- Can we just buy the damn golf course and get it over with already? I personally don’t have a strong opinion whether it’s as greenspace or as a leased public/private golf course. Either is good. At the end of the day, District 5 got the short end of the greenspace allocation and this is a chance to make it right (Gerry Sullivan continues to be spot on). The greenspace money has already been bonded, and we already pay the taxes to support it. The folks who are using the economy/recession as an excuse to do nothing have conveniently left that unsaid. That’s unless they are advocating rolling back – which nobody is doing.

And, of course, nobody could have predicted that Patrick Bell would use this as an opportunity to squeeze a developer friendly option into the discussion. Shocked!

- Bethel. Sigh… Sadly, I think the Save Bethel folks are going to lose this at some point. It’s really too bad. I’m with them on this one. Again, and especially for us folks who live in the north, locking in publicly available land should be a priority. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. This issue isn’t going anywhere fast, but when the in-district commissioner is against you – and you’ve lost some preliminary legal maneuvering – the movement is officially on life support. On the flip side, Bell is pissing off folks who will have a direct say in his re-election, and I know they won’t forget. A strong R challenger, in what will be a district voter only election, can leverage this for maximum damage.

- Rezones to Ag. While I agree with the commission vote to simplify re-zones from Residential back to Agriculture, it’s probably for different reasons than the current commission contemplated. They are just so damn tactical. I mean, I get the fact that some developers are getting soaked on land they can’t afford to develop. So fine, let’s remove the onerous tax environment. Whatever.  Sez Bell:

Many of those who want the rezoning have property in Bell’s district.

After the meeting, he said the expedited process would aid some of those in difficult financial situations.

“With the economy, a lot of those builders then went out of business, so there’s nobody to buy the property,” Bell said. “But yet a lot of people are stuck with property taxes on high density zonings that are creating problems for them.”

Once again, nobody could have predicted Bell’s posturing on this issue.

Only a dunderhead like Bell could suggest that folks are being stuck with “High Density” zonings. Because clearly, before the downturn we were engaged in urban development up here… What a terrible lack of appreciation.

The larger opportunity here is to reset the playing field by re-placing these to A1 and cracking open the comprehensive plan. A lot of land use assumptions were predicated on growth and population numbers that are probably widely off the plan now. It’s a perfect time to re-evaluate how we want to build. To figure out a sustainable path forward (which we were decidedly not on before the downturn). Of course that’s not going to happen. The county commission barely has the ability to break its own lackadaisical inertia on land use planning. Once status quo development begins again, it will be a re-run of rezoning back to 1 Acre Lot Exurban Sprawl and poorly designed and executed development.