Ich Bin Ein Kay Kohler

One of the common threads in the environmental-ish world is that rules apply only to the non-environmental-ish segment of society. We've seen this at work with the Friends, who have long criticized guesthouses for everyone else, but seem to like them personally. Former Friends Board member, Vivian Burnet, had an illegal guesthouse. Former Friends President, Lynn Bahrych, who started off the whole guesthouse fiasco by filing a guesthouse lawsuit in 1999, had a guesthouse. Friends attorney, Kyle Loring, has a guesthouse. Former Friends President, George Lawson, has a guesthouse ... and there are probably others.

Another common thread in the environmental-ish world is to distort the meaning of "grassroots" and "local." Nowhere is this more apparent than in the oxymoronic title of the organization "ICLEI" ... which stands for the "International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives" with their motto of "Local Action Moves the World."  Think about that for a moment ... how can there be an "international" council about "local" initiatives? In the case of ICLEI, the global organization provides a blueprint for local communities to follow ... so that each community fits into ICLEI's overall design in jigsaw-puzzle like fashion. ICLEI isn't a local movement any more than McDonalds is a local diner. However, when we see the golden arches in Lubbock, Texas, or Paris, France, we understand we're seeing corporate McDonalds, not our hometown diner. But, we have not yet trained our eye to recognize that when we see the same environmental-ish battles cropping up in Plumas County, Marin County, Bainbridge Island, or San Juan County, we are seeing the corporate environmental-ish agenda at work, not a local one.

One of our local San Juan County citizens, Kay Kohler, has run into a spot of trouble on her family homestead that she inherited in Snohomish County ... and her situation has lessons for us in San Juan County because, incredibly, it is not an isolated case. In fact, Kay's situation is remarkably similar to the way Rachel Dietzman and our Prosecuting Attorney treated Lopezian Nicholas Padvorac during the Fisherman Bay Road Improvement Project.  We will explain that situation in a later post, but the message we want to convey is that you should pay close attention to the way the County interacts with its citizens on Public Works projects ... because this could happen to you. It's part of a developing pattern involving critical areas (in this case, wetlands, but it could just as easily be shorelines or something else), Public Works, stormwater (think Eastsound mosquito hatchery), contractual fine-print, and the legal power of bureaucratic whim.

The five acres that Kay Kohler owns in Snohomish County was bought by Kay's grandfather in 1936. Kay has old photos of the place dating back to that time, showing what it looked like then. When Snohomish County started developing rapidly, the Kohler clan did not sell the farm, which is located just north of Lynwood.  They held onto it, and houses sprang up on all sides. In 2007, the County wanted to purchase a portion of Kay's property for a road improvement (stormwater) project, and in 2009, after three separate appraisals, Kay agreed to sell one acre of her property to the County for $404,000. At the time, it seemed like a pretty straightforward deal, and neither Kay nor her (now former) attorney noticed that the fine print of the contract said that the County could change the valuation of her property after the fact through "condemnation" or "some other" method. 

In November 2011 ... two years after the sale ... the County hired an "expert" to re-value Kay's land.  The new expert valued the 2009 land transaction at just $48,750 because, the expert claimed, Kay's land was covered by wetlands and was hardly worth anything because it was un-developable. Snohomish County then condemned Kay's land for $48,750 and demanded that Kay hand back $355,250. Then, the County began court proceedings to get its money back.

Notwithstanding that Kay has photos stretching back over 70 years showing her land as not being wetlands ... notwithstanding that the County, as development proceeded apace in the 80's and 90's, configured their stormwater system to dump millions of gallons of stormwater on Kay's property without  her consent ... notwithstanding that Snohomish County has an NPDES permit that prohibits stormwater discharges that bypass their system ... all that notwithstanding, Kay's legal case was bungled and she lost both her court case and her appeal.  Snohomish County is now threatening to freeze Kay's bank accounts in order to get back its $355,250.

Ironically, after declaring Kay's stormwater-flooded property to be "waters of the United States" (i.e., a wetland), Snohomish County then failed to get the required permits from the Corps of Engineers (Section 404 Permit) and the Department of Ecology/EPA (Section 401 Permit) that are necessary for construction projects occurring in wetlands. Is it a wetland only when the County wants to get it for a cheap price, but not a wetland when the County wants to avoid getting the federal and state permits needed to build on it?

And so it goes ... rules only work one way in Snohomish County ... just like they do in San Juan County ... (ethics too, and an upcoming post will examine the controversy currently being manufactured by David Dehlendorf and Kyle Loring about our Planning Commission).

Note: ICLEI has recently changed its name to Local Governments for Sustainability even though it continues to use its original acronym of "ICLEI."

Pure Imagination: Snowflakes Or Jigsaw Puzzles

In this series, we've talked about the overall environmental-ish illusion ... the illusion of perpetually bad environmental news, the illusion of the purity of tribal motivations, and the illusion of the Friends as a benevolent public-interest organization. Now, we want to talk about the illusion of freedom and individuality.

Are you a snowflake or a jigsaw puzzle piece? It's a strange question, but there is a point. Both snowflakes and jigsaw puzzle pieces are unique. But the individuality of a snowflake is derived from its unplanned development whereas the individuality of a jigsaw puzzle piece is imposed upon it by a larger order.

In actuality, this is a very fundamental question about your views of liberty. Should we allow ourselves to be transformed by our leaders ... shaped into more ordered, rational beings for the benefit of society ... and let our institutional bureaucracies create an authoritarian system that we fit into? Believing that people should "fit" into a free society designed by higher-ups leads to a terrible logic -- that we The People do not realize what true freedom is, and we have to be coerced into doing what is good for us.

Read the article below from the Plumas County News in California. It's a familiar story. Everywhere, municipal planners are coercing us into being jigsaw puzzle pieces for some bigger plan. I find one quotation particularly striking,

Senior Planner Becky Herrin, who represented the planning department at the meeting, thanked everyone for attending, but added that she wished they had been “here for the last seven years.”

In other words, the default position of the Plumas County Planning Department is that, unless the public is watching like a hawk, planners will work to impose a restrictive outside order on the community ... in the name of the community.
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  Fearing that Plumas County’s new general plan could lead to a loss of private property rights, a group of concerned citizens wants to trash the document and begin again.

  With the Plumas County supervisors just weeks away from approving the updated general plan, the Indian Valley Citizens for Private Property Rights appeared before the Planning Commission on Jan. 17 and laid out their arguments.

  About 60 people packed the small conference room at the planning department with most standing, and some spilling into the hallway.

  Their spokeswoman, Carol Viscarra, gave a PowerPoint presentation outlining the group’s concerns and highlighting why the new general plan is Agenda 21 in disguise.

  Agenda 21 is a 300-page document adopted in 1992 at United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The document is designed to be a blueprint of how jurisdictions worldwide should move toward sustainable economic growth that simultaneously protects and renews environmental resources.

  Explaining that she was not a political activist, but rather an emergency room nurse and third-generation rancher, Viscarra was nervous. But “I believe it’s my civic duty” to come forward, she said.

  After several months of page-by-page review, she said it’s her conclusion that the general plan “seems to mirror almost verbatim Agenda 21.”

  There has been a growing theory that Agenda 21 is a conspiracy to take away individual property rights and move people off the land to urban centers.

  During her presentation, Viscarra presented a map that showed vast expanses of California as off-limits to the public, wide swaths that were treated as buffer zones to be heavily regulated, with only zones around San Francisco, Los Angeles and Fresno that remained unrestricted. “Eighty-six percent of the land will be set aside as wildlife corridors,” Viscarra said.

  Because 71 percent of Plumas County’s land mass is already in the public domain, Viscarra said Plumas County is an ideal locale for Agenda 21 to take root. “Be informed. Be courageous. Read about Agenda 21 and study it for yourselves,” Viscarra told those gathered. “The stealth of this organization is upon us in Plumas County.”

  She said that the local planning commission members and supervisors “emphatically deny” any relationship with Agenda 21, and she believes them. She attributes the inclusion of Agenda 21 language in the general plan to the consultants that help jurisdictions write planning documents and organizations that provide grants.

  She said the words “Agenda 21” never appear in such documents, but words such as “sustainability,” “open space,” “mixed-use housing” and “sustainable development,” which she describes as the “most egregious,” are all indicators of its influence.

  “They will never, ever call it Agenda 21,” she said.

  Viscarra said that the process began in Plumas County back in 2002 as local leaders embarked upon Vision 2020, with the aid of outside grants. There were meetings and scoping sessions and language terms such as sustained growth and development became more common.

  She said that in the county’s general plan update, the words “open space” are used 121 times, “sustainable” 77 times and “the county shall” is used 430 times. She said that the general plan also has “a lot of references to climate change” another popular theme in Agenda 21.

  Viscarra said that timber regulations, which restrict forestry practices in the county, are a good example of how Agenda 21 is already being implemented without people being aware.

  Addressing the ranchers in the room, she said, “If you’re not worried, it’s because you’re not paying attention.”

  She added, “I looked at the general plan through the prism of a rancher, but this should be a concern to all businesses.”

  Applause greeted the conclusion of her presentation.

  B.J. Pearson, a former county supervisor and developer in the eastern portion of the county, said, “This is one of the best presentations I have ever seen,” and suggested that she should make the presentation in each district.

  Sheriff Greg Hagwood agreed and described the presentation as “one of the most succinct and accurate” that he had seen.

  “I thought I would spend the bulk of my time protecting people against burglars,” Hagwood said. Instead, he said he found himself protecting people “from their own government. I encourage the Board of Supervisors to put strong language in the general plan regarding private property rights.”

  Many in the audience echoed Viscarra’s concerns about private property rights and the new general plan.

  “My understanding is that this plan doesn’t need to be approved until 2015,” Sheila Groethe said. “I ask you to trash this and write a new general plan appropriate to Plumas County.”

  As some of the comments began to degenerate and one man said implementing Agenda 21 to was tantamount to treason, County Counsel Craig Settlemire, who had attended the meeting, stepped in.

  “Everyone here is working to uphold our oaths and the Constitution,” he said.

  Senior Planner Becky Herrin, who represented the planning department at the meeting, thanked everyone for attending, but added that she wished they had been “here for the last seven years.”

  The planning department had held multiple meetings throughout the process including meetings in each community. She said that when the meeting was held in Indian Valley no members of the public attended.

  Her department is now in the process of writing responses to all of the comments that have been submitted for the environmental document associated with the general plan. She said many accuse the general plan of going too far, while others believe that it isn’t restrictive enough. When the document is complete, a hearing will be scheduled before the Board of Supervisors.

  How this latest protest impacts the process is unclear. The deadline for filing comments has passed, but during the Jan. 17 meeting, Planning Commission Chairwoman Betsy Schramel invited those present to put their concerns in writing.

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