||| FROM STEVE ULVI |||
Opinions about potential solutions for our surprisingly gnarly islands issues are often at odds; from bated breath pleas for environmental preservation everywhere, to deep frustrations about continually restrictive development ordinances and the erosion of private property rights. Broad public agreement through comprehensive planning, streamlining processes and reasonable zoning would be helpful for essential infrastructure prior to focusing on specific sites. These islands are a vaunted place that captures hearts, nourishes dreams and yes, fosters plenty of delusion.
It often seems that positive feelings about this archipelago as a place, a refuge from the unsettling aspects of urban swarms and freeway corridors, is one of the only areas of broad agreement. Opinions about most local issues are all over the map, especially on SJI, where the fault lines of socio-economic values and a sense of self-importance run deep.
A telling example is that of the SJI no vote overwhelming the County yes vote tally for establishing a small real estate excisetax to jumpstart affordable housing in 2006. A dozen precious years were wasted until another effort in 2018 finally passed. Talk about a classic case of many self-oriented people voting against essential community needs!
It seems obvious to me after 18 years of actively engaging herethat the challenges for this unusual county and its many enclaves are mounting in scale and complexity amplified by the hard limits of small islands, divergent resident values, 30% resident turnover every few years, explosive regional growth and inexorable climate warming. The recent sparky controversies within OPALCO, our member owned cooperative, in proposing alternative electrical infrastructure sites, are sadly instructive.
Most troubling, adjectives like “pristine”, “abundant” or “superlative” – even “wild” – are loosely used to describe the seriously degraded environment here. Sometimes these words are thrown out by folks at both ends of the preservation vs development spectrum in support of their extreme views.
As a lifelong conservationist, I think that some of today’s preservation rhetoric is a throwback to late 1960s and 70s, a golden era of conservation awakening, protest and federal legislation spawned by startling industrial disasters and irruptive outdoor recreation. It seemed that the time had come to deflect the arc of history toward more precautionary resource use and restrictive development strategies. But that proved to be illusory.
One insightful quote by Aldo Leopold resonated for me back then, and more so now, “One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” Many of us, who came of age in that era of protest and promise, felt a powerful attraction to natural and wild places and now know what Professor Leopold could not in the 1930s; visible environmental wounds created by industrial greed and human ignorance would be multiplied exponentially by decades of
human population overshoot, resource consumption accelerated by technology and a carbon-burning free-for-all that within the passage of just one century, would profoundly alter the relatively stable chemistry and untold resources of vast oceans and change the global atmosphere that enabled modern human life to flourish on our wondrous blue planet.
Here and now, in the place we live, within the island communities we depend upon, the pivotal issue in the necessary, but tedious update of the Comprehensive Plan (an effort not unlike undergoing a full magnetic resonance image scan of place and community), are key estimates about carrying capacity and resident population projections. These numbers and necessary speculation about County population growth have set off alarm bells for some but seem oddly irrelevant to most.
Interactive public participation in planning can set the stage for transformative leadership but seems increasingly difficult to achieve, even if we limit analysis to the local circumstances and artificially exclude the confusing ripples and waves of regional and national trends. Even here, in a place of relative calm and cohesiveness, we seem unable to focus our impressive collective knowledge and abilities on the things that matter most.
For me, any notion of “maximum viable resident human population” on SJI is pivotal to nearly every other aspect island life and is the issue best not left to chance. We face a crying need for strategic decisiveness in San Juan County after decades of reactionary governance and general economic inertia. The near-completed Comp Plan is excellent in informing the discussion of options and opportunities butcannot make the hard decisions for us.
There is a dire need for intentional, managed County population growth, with measurable and achievable goals building toward economic diversification and stability. In speaking about community adaptation, David Suzuki aptly said. “Our future will not be determined by chance. It will be determined by choice”. Simple words that ring with uncommon wisdom.
Our small county population has convoluted demographics and oddly divergent socio-economic characteristics making it very difficult to find common ground or accurately predict future trendlines given the variability of “by chance” summer tourism and extravagant home construction, our central economic engines.
There are a few serious supply side constraints (not land availability) to be carefully weighed during any further population growth; fresh water and area recharge capacity, a severe lack of permanently affordable housing, rising electric rates, 96% of our food imported, ferry system dysfunction and sky-high construction material/labor costs. Some of these issues remain poorly understood in terms of cause and effect or are largely beyond local control.
What might be the keys to effectively steering inevitable population growth toward community sustainability? The main problem we face is the fragile, volatile and undiversified SJI economy that cannot generally support year around living wage jobs due to the multi-decade focus on picking the low-hanging fruit of the yearly mini-boom and mega-bust of summer tourism and asynchronous real estate bubbles.
A visitation onslaught eventually becomes tourism overshoot as a self-fulfilling prophesy. Businesses cater to the plague’s whims, residents retreat and give way and powers that be accommodate the sporadic revenue flow as it becomes all they can imagine, thereby over time recasting the business community character. This pattern has de-emphasized other economic sector growth, strongly bolstered low wage employment, affected summer resident patterns in town and our enjoyment of public places, and can clog limited ferry slots all summer. Overtourism is termed a “wicked problem” by experts precisely because it is often without antidote and unmanageable.
A good example of the erosive power of visitor revenue preference, especially in a small economic center like Friday Harbor, is the Saturday Farmers Market. Offerings used to be mostly fresh farm produce, baked goods and preserves by local makers but have been replaced by art work, t-shirts, photographs, nick-nacks and jewelry. Most product components are manufactured elsewhere and shipped in resulting in “hollow dollars” with little trickle down except for the creator.
The only elements of constraint are that overnight lodgings, daily vehicle numbers on ferries and seats on airlines are capacity limited. Again, management by chance, not plan. What are the other cylinders powering our sputtering economic engine? An important county-wide reality, that is little understood in terms of population growth and real contributions to the local economy, are the 40 plus percent of the existing residential structures uninhabited (except for capped VRBOs) for all but a few weeks a year. These numerous “investment homes” result in miniscule participation, tepid annual economic contributions and individualize profit rather than strengthening community.
The most extravagant builds and land sales are significant real estate transactions fueling the Home Fund that require skilled labor to remodel or build, with landscaping and annual property management contracts, and generation of substantial materials sales taxes but do not contribute to our community otherwise week in, year out. The consumption of electricity and ground water are problematic.
Retirement in-migration whether renting, building or buying homes is a significant economic contribution here. Aging residents who have retired here, most often from elsewhere, import and spend their monthly retirement income, investment distributions and free time and specialized skills to volunteer in scores of ways for the general betterment of our communities. Then we age out and are replaced. The local trickledown and multiplier effects of personal energy, expenditures and monetary donations are impressive.
On the other hand, working trades people with families are the cornerstone to any local economy due to broad participation in schools, sports, clubs, new business start-ups, voting, organizational boards and other dollar-circulating cohesive community endeavors. But they struggle mightily with housing.
A thriving, participatory middle class can become the strongly beating heart of a much more economically stable, diversified and resilient island community. It seems that population growth in this bucolic county is all but inevitable in the near term, given recognized factors and larger scale pressures causing increasing outmigration from elsewhere. The Comp Plan update incorporates and builds upon many components toward growth and does not forecast little to no growth.
A key question is whether near-term actions by the County Council, based upon Comp Plan goals, that constrain certain population cohorts or economic sectors and benefit others, are legal or effective in undertaking managed population growth here. Are we exhausting all avenues of effect and control we may possess?
Every notion of a community reboot must start somewhere. My view is that funding and constructing many hundreds of permanently affordable rental and owned houses, scores of mid-range multiple family homes, as well as allowing rural clusters of tiny houses and trailers – as appropriate on each island – is the one sure path to strengthen our core economy and nurture middle class expansion with new business incubation and living wage jobs thus increasing the tax base substantially.
In direct contrast, “degrowth” is sometimes mentioned in the Orcasonian as an optional pathway and solution for what ails us. I find that idea illogical and problematic. In the real world, isolated community degrowth generally only occurs due to profound external factors; closures of major economic engines (e.g. car plants or coal mines), death and destruction due to war, plague or serious natural disaster, deadly pollution or a community being left high and dry by a river or freeway realignment. Or perhaps a serious, sustained reduction of reliable state ferry service to small islands?
“Degrowth” has become a catch-phrase, a magic shrinking process that somehow restores a smaller Humpty Dumpty, a fuzzy concept with no rational process. I know of no place where purposeful “degrowth” has resulted in a reduced population and a more robust economy while protecting the healthier ecosystems that proponents imply would result. I believe that summer tourism will naturally contract as the US economy shrinks in future years due to the numerous negative externalities of population overshoot catching up, fallout from current deconstructionist socio-economic policies, the balkanization of US states and decimation of middleclass wealth that will all collide with inadequate funding and flailing emergency measures employed to cope with the cascading impacts of accelerated climate warming.
A more diversified and sustainable local economy based upon housing of all types, stern conservation measures and managed increased growth toward that time may be the only communityprotective buffer in a dim, but rather certain future.
**If you are reading theOrcasonian for free, thank your fellow islanders. If you would like to support theOrcasonian CLICK HERE to set your modestly-priced, voluntary subscription. Otherwise, no worries; we’re happy to share with you.**
A brilliant commentary, Steve.
A step toward a solution would not just be “housing” but housing occupied full time by people committed to our community.
Our economy requires investment in in-county enterprises that can support middle-class employees. A tremendous amount of capital resides here, at least in summer, but it is invested elsewhere. If invested here, it is invested in tourism and real estate, the two least risky investments available … and they are risky in their own lights.
For those who dream of limitations on population and resource use and abuse, a well-balanced economy might only make things worse, in that sense. The issue of limitation, of imposing limitations, is academic. There is no urgency on the part of the county to assess its own resource limitations beyond saying that “a study is underway” (and has been for X years and so is moribund).
I had hoped that a group of realists could meet and assess what tools were available in the workroom of reality, not dreams, from which a dynamic, balanced, and healthy (including ecologically) economy could flourish. A lot of information would have to be gathered first. A lot! I have not found any interest in such a venture beyond band-aids as needed. And so, on we go.
An economy mimics life: it must either grow, change, or die. As you point out, shrinking is not a sane option.
So, what shall it be?
The total acres in SJC are 111,360.
The acres in farmland (as of 2017) is 18,402.
Let’s be generous and double the acres in farmland to estimate the “biocapacity” of SJC for humans: 36,804. (I’m assuming we understand that other living beings and ecosystems need homes too and that we can’t live here without them).
The average North American footprint is 18 acres.
Using this admittedly crude estimate, dividing 18 into 36,804, SJC could feasibly support (without outside inputs — i.e. stealing land, resources, etc. from others) 2044 people.
I find this article rather fascinating, Steve, in that you acknowledge ecological overshoot and the inevitability of degrowth through chaos “due to the numerous negative externalities of population overshoot” and yet your solution is to advocate for more growth to better “strengthen our core economy and nurture middle class expansion with new business incubation and living wage jobs thus increasing the tax base substantially” — that is, to make overshoot worse.
As you allude to, I have in the past suggested planned degrowth (rather than chaotic degrowth) as a way to build resilience in the community for the very tough times ahead. I agree with you that this may well be impossible, especially if the county is unwilling to let go of the utterly insane ideology of infinite growth on a finite planet that the entire world has fallen capture to.
I could perhaps understand your “let’s expand the middle class” approach if you suggested *replacing* the wealthiest (particularly those with second homes here) with middle class as an initial first step in reducing the footprint of the county. But *adding* middle class to the existing structure will add tremendously to our ecological footprint, which is already almost 10x in overshoot by my crude estimations.
Banning second homes, reducing and eventually eliminating tourism, legislating maximum house sizes and energy use, developing local food systems, and restoring ecosystems seems a far better approach, although obviously unpalatable to most at this stage. This may seem impossible, but for the longer term viability of this county, we must all tighten our belts and face the reality of our predicament. Eventually these choices will seem easy in comparison to the impacts of overshoot that are coming our way.
Steve, you point, in a very direct way, to the two most pressing challenges we face as a rural island community: the prospect of population growth without any planned limits, and the increasing cost of living here and consequent working- and middle-class displacement, brought about by an import economy based largely on retirement incomes, second-home investment and property speculation. An portent of a possible future is Nantucket, roughly the size of Orcas with a population two-and-a-half times ours and a median home price of $4.5 million.
In my view, there are two things we can do about those problems. For the first, we can begin by assessing and acknowledging our real resource limits, starting with water, power, and the cost of, and ability to provide, public services–a stated intention that, as Bill says, is “moribund.” But possible. If we get real about those limits now–even without certainty of their boundaries–we can began to plan to put the brakes on growth, looking ahead twenty years into the future; and that is exactly what a comprehensive plan is supposed to do.
For the second, we can begin to redirect our economy by outlawing monster homes, discouraging, to the extent legally allowable, vacation homes and investment property, and making them pay for, and continuing to invest in affordable housing in reasonably compact, dense and accessible growth areas. Again, the job of the comp plan.
Bill’s vision of a conversation among a “group of realists”–actually a consensus among anyone interested in the future of our community–is what a comprehensive planning process is supposed to be about. Currently, that process is being done by an off-island consultant group. Importantly, though, the County is about to select a new Community Development Director from a current finalist pool. That position is critical to all of these issues, and it is important that we find a candidate who is knowledgeable, experienced and committed to growth management and economic balance in a rural, tourist-driven economy. I have urged our County Council to make their selection transparent, public-facing and accessible; and I encourage anyone interested in our long-term future to participate in any process that is offered.
The “group of realists” I propose would not be the same as the Comprehensive Plan process. The former would include only those who understand what makes an economy tick, who have direct or indirect access to capital to make things happen, who would maximize hiring (and training as needed) of those here, with attention to reducing the effects of existing enterprises impacted. Think tricky surgery., no ham-handed “Cut it back!” irrespective of those whose lives and fortunes depend on the status quo. Instead, it’s delicate surgery, aimed at minimizing damage, redirecting capital and/or revitalizing an economy to support local families and rebuilding our straitened middle class..
The Comprehensive Plan process is a public process whereby people who do not intend to participate either giving or receiving in the economy, or are organizations similarly focused, get to say what other people should or shouldn’t do as a matter of personal or predilection or nonprofit mission. This is policy, largely aimed not at building, but with consequences they may or may not fully comptehend .
I hoped that close readers of the Orcasonian would offer up additional analysis and suggestions as to how to navigate the troubles ahead that will be insurmountable in my mind if we don’t decisively alter the broad cohorts of people who live/invest here and the limited economic sectors we cling to. i proposed that an accelerated program of investment and development of permanently affordable housing in order to establish a stable middle class as the key to such course changes. Since I live and rapidly age on SJI I focus most of my criticism and broad brush analysis of the status quo reflects those experiences.
I very much appreciate nearly all of the comments thus far. This convergence and exchange of ideas is unusual in this county and refreshes me.
Elizabeth, with all due respect, and acknowledging that my lengthy essay had a lot of loose ends and unidentified assumptions, I try to incorporate only realistic and achievable strategies. I am quite sure that “banning second homes, reducing and eventually eliminating tourism, legislating maximum house sizes…” are litigious blackholes, economically crippling in the short term and likely to be unconstitutional. I have been worried about population overshoot since the late 1960s on a global and national scale but do not extend that to our little county and do not agree with your admittedly crude numbers. With all of our troubles we are not yet, here at least, like rats in a cage or cattle in a pasture. I am aware that most capitalist approaches involve growth I see this middle class growth based upon increased housing as a way to use the existing imperfect system to alter our demographics and economic engines to become more resilient.
Bill and Brian you have both pulled back the curtain on two aspects of our peculiar island situation as I see it; first, the current Comp Plan revision is being excellently executed in good faith and could be a powerful platform for strong public expression if it weren’t for our disharmony and light (but loud) participation. Our many volunteer committees and commissions are exemplary in advisory roles for the Council and county bureaucracy but prominent leadership and exploring big new ideas does not result. Secondly, the potential private investment capital here could be a game changer as Bill states but the genius required to focus it on the kinds of community alterations I suggest has yet to step forward. But I believe that we have the inherent ability to increase the strategic focus of community foundations and private funders or create something new to enable us to develop hundreds of affordable residences that will allow for new business incubation and eventual community resilience. The time for changing the arc of our history is now.
Amazing, in spite of all evidence pointing to the fact that we, as capitalists, are over consuming our planet, (with the future holding the same for our islands), and that we would do well to do with less… you call people that think this way “academic,” “dreamers,” of not being realistic” of not offering “sane options,” while you propose we find a wealthy private investor(s) who have our county’s best long-term interests at heart to fund the building of hundreds of affordable homes for people who will start their own businesses and hire more employees, leading to market prosperity that will allow us to continue to build more homes and more businesses, and then more homes and more businesses….
That is what I call insanity.
Bill, cynicism about planning notwithstanding (a plan is, after all, a map for getting somewhere or the first step to building something), I too am looking for a “group of realists” with resources (brilliant minds included). Why don’t we start with saving and reviving Rosario to realize its potential both as a business and as a community-serving asset. Realists please apply here.
Plans are great maps, but with few exceptions, don’t require actions. A bland statement in an old plan suffices for the current one, tweaked to look updated. When I lived on Waldron, we had a complete island-wide water study done by a hydrologist. As to other islands … we’re still waiting: Not everyone is anxious to find out or it would be done by now.
A note about middle class growth: there are valuable resources available through the EDC. For all the noise about commercialization, it takes a lot more guts to start and run a business than to talk about it. All businesses require some investment, and housing takes a lot. It’s not a question about what other people should do. Speaking for myself and without advice for others, I spend money only on enterprises that I would want in a smaller environment … except for medical expenses, and what level economy is needed to support that level of care?
That said, realistic suggestions are valuable, particularly when made in a constructive spirit. No one struggling to earn their living here is having a high old time.
And finally, I’m sure that a deep enough pocket would get the attention of the present owner of Rosario.
M.J., I wholly agree with individually, and eventually as resilient communities, greatly reducing consumption and waste. I have tried to do so for the majority of my life but can do more. A foundational assumption in my opinion piece requires stern conservation measures and small housing footprints. I am clinging to the rough idea I have sketched precisely because for the near term county population growth is inevitable. At least a couple thousand in the next couple of decades, probably more. Our economy on SJI is allowed to run in the same way it has for 40 years except now and for me holds little to no promise connecting the dots out into the future. I merely offer a simplistic but thoughtful alternative to be achieved through managed growth if we can find the means and will power to do so.
I see no reason in the world that our little moated county should not strive to be much more resilient and self directed. The current situation and trajectory is unacceptable IMHO, filled with volatility and uncertainty, so perhaps establishing a working middle class here could stabilize our population and improve our economic diversity while still respecting the very prominent limits we face. If I were dreaming I would compare such a possibility to a tiny outpost in Ecotopia just self reliant enough to weather the terrible storms of altered social norms and cascading impacts of climate warming upon us. Please explain how capping resident growth (if even possible) or managed degrowth in our county would be accomplished and how it would lead to a more sane and stable local economy.
One of the fallacies of the human condition is that as a society we seldom do what is needed until we’re forced to do so, (and that is often too late in coming).
“Please explain how capping resident growth (if even possible) or managed degrowth in our county would be accomplished and how it would lead to a more sane and stable local economy.”
Hmmm… though a fair question that’s a bit like asking a similar question to a common person who sees the ludicrousness of our country’s current energy policy or our country’s current foreign policy or our policy of handling nuclear waste, (you know, asking someone who has an understanding of where such policies are leading us and is constantly saying “we need to do something different,” but also someone who doesn’t have either the expertise or the knowledge to come up with a solution). So I must say, “I don’t have an answer to that.” Anymore than do “the dreamers” who conjure the vision of a private magnanimous benefactor suddenly popping out of the woodwork who’s willing to spend (to risk) their fortune on Rosario Resort and hundreds of middle class only homes & businesses.
My vision, being one shared by many, is that we need to slow down, to downsize and conserve, (this admittedly being easier said than done), while others amongst us proclaim “that we need a wealthy saviour.” Good ideas both. Perhaps there’s some middle ground as you, like myself and many others, practice what we preach in the way of conservation. The one thing we can agree on is that we need to do something different from what we’re doing now.
In the meantime, I’m re-reading a copy of a dated article in the Journal (from sometime in the 1980s), written by a much younger Bill Appel, that’s titled, “An over reliance on tourism will kill the middle class.” Hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it? Meanwhile, history keeps repeating itself.
The sun’s out, the rain welcome, the garden and orchard are calling… dream on. For all solutions begin with dreams.
Alright M.J., fair enough. I am unsurprised that Bill was railing politely back when I was still living in a small cabin on the banks of the Yukon River in Alaska. I am thinking South Burn enters into this early blowback on unmanageable tourism out here in the 1980s. Swimming against the current is familiar to many of us.
I feel that the current Comp Plan is going to be excellent as foundation for important decisions. I know that only the County Council with tremendous public pressure can prescribe a stepped course change to a new island economy. But I have an unpleasant sinking feeling that those of us who dream big of things necessitating self restraint and envision a broad willingness to downgrade our unrealistic expectations of a standard of living for the good of others living together is hopelessly anachronistic and deluded. Even on bucolic islands where residents seem proud of appearing to be very different from the Mainland. I feel like we are no better than dogs who tirelessly chase cars in a lather but have no idea what to do when we catch one. But this interchange is still better than hollering at the sky at the ferry landing in Friday Harbor.
Thinking in simplistic terms and going full-circle with this, one has to wonder, “What happens to the middle class when you “kill it”?
Does the middle class simply disappear, or does it then become the “lower class”? We know, as community dynamics change, some sell out and leave, (some because they want to, and others because they’re forced to). Others go broke, going bankrupt in the process and losing their homes and businesses. Some turn to drugs and alcohol, some become wards of the state becoming dependent upon low-income programs. Some commit suicide.
In the bigger picture, what happens to a community when it loses sight of, when it turns its back on, and when it loses its greatest asset?
Whatever the end result of this will be, given what’s at stake, it’s difficult in my mind to envision our current path as being the best policy to continue in pursuit of what we think of as “our economic well-being.”