— from Joe Symons, PhD —
In a week, citizens of San Juan County will be given an in-person moment to express their views about what they value and want in living here. San Juan County is offering a one-day event on each of the three major ferry served islands where citizens can express their vision for the future of the county.
These events are described at sanjuanco.com/1079/Comprehensive-Plan-Update. More details are offered at sanjuanco.com/1340/SJC-Comprehensive-Planning-101 (see all of the presentation documents available there).
WAIT! Don’t click over to those links just yet.
These one-day events are supposed to gather your vision for the size, location, and feel of spaces and people that are your community. You need to think of them as “talk.” You might imagine that this “talk” would and should lead to a consistent and parallel “walk” to ensure that the comprehensive plan actually accomplishes this vision.
The reality is that the existing comprehensive plan, which is being updated, has never “walked” the vision “talk.” Growth in San Juan County has nothing to do with the comprehensive plan. It has everything to do with the market. The current plan is as effective as a toothless, clawless tiger. The best it has done, and without your strong and clear input, the best you are going to get going forward, is a set of “goals” none of which touch the key issues: consistency with the vision, with the Growth Management Act (GMA) under which the plan was crafted, with carrying capacities or with sustainability. You may not believe me; I encourage you to validate this assertion for yourself. You can find a wealth of solid information not available on the county’s web site at
KeepSanJuansWild.org, which is the only truly comprehensive collection of specific detailed information on what the gap is between what the “talk” and the “walk.”
Those one-day events being held outside the main grocery stores on each island are not your only opportunity to weigh in. However, given how busy and distracted most people are, it is likely you won’t take the time to really understand the invisible marriage you have made by choosing to live here, nor should you expect the overloaded planning department to give you a comprehensive tutorial on the real stakes regarding this marriage.
Imagine your future spouse is the look and feel of the spaces and community that brought you here and keep you here. That’s why you fell in love and why you want to live and stay here. What often breaks up a love affair is when one spouse changes and the other can’t adjust to the change. You might want to know what those changes could be and how they will impact you. There is no reasonably accurate prediction of the market-driven changes you will experience, but you can be confident that there will be many more non-residents, more traffic, less quiet, and a growing gap between the haves and the have nots. Some of this information is sitting quietly in official documents such as the recently completed housing needs assessment. (Spoiler alert: the problems are identified but no solutions are offered.)
The bottom line is that the trajectory we are on is exactly like that of every other beautiful destination community in the world, each one of which has been irrevocably altered to no longer meet the original vision and experience of a slow growing rural county infused with tranquility, simplicity, and beauty—fundamental elements in our existing vision statement.
The short version is simple. There are two paths. Each path has costs.
The default path, the one we have been on since 1970, is entirely market driven. The fact that we have a Comp Plan is a convenient fiction to mollify and pacify locals. Economic costs go up as more infrastructure is needed. Environmental costs go up as wells get salty or run dry, wildlife leaves, noise increases, traffic and parking become more challenging. Aspirational costs rise as locals wonder what the end game is: the place is no longer what we came here for.
You’ve lived it. The population of the county more than doubles in the summer. 70 percent of new residential construction for the last decade is for second homes. There is no affordable housing, either owner-occupied or rentals. We have double the state demographic for the over 65 population. We enjoy the lowest wage rate in the state. The list goes on. You surely have your favorites. You will live it going forward. The buildout population is over four times larger than we are today, not counting summer visitors.
The other path is the planned path. A real plan that has vision-created, not market-created, boundaries. This path will also cost.
Right now no one knows which path will cost more. What we do know is simple: If we take the first path, those costs will be expenses; If we take the second path, those costs will be investments. In one case, we pay for what we don’t want. In the other case, we pay for what we do want.
Which would you rather pay for?
If it matters to you, your marriage moment rapidly approaches: Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace. Time and tide wait for no one. The clock ticks. The county has to complete this update soon. It is now on its third two- year extension. There is virtually a forced march to complete the update by next summer. Without your significant participation, you will get the default market-driven path.
Why believe me? Because I was the chair of the Orcas Committee to write the Comp Plan starting in 1993 and was one of five locals that challenged the plan in 1999 as in egregious violation of GMA. The county lost over and over. It was a bloody mess and we ended up with a plan that has no bearing on the vision we spent a year crafting (and you may spend a few minutes giving feedback on during your one-day stop at a local market).
Determine for yourself if what you read here is opinion or facts. Drill into the details at the only place they exist anywhere: KeepSanJuansWild.org.
We can, and should, set a much higher standard this time around.
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Oh, My! Thank You so very much Joe!
Bless You! Spirit Eagle
Bless you, Joe Symons for telling the TRUTH so eloquently, passionately, and clearly. PLease know you get a standing ovation from here in the UGA – where the destruction of our forests has changed this town and surround so much it is no longer home to me. I am heartbroken. And you absolutely, unequivocally NAILED it.
What Joe says is true.
The Growth Management Act sounds as if it allows us to manage growth in a thoughtful way. But one of its main “pillars” is property rights. This is why growth has been and will continue to be market driven. The only sure way to change the ultimate buildout population of four or even five-fold the current population is to vote for “transfer taxes” such as our Land Bank or donate to organizations such as the San Juan Preservation Trust that remove development rights from the big picture. But, if enough voters speak loudly enough, our County Councilors might pay attention. The Growth Management Act does state that growth should not outpace essential public facilities such as sewage treatment, water, roads, ferries, parks, etc. Some aspect of development could be tied to adequate provision of these essential public facilities. I am very concerned about water because the bedrock aquifers on the west side of Orcas provide limited fresh water and are subject to saltwater intrusion when overdrawn along our shorelines. Please attend the workshop on October 3rd from 6 to 8 PM at the public school cafeteria. “Pop-up” information will be available at the Island Market from 8 AM to 4:30 PM on October 3.
Here’s a rather interesting development (no pun intended) from Texas and the right of property owners to own their own trees:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/growth-of-private-tree-regulation-spurs-fear-of-backlash_us_59c90fdee4b08d6615504455?section=us_huffpost-partners
That article and mindset is frightening, Lin – at least to me.
Remembers the bumper sticker, “We Don’t GIve a —-how you do it on the mainland,” to be seen now on the rusted bumpers of old parked pickup[s? Unfortunately, the mainland (aka the ‘market”) cared about us.
Those forces are, of course, exactly those which all the old soulful hippie aesthetes( you know who you are) came here to escape, hence the long festering disaster upon us. Thanks for the wake up call on this. Like rust, capitalism never sleeps.
I feel you all on this thread, amen/
Thank you Joe. The comp plan needs to be vision created and to have some teeth as this island is soon to be another over crowded casualty of the market driven growth phenomenon we have seen in most other beautiful tourist destinations. Greed and the market rules. It is considerably harder to secure housing and live on this incredibly beautiful island now if you are not already well heeled or retired, harder to be a poor but promising young artist and move here as I did long ago. Like all beautiful places, Orcas has been discovered and so it has over the recent years become ever more expensive and densely populated. You have expressed and explained the escalating population problem clearly Joe. . When I arrived here many years ago there were eleven hundred residents. There were plenty of salmon, billions of herring spawning out front and candlefish and seagulls, diving ducks, seals, dogfish. I spent lots of time fishing in a small rowboat. My neighborhood was quietly rural and now it is noisely suburban. Eastsound shops used to carry mostly essential goods for residents. These days due to the crowds I cannot even go into town in summer to get groceries unless I go first thing in the morning or close to closing at night. There are so many cars, souvenir shops and tourists in town there is no parking. I keep trying to accept the changes, which are often not what I would have wished or foreseen and which are occurring more and more rapidly. I’m not sure how you can back up, but maybe we still have time to at least stop getting too much worse. We are crowding and spoiling the quality of life both on land and sea and we badly need to consider where we are thoughtlessly headed if we continue In this direction unregulated. Let us keep our islands green with a rural character and the Salish sea waters sustainable and healthy. We need a strong vision in a strong comp plan as an investment in our healthy future. And yes, we need to be committed to this in action even if it stings a little at first.
Thank you so much Joe! We are loosing what we came here for… another our of whales died this week… Yes, we can change the trajectory if we WANT TO!
We can change if we want to AND IF THEY WILL LISTEN. I gave up over a year ago trying to offer input at the meetings, as a community member, because all I felt was this overwhelming feeling that they were just taking our ‘talk’ but doing nothing with the information. Joe hit the nail on the head, again. In one ear and out the other and into the trash can.
How can we change THAT??
We can change things if enough people show up in person at the County’s Comprehensive Plan Meetings and speak for what they care about. The next meeting on Orcas is October 3 from 6 to 8 PM at the public school.
Keep showing up and keep speaking up.
Another proposed coal terminal has been denied a crucial permit by the WA State Department of Ecology. This happened because people spoke up and showed up and encouraged their friends and neighbors to do the same.
https://tdn.com/news/local/ecology-denies-coal-terminal-a-key-permit/article_0936300e-ea3b-5980-b3b4-874d7a784789.html
There’s another option for input beyond the dates already announced: Invite the County to present at a self-organized meeting, like the ones already held by the League of Women Voters and the Eagle Forum.
Please tell me this is not our ONLY chance to weigh in on the proposed, even more toothless, Comp Plan.
Please read and delve into the website Wild San Juans; there is a wealth of information there. (click the menu bar at the top right of the page.) Joe Symons has worked on this tirelessly for many years, and it’s time to support his work and learn what he knows, so we can have the ongoing conversations we need to have in order to responsibly and responsively “vision” and implement a sustainable future for our cherished islands.
Lesley Liddle’s response speaks eloquently of the degradations and changes we have endured, with much worse to come right now in the Eastsound UGA (can’t speak for the other islands, but would really like to know how San Juan and Lopez are faring.) and Donna Riordan has a good idea – I’m game.
oops. i meant KeepSanJuansWild.org. Joe provides the right link/website name in his editorial. Sorry – I am exhausted from being up night after night grieving the latest clearcuts in Eastsound right across from lavender hollow and soon on school road. My heart is broken and I am exhausted like never before, so forgive my rawness and mistakes.
Great article. You are EXACTLY right that you have to speak up NOW regarding how your Comp Plan is written. The Comp Plan is legislative and much more difficult to change once it is deemed consistent by the state. The code are the laws that carry out the Comp Plan and can be changed on the whims of the commissioners.
I was horrified and did send e-mails to your planners when I saw the 40 units to the acre in the Eastsound UGA. No I didn’t get a reply.
Janet you brought up property rights. There Florida case that became law called Burt J Harris Act. Basically once you entitle a property with a land use, it becomes a “taking” should you try an deny the full enjoyment of that land use. Hence, 40 units/acre on 5 acres = 200 units and they can sue you (the county) if you try to deny their request. That’s why I chose to put my neck out and say something to stop it and suggested that Hotels, resorts and group facilities have their own land use and NOT just arbitrarily issue out land uses with the thinking that no one will abuse it. THEY WILL. We have had cases where they wanted, and got the entitlement from the adjacent right of ways and easements. Made private TDR transactions transferring units to other lands that were never intended to receive from out lying areas.
I cant beg you enough to stand up as a group and say NO to anything that increases entitlements or picks away at what you have. You cant get it back.
Yes, I live far away, but Orcas is my end game once I retire and I have been a County planner for 20+ years now and have seen what economic driven reactionary planning can result in. Its sad and not at all what folks think it is.
With regard to the statement by S. Gash “The Comp Plan is legislative and much more difficult to change once it is deemed consistent by the state,” please note that the state of Washington does NOT review SJC’s comp plan. The only “review” of the validity of the comp plan comes IF someone in the county with legal standing successfully challenges the plan as being non-compliant with GMA. A county’s comp plan can violate all principles of GMA and still be the law unless it has been successfully challenged. GMA states that a county’s Comp Plan is “presumed valid”. That’s legal talk for it’s good to go and we (the state) will not question it. The burden of proof for a challenger (a Plaintiff) is not the basic standard of “preponderance of evidence” but the far higher standard of “clearly erroneous”. That means the plaintiff must show the county KNEW they were breaking the law or Should Have Known they were breaking the law. You can read all about the train wreck that occurred here 1999-2007 as San Juan County was found repeatedly in non-compliance with GMA at “doebay.net/appeal”, a sub-component of the KeepSanJuansWild.org site.
And those violations and the non-compliance continue, Joe, as you know better than anyone. And when you point them out, you are publicly shamed and made the “bad guy” or called “negative.” I’m so thankful for you and for the few people who kept the old papers, the old maps, and have proof beyond a doubt.
IMO, the reason that S. Gash and none of us get responses from the County is probably so that we cannot have this type of legal standing required by the Growth Management Hearings Board. We could probably win our petition on what they have done to Eastsound alone! I would be willing to get with others and be a petitioner.
I would think letters written via email count because at least you have written proof you sent them and they didn’t bounce back. Only problem is, even when you specifically state you want your comment kept in perpetuity, “perpetuity” only means something like 7 years – maybe less. Then the county can get rid of it. So all that stuff from 20 or 30 or more years ago is gone. They didn’t even start making electronic copies of anything including maps til, i’m guessing, about 2007 or 8 or even later than that. Someone will know.
If anyone has the old original printed materials, please do not burn or throw them away – they are golden. They show where we were and how fast things have degraded.
S. Gash is right; we can’t get it back. Eastsound has been my home for many years, and Orcas my home for 36. I am heartbroken at what has been done to it, and the land use densities that this narrow land mass 1 mile wide is being asked to take. It will fail – ultimately, even the land itself may fail as sea levels rise or if we have a big earthquake. Look at Miami for one example of what happens with sea level rise. Rural areas here won’t fare well either, with the sprawl planned. Where will the wild places be?
This whole Comp Plan needs to be written with both land and water carrying capacity as its model.
As per Donna Riordan’s comment, the problem with the County presenting is that they don’t do comparison presentations – old vs new and proposed (because they don’t have them anymore probably) – so how can people know how far this has degraded – especially new people who can’t know our history and maybe moved here from L.A. so they think this place is pretty swell. And compared to most places in the U.S., it is! And we should work and give with everything we’ve got to keep it that way. But we are an island in the Pacific NW coastal region (think “forests”), not Palm Springs or L.A. – and we don’t WANT to be California, or anything/anyplace else than what we are… do we?
The market model of growth is take and take. The preservation model is give back. This means to the ecosystems too, not just “people.”