Guest Opinion | Comp Plan? What’s That? Who Cares?

— by Joe Symons —

I am not working on the Comp Plan because it brings me joy. The motivation for this work is love: love of these precious islands and a strong impulse for stewardship instead of exploitation. There is hardly anything more boring and dry than a comp plan: think eating talcum powder.

But given the state of humanity, Version America, Chapter 21st Century, the comp plan is the nexus for the arm wrestle over private v public. ( see orcasissues.com/guest-opinion-county-comprehensive-plan-guides-growth/ ) Combine wealth inequality with the illusion of Individualism, and pit that against a meme that despises government at almost every level and it’s evil tool (taxes), and the scale is tipped way toward exploitation rather than preservation.

Trying to even have a thoughtful discussion on this is like moving a supertanker with a rowboat.

Comp Plan? What’s that? Who cares?

Even if it is the most significant, and basically only, public document that legally paints the portrait of our future. Who knows that? (see doebay.net/cpupdate/sjccp )

Having been here long enough to see the population quadruple, and from my analysis with the current Comp Plan on the books, knowing it could quadruple or more again, (not counting visitors), I wince at my inability to bring the awareness of this to more than a handful of folks.

(Editor’s note: The Comp Plan is a subject of discussion at the meeting on Thursday, March 2 of the Eastsound Planning Review Committee (EPRC) at 3 p.m. at the Eastsound Fire Hall.) The meeting’s primary purpose is to present the current status of the Vision Statement for Eastsound; the EPRC Vision Statement was crafted by a citizen committee to be incorporated into the county’s Comprehensive Plan.

Joe Symons is the former chair, Orcas committee to rewrite the Comp Plan, 1992-1999, and a former plaintiff, challenging the plan as an egregious violation of GMA, 1999-2008