Next Monday, two county supervisors will call into question the 12 principles that have been guiding the county’s general plan update since March 2004. In an email to Planning Director Kevin Hamblin sent yesterday evening, 2nd District Supervisor Estelle Fennell offered a draft of 11 rewritten guiding principles. She explained that she’s “been hearing from several people” about the existing principles and that both she and 5th 1st District Supervisor Rex Bohn would like to see her alternative versions discussed.
How do Fennell’s guiding principles differ from the existing ones? They put a stronger emphasis on property rights and rural development and deemphasize environmental protections.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise given Fennell’s almost three-year tenure as executive director of private property rights group Humboldt Coalition for Property Rights (HumCPR) and her recent votes to appoint that group’s leaders, Lee Ulansey and Bob Morris, to the county planning commission.
Let’s do a little compare and contrast.
• Existing principle: “Protect agriculture and timberland over the long term, using measures such as increased restrictions on resource land subdivisions and patent parcel development.”
• Fennell version: “Encourage, incentivize and support agriculture, timber and compatible uses on resource lands.”
Gone are protections for agriculture and timberlands, replaced by incentives to produce on those lands.
• Existing principle: “Provide sufficient developable land, encourage development of affordable housing for all income levels, and prevent housing scarcity under a range of population growth scenarios.
• Fennell version: “Promote and facilitate the creation of new housing opportunities to mitigate the decline in availability of affordable housing for all income levels.”
These two may seem similar, but the differences are meaningful. The existing principle is geared toward maintaining an adequate housing inventory. Fennell’s version takes for granted a decline in affordable housing, and calls on the county to actively “promote and facilitate” new opportunities. Since the general plan update is a planning document intended to last for 20 years or more it makes little sense to base policy on a variable market assessment, especially one that may already be incorrect. According to the latest data from the Humboldt Economic Index, home sales have increased by more than 15 percent in the past year while prices have dropped dramatically.
• Existing principle: “Ensure efficient use of water and sewer services and focus development in those areas and discourage low-density residential conversion of resource lands and open space.”
• Fennell version: “Cooperate with service providers in delivering efficient water and sewer services and infrastructure and support scientifically proven alternative waste management systems in areas not served by public sewer.”
This change comes straight out of HumCPR newsletters. Fennell’s suggestion would eliminate the goal of focusing development around existing services and instead open up the county’s rural lands to development, in part by allowing non-standard waste management systems.
• Existing principle: “Protect natural resources, especially open space, water resources, water quality, scenic beauty, and salmonid habitat.”
• Fennell version: “Honor landowners’ right to live in urban, suburban, rural or remote areas of the county while using a balanced approach to protect natural resources, especially open space, water resources and water quality in cooperation with state and federal agencies.”
Here Fennell explicitly places landowner rights ahead of environmental protections, which she would leave to “a balanced approach.” She doesn’t specify whose definition of balance would be applied. Opinions in this county vary wildly about how best to balance the two opposing values.
• Existing principle: “Preserve and enhance the character of Humboldt County and the quality of life it offers. “
• Fennell version: “Honor and enhance the diverse character of Humboldt County and the quality of life it offers.”
Replacing “preserve” with “honor” implies reverence. To what? You decide.
• Existing principle: “Support the County’s economic development strategy and work to retain and create living-wage job opportunities.”
• Fennell version: “Support
the County’s economic developmentstrategyand work to retain and create living-wage job opportunities.”
Here Fennell shows a libertarian’s distrust of government, denying the county’s authority to develop a strategy for economic development. Such development is a goal unto itself, says Fennell.
• Existing principle: “Adhere to a practical strategy that can be implemented.”
• Fennell version: “Adhere to practical strategies that can be implemented utilizing constructive cooperation and common sense.”
Sure. Why not?
• Existing principle: “Provide a clear statement of land use values and policies to provide clarity in the County’s permit processing system and simplify review of projects that are consistent with the General Plan.”
• Fennell version: “Provide a clear statement of land use values and policies
to provide clarityin the County’s permit processing system and simplify review of projectsthat are consistent with the General Plan.”
Fennell would eliminate the requirement that projects be consistent with the general plan, which raises the question: Why have a general plan at all?
• Existing principle: “Include actionable plans for infrastructure financing and construction.”
• Fennell’s version: None. This one’s simply deleted.
Three principles Fennell leaves unchanged:
• “Ensure that public policy is reflective of the needs of the citizenry as expressed by the citizens themselves.”
• “Maximize the opportunities to educate the public about the planning process, in order to have meaningful participation in the development and maintenance of the Plan.”
• “Support a broad public participation program at all levels of the decision making process; including study, workshops, hearings, and plan revisions.”
If you’d care to discuss these dramatic revisions to the principles guiding our county constitution, you’d better hope you can take Monday off work. The hearing starts at 1:30 p.m. in the supervisors’ chambers at the county courthouse.
This article appears in Intern Unrest.
Thanks Ryan for the transparent reporting, something Fennell ran on for Supervisor. It would be interest what she talks about on Monday Morning Magazine (KMUD) with Host Dennis Huber (Southern Humboldt Community Park Board President).
I forgot to add Ryan, Fennell is also on the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo). Humboldt LAFCo facilitates changes in local governmental structure and boundaries that fosters orderly growth and development, promotes the efficient delivery of services, and encourages the preservation of open space and agricultural lands.
http://www.humboldtlafco.org/common-questi…
She disturbs me greatly.
So, they haven’y been able to get this done for 10 years…20 years? Isn’t it time to look at a new approach? Why be so negative Ryan? Is there an owl without a tree? I think people should have more rights to do with what they want with their property.
humboldt county is officially going to hell in a handbasket. this is probably the worse news i have read since i read about the plans to split lots to permit development in fema zone A along the eel river (idiots). it is like we are moving backwards in time to the 1950’s. one would think that we learned something in the last 60 years.
i coined that fennel was the amy goodman of humboldt county in 2003. clearly, this is no longer the case.
we can kiss the salmon goodbye. these changes seem to be so ignorantly based given what we know about hydrology (eg. roads and “flashy” hydrographs) and climate change (eg distance to existing services).
of course, there are really silly and useless statements that have absolutely no meaning at all (eg “common sense”).
She disturbs me greatly too http://youtu.be/CQD3q4kvB4E
Perhaps they should consider “McKinleyville County,” since they’re into re-naming things lately.
We have nothing to fear—the fox{es} now guard the hen house>>>>Raging Granny
Here’s a good critique from That Other Anonymous on SoHum Parlance, who also observes that recognizing longstanding efficient and effective rural sanitation practices has nothing to do with development, it’s just common sense and good planning. And I quote:
The side-by-side comparisons of the existing wording, and Fennell’s proposed revisions, is interesting and at least a few of the differences are potentially significant. But much of Ryan’s “analysis” of what those revisions signify is pretty hyperbolic, for example his scary-sounding “Gone are protections for agriculture and timberlands…” And some are just plain laughable, such as “Replacing ‘preserve’ with ‘honor’ implies reverence. To what?” Oh my God, just what exactly is she proposing that we honor with reverence!!!???
And then there’s his freakout about her proposed rewording of ““Support the County’s economic development strategy and work to retain and create living-wage job opportunities” to instead read “Support economic development and work to retain and create living-wage job opportunities.” Here Ryan warns darkly that “Fennell shows a libertarian’s distrust of government, denying the county’s authority to develop a strategy for economic development. Such development is a goal unto itself, says Fennell.”
Uh, I guess you could read it that way, if you supply a whole lot of bias to grease the rhetorical wheels — but a simpler and more straightforward interpretation is that “Support economic development…” is simply a broader goal that speaks to what county residents actually care about — that we support economic development that retains and creates living wage jobs, as opposed to what reads as a narrower goal, that we only support retaining and creating living wage jobs IF they fit neatly within a certain pre-determined economic development strategy. I don’t see how Fennell’s wording would preclude
And of course his claim that “Such development is a goal unto itself, says Fennell” makes no sense unless you accept that under the original wording, the County’s development strategy is “a goal unto itself,” an even more absurd notion. Fortunately no such tortured interpretation of either version of the wording is necessary, since in both cases the second part of the sentence “to retain and create living-wage job opportunities” easily provides the needed context — that in both cases the point of the economic development is so that we can retain and create good-paying jobs.
And his ‘OH NOES WE’RE ALL DOOMED CUZ SHE’S ONE A THEM CRAZY LIBRUTARIUMS!” freak-out doesn’t quite fit with Fennell’s addition of the phrase “in cooperation with state and federal agencies” to the statement about protecting open space, water resources and water quality. He somehow completely misses that pro-government-agency-involvement addition, which certainly doesn’t sound like the kind of reflexive “libertarian’s distrust of government,” that he believes he detects elsewhere. No, he glides right by that, instead choosing to fret over the ominous addition of the phrase “balanced approach” (Because surely we wouldn’t want to strive for a “balanced approach,” since as everyone knows, an “unbalanced” approach is generally the best way to approach issues where differences of opinion are significant.)
Basically Ryan seems to be laboring pretty hard to try to put as negative a spin as possible on her proposed changes, and has to employ quite a bit of pretzel logic and creative-reading-between-the-lines to do so, and still doesn’t come up with much. Yes, Fennell is clearly not a fan of the proposition that allowing people to live in rural areas should be strongly discouraged by the County. Which is news to precisely nobody, as this is a position that most of her rural constituents share, which is one of the main reasons that she won her election in the first place.
I suppose that we can “honor” undeveloped rural areas by building on them, rather than preserving them.
Replacing “protect” and “preserve” with “honor.” What does that mean in terms of policy?
Fennell is choosing weaker words so that development will be willy-nilly, as it has been in the good old days.
Here is some of what Fennell said on Monday Morning Magazine this morning on KMUD:
http://archive.kmud.org/mp3/kmud_130603_08…
Property rights end where others rights begin….except when development-interests win a majority of elected and appointed public offices!
Now, they must hurry to reverse any perception that public infrastructure and water resources belong to The People, (which inconveniently includes the poor); resources that were never theirs to dominate with high-profit subdivisions and every imaginable use of “privately-owned water”.
They even have local environmentalists doing their dirty work to make it easier to own water storage tanks….which merely guarantees more water use!
This latest batch of “good republican” supervisors seek to make government more efficient by effectively reducing 12 principles into one…the one that eliminates regulations that might restrict the transfer of public wealth to the wealthy.
If Southern California is any indication, no one will remember the names of developer’s political lap-dogs LONG after the damage is done.
The Times reports that the Supes voted 4to1 to Amendments, relatively unpublished with respnse from us–the citizens..Fennell is quoted– I feel like we have had enough diverse input “”” ‘ Do we care????
Honor the “Loyal Opposition”, May they continue to stand up for what they believe forever!!!!!