this forum. Let it stay healthy so that we humans may stay healthy.
We can’t be the panacea and cure for the imbalances found on the mainland. There is no “need” for an increase in our population. Increasing the stress on the island’s natural habitat and infrastructure for a political war makes this island a mini-war zone. That’s bordering on pathological behavor, political obssession and myopia.
If you’re wanting to battle the Nantucket-ization (nothing personal for those who love MV and Nantucket) of Orcas Island by way of these measures you will almost certainly lose to big money.
Rather, you should consolidate your efforts and work to protect the fragile habitat that MUST exist before we can get to the question of a “healthy human” community.
Your approach is simply adding fuel to the flame and it’s hard to distinguish who is or will do more harm to this planet and our small island—the left or the right?
Where’s the non-politicized common sense in the middle?
Where’s the fervent fight for the the Orca whale, the need to preserve and protect wetlands and open spaces do that they remain free of an overload of damaging human traffic? Raise taxes for that!
Raise taxes to protect and preserve, not to further denigrate our, I repeat, very fragile island ecosystem that’s under serious attack.
Just sayin’