Letters May 20, 2009

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

By Planet User

Can’t have it all ways
This appears to be “deja vu all over again.”  There is no way to maintain wildlife and community character while allowing for growth. These things are mutually exclusive.  Coupled with the fact that growth never pays its way, this is a very depressing conclusion to have come to (again!).  I’ve watched these plans since the first attempt at a Comp Plan decades ago. 

hese plans end up being driven by the “players.”  Who are the players?  The entities that are at every meeting and are paid (either directly or indirectly) to be there. Those are almost entirely development interests. They are NOT the general, working public who largely make up this community and cannot be at all the meetings.  The latter are the folks that frustrate planners and commissioners time and again because they aren’t up to speed and end up wasting time at meetings going over already covered ground and making unspecific comments about wildlife values and small town character. 

But this is what the majority of residents want.  The specifics have to relate back to these general principles.  The public has always wanted these concepts to guide the plan.   The future is going to be a very different place from the past.  The economy won’t be so consumer oriented.  Old modes of doing business (including planning) will prove to be devastating both financially and ecologically.  We need to find sustainable ways to maintain this community as a viable place and I would argue that that means contraction as opposed to growth.  I say no more commercial space, or reconfigure what is already allowed.  The scale of everything will be smaller and more localized in the future.  It will have to be.
– Phil Round, Wilson

What I gather
You have printed a large number of letters to the editor and news stories recently regarding proposed Comprehensive Plan revisions.  In reading those, I have drawn the following conclusions:

1) Most of the letter writers, and apparently most Teton County residents, oppose the directional thrust of the changes that have been proposed by our government growth planners – after those planners sought and received input from mercenary consultants who do not live here and couldn’t care less about our immediate housing problems, near-term growth problems, and potential future problems.

 Such consultants are experts mainly in receiving money to make recommendations that almost no one but government growth planners will pay any attention to.

2) There is a great and growing concern that our government growth planners have almost completely failed to hear what most property owners were saying in those surveys that were taken specifically to get their feedback.  On the other hand, our decision makers could have gotten the gist of those opinions but have simply decided to ignore any public recommendations that they do not agree with.

3) As proposed, the revised Comprehensive Plan would not stop or even slow the growth of Teton County, but would actually encourage it.  Since the problems that we are trying to solve today were caused by growth, allowing further growth would simply exacerbate today’s problems and make things even worse tomorrow than they are today.

4) Our government growth planners have demonstrated very little interest in protecting two of Teton County’s greatest assets:  our fascinating and revered wildlife, and our critical wildlife habitat.

5) Our government growth planners have completely failed to grasp a very simple concept:  growth – without imposed and enforced limitations – is self-perpetuating (“If you build it, they will come”).

Facilitating the construction of, say, 500 more homes in Wilson will require the provision of that much more goods and services – underfunded and overcrowded schools, fast food markets, vehicle repair centers, gasoline stations, etc. – to meet the needs of those 1,500 or so new residents.  That would create more jobs, certainly – which would attract more people.  In turn, there would be a need for more housing to accommodate those additional service providers.  More housing would also create more construction jobs.  And more construction jobs would call for more housing, more goods, and more services.  The “more, more, more” cycle is endless.  And vicious.

6) Unless a reasonable and enforced cap on growth is imposed in Teton County, no Comprehensive Plan revisions will ever adequately meet our perceived needs and respond to the fears about lost quality of life of the majority of property owners in this county.

7) Any Comprehensive Plan revisions which are designed to minimize vehicular traffic congestion, impose a minimum construction requirement for low-income housing, or respond to any other impacts of projected growth will fail, auspiciously, because it is not the feces of this growth process but growth itself that is the prime problem.

8) We have met the enemy, and he is us.  Ask Walt Kelly.
– Fred Whissel, Rafter J

Wrong time
[Planet JH received a copy of the following letter addressed to Teton County Commissioners and planning staff. – eds.]
My intention had been to comment on the various sections of the draft but the more I think about the whole process the more I feel that the timing for this planning effort is just plain wrong:

As the economic base of this community is tourism and real estate, and there is huge economic uncertainty at all levels,  local, state, national and international, no one knows what impact this uncertain climate will have on this community, and for what period of time.

Also, the town and county are making the push to “Go Green” and to become leaders in this movement, to set examples for other communities on how to lower carbon footprints.  Isn’t it backward to adopt the Comprehensive Plan before having the Green initiatives in place?

Although I support efforts to “protect wildlife and open spaces, manage growth responsibly, and provide workforce housing,” I feel that the numbers proposed for the “nodes” are excessive.  I know that currently there is frequent “gridlock” on the roads (knowing how long it sometimes takes me to get out of my subdivision, Skyline Ranch, onto Highway 22). The idea of adding those hundreds more cars sounds like a recipe for disaster, and certainly doesn’t fit with reducing the carbon footprint.

I am aware that this draft of the Comprehensive Plan fails to evaluate the impacts this amount of development will have on many parts of the community. As a former Teton County School Board member, it makes me shudder to think of the numbers of new schools that would have to be built, not to mention all of the other requirements for human services, law enforcement, and so on,  that would be needed should the numbers suggested materialize.  This at a time when cutbacks are being required in these areas due to loss of revenue in the state.

What happened to “Community Character” that has been so important to the people of this valley for so long?  I could go on, but I know that you’re hearing from plenty of people who are alarmed at the potential for the destruction of what most hold dear about this place.  Be careful.  There is a real potential for “Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.”
–  Jean H. Jorgensen, Skyline Ranch

One forward, one back
[Planet JH received a copy of the following letter addressed to Teton County Commissioners, Jackson Town Council, the Mayor and planning staff. – eds.]     
It seems a political nightmare has been created in the process of taking one step forward, and several steps back in the current planning process.  The one step forward is the current Draft Comprehensive Plan; the first of 10 steps back is the loss or removal of the basic tenets of a perfectly good plan from 1994. 

That plan clearly incorporated the wishes of the community in the details of the plan.  Other steps back include an amazingly naive, simple projection of growth in an environment that geographically limits its growth by the nature of its surroundings and by its population of wild animals and concerned citizens. 

Also, there is a lack of clear and detailed provision for the animals whose homes we have chosen to disrupt, by use of nature-mapping overlays.  The only overlay I perceive is that of planners with vested interests in growth and little apparent perception of why they have been retained by the citizenry.

As far as the general populace is concerned, the draft plan does not represent its wishes, aspirations, or even intent.  As far as any other constituencies are concerned, the suspicions and rumors are in full sway, and as politicians, you must make some hard decisions.

Letters from concerned citizens have politely made the fundamental deficiencies of the draft plan abundantly clear.  There is also no lack of detailed criticism on all aspects of the draft plan from numerous sources, if you will only entertain their input.
– Robert Hughes, Wilson
 
Moral priority
 I so tire over the cacophony of controversy about the alleged torturing of prisoners in our modern time of war. I by no means condone such practice, but its use has been applied in the attempt to obtain valuable insight to an enemy since man first unsheathed his sword against man.

We do search our souls and question the morality of such procedures, but should we not delve a bit deeper into those souls and question the morality of war itself, in which torture is unfortunately one of the more humane atrocious by-products.
 It is really a strange thing that there should not be room enough in the world for all to live without cutting one another’s throats.
– Patrik Troiani, Jackson
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Letters May 20, 2009 | Planet JH News Article: Letters To Editor

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