— from Susan Malins —
The Port of Orcas presented DOWL‘s alternative options for their Master Plan choices & requested comment. The vast majority of citizen comments favored “No Build/No Growth” with minor improvements, for a variety of good reasons stated (partially available at portoforcas.com) Hundreds of islanders signed a petition favoring the same.
Last week many of us attended the “big reveal” Port/DOWL events, viewed The Plan, listened to presentations, asked questions.
TO DATE our “No Build/No Growth” input has been ignored. The currently proposed plan/expansion is at odds also with the County Vision Statement and the EPRC Vision Statement. This “Follow the consultants” approach (with a $600,000. price tag!) has produced a draft plan wildly out of sync with islanders’ self-determination.
Some concerns:
- The port’s demonstrated limited ability to deal properly with wetland issues;
- Allowing B2 commercial planes to dictate Port needs;
- Mt. Baker Road relocation;
- Increased noise, traffic & congestion;
- Lack of mitigation/noise abatement plans;
- Negative impact on the vital Brandts’ Landing marina;
- Developing the former dog park corner into a mini-industrial park with new hangars, parking, a helipad, taxiways, and relocated terminal +++;
- A commercial park at the end of the already-beleaguered Seaview neighborhood;
- Requiring privately-held property to the west and east, seriously affecting neighborhood property rights and values;
- Lack of economic & other impact studies; ETC.
Any & all further public comments are due by October 4 . PLEASE SPEAK UP NOW to your elected commissioners & orcasmasterplan@dowl.com.
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It’s mind boggling for the Public to go through this process, only to wonder how it gets decided that our comments won’t even be considered in the outcome, except for small tweaks to the ultimate buildout plan. I know that the planners are working hard on these minor tweaks to try to give us something; but what they don’t understand is, we don’t want a “showcase terminal” or a bunch of hangars not mandated by FAA safety standards. We want as small a footprint as possible while still meeting minimum safety standards for the FAA – until we can have real Public dialogue early on in a master plan process.
We want the Port to pursue a Modification waver in order to slow things was down; we believe there are constraints that will prevent most of this overkill anyway.
To have no real influence on the outcome, although the majority of us have said we don’t want this overkill, is an insult to our community and shows disrespect and lack of understanding of how important this place is to us, and how united we feel in our desire to keep a small footprint for our airport. The safety requirements, we understand – to a point. We recognize the efforts made. It’s the attitude of “while we’re in there, let’s build everything we can” that rubs the Public wrong and erodes Public Trust.
We’re also left to try to decipher, on our own, the missing parts to the conversation – what we haven’t been and aren’t being told.
In the growth projections, there’s no contingency for market declines or natural or manmade disasters in a soil liquefaction zone, if mass emergency response should be necessary. if the issue is “safety,” these need consideration.
Thanks to the citizens who knew enough to try to soften the “layout enlargement” footprint – If we had come in to this process united – as wanting the highest good for all – I don’t think we’d be at this juncture right now.
Susan- can you identify legal hooks in your above comments and perhaps some not mentioned here?
There may be ways to halt the expansion; negotiate, or buy time til we elect new commissioners who will represent the community’s
priorities.
Possible hooks:
-EPRC and County Vision-planning statements
-Environmental impact (mitigation) / demand time for additional assessment
-Emminent Domain challenges
– Others hooks?…think about conflicts with local zoning, planning or other code / laws, or possible code violations requiring court intervention / stays for obvious reasons.
All the directly effected parties can raise funds; the community can organize a fundraising campaign; public interest attorneys vying for our votes and trust for loftier heights might be convinced to prove their mettle and credentials by contributing their services for free or at deeply discounted rates.
Do what big money does in every city throughout the country—-throw wrenches into unacceptable plans; except here it will be for the more principled reasons of electing those who will honor the island’s rural character (and not just to transfer wealth from one big developer to a competitor).
So why make comments that might be ignored? Because then your comments are a matter of public record. Could be important
I would add that some hooks might be: (not sure if legal but maybe:)
~ lack of transparency and misinforming the public
~ never doing the mitigation on the project started in summer of 2017 in the wetland
~ encouraging people to call or stop in, rather than write their questions or concerns – so no written record would be evident
~ not including a fair and balanced representation of stakeholders outside of Industry on the Advisory Committee
we should have been recording all of these port meetings once we found out. we tried to get recording equipment but no one had any. another classic example of how lower income less monied people simply do not have the resources to have the same equipment available – and a plea to anyone with the equipment to lend or use to record these meetings, to do so. Then spoken things become as ironclad as written things.
Some reading this might think i am accusing the commissioners of something duplicitous; i’m not. they seem sincere in their belief that the path presented is the right one – and are instructed to ignore us. In fact, i think the commissioners, whose job it is to take airport safety seriously, are getting bamboozled by whoever is driving this thing that it all urgently needs to go in THIS master plan NOW. That should be a concern to us all.