Letter to Editor | Open letter to Mr. Hughes

||| FROM ED SUIJ |||

Dear Mr.Hughes,

In a time of sound bites and short attention spans this letter might seem a bit long to you. You may quit reading it after a couple paragraphs. That is fine with me. The voters will read it. We all know your qualities as a businessman and you are doing a great job running the pharmacy. Orcas could not do without it.

Coming from the commercial world you are good at marketing and have good communications skills too.

But you yourself have to admit that your 8 year stint as County Council member from 2012 to 2020 has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. Because you took your business acumen to the county government and almost turned the county into a tourist promotion agency.  First of all county government is not a business and shouldn’t be run that way and secondly it should not be in the tourist promotion business. From 2012 to 2022 the total number of tourist visits nearly tripled. This data is from San Juan National Historical Park. We have all seen the numbers. In the summer tourist season the population on Orcas doubles. Instead of 5,800 year round inhabitants there might be upward of 12,000 people on any given day. (Is anybody keeping track?). It means that the population of 5,800 has to come up with facilities and services for 12,000 people ( maybe even more in peak season.)  In other words: adequate roads, parking spaces, water and sewage, food, garbage disposal, fire protection, emergency medical facilities, sheriff services, etc. have to be available and provided for double the number of inhabitants. Think of how many extra food, beverage and garbage trucks need to come and go on the ferry, taking up a lot of space.  (I live near the ferry and am always astonished how many large food, beer and beverage trucks drive off the ferry.) 

No wonder taxes and levies are going up and up, because everything has to be geared for all those extra people. We all know “islanders” and old timers that are being taxed off the Island. I am sure you do too. And who is profiting from all those extra expenses that have to be coughed up by the community? Mostly a small number of business owners and vacation rental property owners (quite often outside investors) in a great example of socializing costs and privatizing profits.

Since the so-called road “improvements,” the traffic speed has increased dramatically. Yet at any speed over 35 mph, one no longer feels “in” the landscape; one is merely zipping “through” it. On the way to somewhere else, often without time to look at the faraway snowy mountain tops, the hawk on the fencepost, the fog lifting in Crow Valley. One is too busy avoiding collisions with bicyclists, deer and people simply coming out of their driveway. I am sure the road department has already marked in red the “bottlenecks” on the roads that need to be widened, so speeding cola and beer trucks can pass one another without forcing bicyclists into the ditch or barbwire fence. Do the test yourself. Drive from Eastsound to the ferry at 35 mph. And see how many cars will have accumulated behind you by the time you reach the ferry parking lot, some trying to pass in impossible places. All in a hurry to the ferry, then having to wait for hours. The pace of “Island life” has picked up speed. Have you noticed? Real estate values along Horseshoe Highway are dropping. Who wants to live next to a noisy “freeway?”

During your time in office, vacation rental permits were handed out like candy. You ignored the people who asked for restraint. There are somewhere over 400 permits on Orcas. Available housing and affordable rents vanished. Young couples pay $1200 to $1500 a month for small living spaces, if they can find them. They often have to work multiple jobs to come up with these sums. No wonder we hardly ever see young people at the important meetings where we talk about THEIR future. They are too busy hassling to pay the bills.

What do a lot of these visitors do? They go shopping for a retirement or second home. More than 50% of housing stock on Orcas is either empty or a holiday home. Any realtor will tell you, oh, investing on Orcas is good, because prices will just go up and up. And indeed, you made that happen. (1,581 vacant housing units and 2,854 occupied housing units according to the 2020 Census.) Overcrowded in the summer, and “dead” in the winter.  A lot of businesses have a hard time staying afloat with the big fluctuations from summer to winter. So now you want to also fill up the “shoulder” season with even more visitors?

The effect of all of this is steep inflation of real estate prices, putting owning a home or a piece of land out of reach for a whole generation of young people, though they are the lifeblood of any community.  What we are seeing is a social distortion of increasing proportions. More and more older people, fewer younger people. With all the inherent consequences, of businesses having a hard time finding employees, of wage inflation so farmers can not find or afford to pay workers, as more money can be made clipping lawns and cleaning toilets at vacation rentals and second homes. No wonder only 4% of all food consumed on Orcas is grown here.

Did these consequences even ever cross your mind?

Mr. Hughes, your website says you want to move in a different direction. But you never really tell us what that direction is, besides a recital of polished soundbites. You talk about wanting economic “growth,” which simply means more development. You talk about managing “growth” in vacation rentals, which simply means more, but maybe at a bit slower UPWARD pace.  But sorry, we do not need more development. It is a well known fact that development does NOT pay for it self. The cost of county services required by new development is more than that development brings in more taxes, so the shortfall has to be paid by the existing taxpayers: the community. In other words, development means higher taxes. This fact was verified in San Juan County in the cost of Community Services study.

You say you want to “diversify” the economy, which simply means tourism PLUS….? Always plus and more. The words “less” or “slow down” are not on your website. Survey after survey shows that the majority of people on this island do not want more tourism; they say enough is enough. They don’t want more vacation rentals and new neighbors every two days. We have all experienced how this seriously unravels community coherence. Just imagine for a minute stepping back just 12 years, taking 2/3 of the cars off the ferries (and our roads) and envision a situation with no vacation rentals. Most of the problems we are facing now would NOT exist. Our crises of ferry space and of available affordable housing would be drastically reduced.

Hindsight is easy you say. But can we learn from it? Already in 2012 I warned people, if you vote for Rick, you will never have to go to the mainland again. The mainland will come to you! And indeed look around yourself, it has come. Big time. We are now a full blown “tourist destination.” We are on the “map!”
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Tell us Mr.Hughes, want do YOU want?

Do you want more infringement and exploitation of the Commons? More airplane noise, more polluted waters, more waterfront development? More defilement of our formerly uplifting vistas and night time skies? Do you want the annual headache (the tourist season) to extend from the summer months into the spring and fall. Do you want the small town character of Eastsound gone for good? Do you want the rural character of our island completely lost? Do you want less protection of the shoreline, wetlands and our biodiversity? Do you want wider roads, ever more cars, an expanded airport (you were all for it) and every other house a vacation rental?

Like most of us, you don’t want any of it, I am sure. But that is the direction you have guided this community into in the past. You say you are a person who listens to his constituency, but there are so many examples where you didn’t. The gas tank, the sidewalk near the Odd Fellows Hall, the paving of Dolphin Bay Road, the Deer Harbor bridge, the Prune Alley road plan, limiting vacation rental permits, updating the Comprehensive Plan without for a moment revealing to the public the data the county knows and has at it fingertips, at the push of a button, showing the drastic increase in population the Comprehensive Plan allows. You listened, but you did not hear!

Probably as a business person you are using computers and cellphones on a daily basis. Well, it happens to be that the science behind those gadgets is the same science that tells us that there are some serious problems coming our way. Maybe you are too busy to keep up with the new reports that are coming out almost daily. But here is the situation. It is like being on the Titanic, we see the iceberg in front of us, we know our trajectory and a collision seems almost inevitable unless we take drastic action now, not sometime in the future.  As a planet we are on the wrong track, as a nation we are on the wrong track. So are we just going to bob around rudderlessly and aimlessly or are we actually capable of understanding these matters, plotting a course different from the one we are on and taking action?

This is the only place where we can do it. If WE can not save our own ‘home,” nobody else is going to do it for us.

Mr. Hughes, maybe it is time to go sit under a big oak tree on the top of Turtleback Mountain, with a view of the Sound and the Olympics. Listen to the wind for a while and watch the eagles soar. And think back just how it was in these islands just a short time ago.

The native people inhabited these islands for hundreds if not thousands of years. We see the evidence in the shell middens, almost their only trace. They left us beauty, bounty and abundance. Waters full of salmon and orcas, old growth forests, skies full of birds, thriving ecosystems.
But in a mere 125 years the waters of the Salish sea have been seriously depleted of salmon. The orcas, a keystone of our marine ecosystem, are starving and the water they live in is heavily polluted. The number of waterfowl has plummeted and the old growth forests are reduced to a few specimens in “parks.” Thousands of precious acres on this island are covered in asphalt and concrete for ever. Our CO2 emissions have grown exponentially. (And the amazing thing is that I was here for the last 1/3 of that time).

What will OUR legacy be?

Most locals believe in nurturing and protecting these islands, instead of overexploiting and ruining them for short term personal gain. They believe we can steward these islands into the future, while preserving as much as possible of the beauty, biodiversity and magic that is left. By making this effort, we can preserve what we value and maybe pass on to the next generations cleaner water, healthier ecosystems, more biodiversity, more soil fertility, and more sequestered carbon. Many of us would like to do their share to get us in that direction.

Mr. Hughes, you have had 8 years at the rudder in the past and you plotted us closer towards the iceberg. We simply cannot afford 4 more years of that.  We need someone at the tiller who understands our serious situation in these crucial coming years. This is not a popularity contest. We all like you and we would all hate to see the pharmacy without a manager, were you to spend most of your time in Friday Harbor and Olympia. I think most people on Orcas would love for you to just continue to do your job here at home.

You may never have heard of the Shifting Baseline Syndrome. Here is an example of how this works. People who have lived on Orcas 1-5 years call it “Paradise,” after living here more than 10 years they call it “Paradise Damaged,” after 30 years “Paradise Mangled,” and after 40 years “Paradise Lost.” All talking about the same situation. In other words the longer you have lived in a place the more you have seen the change and the loss over time. For a “newcomer” it is still paradise compared to almost everywhere else.

And here is my challenge: find me 10 people who have lived here more than 40 years and ask them which Orcas they like better, the one they experience now or the one from 40 years ago. I think you and I know the answer. It is the people who have lived here the longest who are the most motivated to preserve the little that is left, they have seen “the island way of life” disappear in a mere generation.

I am sure you have heard of the word “carrying capacity.” You can read it on the life rafts on the ferry. Now, when a raft says: “capacity 20 people,” would you set out with 40 people aboard into choppy seas, with the water level at the gunnels? Maybe not a great idea. Well, that is exactly what we are doing. The build-out population of San Juan County is upward of 130,000!  At the current growth rate, the current population of about 19,000 will double to 38,000 in 35 years or less. All the current problems will multiply many times over. And the Comprehensive Plan does not even consider the impact of tourism more than doubling population for months of each year. I assure you that you will see the first stoplight on Orcas in your lifetime. Progress?

On your website you talk about leadership. Here are just a few things I think a leader should do:

• Listen to the Elders, they hold wisdom and insight about how to proceed.
• Let go of the anthropocentric attitude. It is not just about humans. It is about all our “Relations.”
• Keep up with the scientific evidence and act accordingly.
• Do not pander to interest groups who want to kill the goose to get at the golden eggs.
• Draw the younger generation into the decision making process.

So in all honesty I cannot endorse you for County Council; it would be against my own interest and all the living creatures that make the Salish Sea their home. You simply failed my leadership test. (But credit where credit is due, you did a good with the Exchange).

Your campaign is mainly self financed along with some large out of county and out of state donors. 

I wish you well.