Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Supervisors, DO NOT remove the one honest addition to the new Guiding Principles. I know they will, but I hope to goodness they don’t.
Here’s Principle #7, which also guts any principle to protect natural resources for their own sake, but forget that for the moment. Notice the addition of “honoring landowners”. How perfect is that? Especially in a set of principles bought and paid for by HumCPR. (The PR stands for “Property Rights”). Really and truly and sincerely, please do not remove the honoring, please. But they will.
I mean they didn’t choose ‘person’s’ or ‘resident’s’ for example, but ‘landowner’s’. Perfect AND honest. And I am pro-honesty in government.
Guiding Principle #7:
Existing principle:
“Protect natural resources, especially open space, water resources, water quality, scenic beauty, and salmonid habitat.”
New 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, water quality and fisheries habitat in cooperation with state and federal agencies.
Please?
(d)emocratic Humboldt 
DJon: For all that is sacred, you are kidding here ? The new version sucks. I thought you thought that too?
I am kidding, sort of. What I’m trying to say if they do keep them the way they are (which they will) do not remove that one phrase “honoring landowners” because that is such an obnoxious thought. They will replace that term “landowners” with residents or something, but that will be about it. They are not about to make any substantial changes back to where the Guiding Principles should be, because, well because, that is why they were elected.
But when they make these changes, they will be proving that all the complaining they did about the process was a bunch of hot air. They didn’t care about process, they just wanted to be in charge of the process.
Oooohhh. Got ya. Then I agree with you that they need to leave Estelle’s rewrite in verbatim!
🙂
Right? Using this term in a generic context in a public document issued by a governing body should be an embarrassment in and of itself. What “Right” would this be? How did that “Right” get established. Are we talking about a John Stuart Mills “Right” or we talking about a “Right” given by the rule of law. If the latter then why can’t homeless people through a tent out in the forest and call it home? Seriously lacking in thought and foresight whomever redrafted it in my opinion. Has all the characteristic hallmarks of being stupid, obviously special interest, and personal agenda driven. It is shameful the other Board members do not have the courage to call them out on this garbage. It is a negative hit on the entire Board.
So well said. YES!
(cough, cough)… that would be “throw”. Mea culpa
Note: for some odd reason it is so much easier for me to write when I know my scriblings are going directly online. Below is a sneak peak of what I am thinking about saying at the meeting in 3 DAYS! AHHHHH! It’s a work in progress and I will post it as I work on it.
Journalism is finding out what other people do not want you to know and telling you, everything else is public relations.
This process has been all about public relations. To get this current version of the GPU through, no local public institution, whether it be our Board of Supervisors, planning department, or even our political system itself is immune from the manipulation of vested interests.
Vested interests. They are not necessarily nefarious, they are simply vested. I don’t know if that is actually the source of the phrase, but it is very descriptive. It is those interests that we would prefer to keep underneath our vest.
And I think those are the interests that are behind this incomprehensible re-write of the Guiding Principles.
I think most of the people in this room are familiar with the vested interests of most of the 4 Supervisors that voted for this rewrite. We don’t need Kevin Bacon’s six degrees of separation, we only need 1 or 2 to link every one of the four to this or that organization or employer that views land not as land, but as an financial investment.
Like our national politics, it is this connection to money, whether it be through development of the land or production of our counties federally illegal export…Break!
Version ii… Cutting out the partisanship because it will be very difficult for me to say and time is limited. This may be a framework for future versions.
“Journalism is finding out what other people do not want you to know and telling you, everything else is public relations.”
Before the 2012 elections, the public relations focused on the canard of unequal public education and participation. These concerns where written into the plan as Guiding Principles 1, 11, and 12 largely thanks to the efforts of a tiny minority. Since the elections the new strategy for public relations has been complete shut down. Try to find any information or discussion of the Guiding Principles outside of this room. Good luck. The only one I could find was a week complaint by Bonnie Blackberry in GPU -524.
The result of this re-write? I think only a few people really realize the specific meaning. In general it is a wholesale forfeit of public interest in planning and protection of resources to private interests in the false hope that the increased efficiency of leaving more planning in private hands will benefit our economy.
I would strongly suggest that the Board revert to the 12 guidelines as originally written, if for no other reason but to follow the guidelines established in the only 3 principles which they did not change. But I don’t see that happening.
Given that, I wonder if you could answer some time today what I have asked each of the four Supervisors who are supporting this rewrite. Once passed the straw-vote stage, how long do you believe the new set of guiding principles should remain? Should a new Board with different opinions get a chance to weigh in and change them as you have done, or should they remain for a period of 20 years or whenever the Plan is scheduled for it’s next update.
Another question. Supervisor Bohn’s catch phrase in this process has been “Maximum Flexibility”. How is any plan worth it’s weight in salt supposed to also provide for “Maximum Flexibility”. Isn’t maximum flexibility another way of saying “let’s decimate the plan and allow private interests the benefit of a doubt”.