The CAO is a suspension of civil liberties. The county has declared itself landlord and simply taken control of 65-percent of privately held land, and will dictate which part of it you may use.
A new police force must now be established to enforce the percentage of native vegetation people have in their backyards. Will they be granted the right to inspect properties, without consent? We don’t know yet but the mechanism for monitoring and enforcement will be at the expense of privacy.
When such regulation is imposed, there is always a new bureaucracy granted the right to rule by edict over your and my future. We don’t know exactly what form this will take, but it will surely have something to do with “best available science.”
The drafters of this ordinance are attempting to woo us into complacency by playing the kinder, gentler authoritarian saying we will still be able to develop our land. We all know what this means. We’ll have to go before them with hat in hand, showing the proper amount of subordination to solicit their approval and paying ever-increasing fees.
Regulation inhibits opportunity. The density levels already being imposed by a centrally-controlled, Soviet-style growth management act are driving up the price of a house to an average over $300,000.00.
When your children and mine want their piece of the American dream, what will the average be then? Five, six hundred grand seems probable, and if so, only the wealthy among them will be able to afford one.
The role of “land steward” has been ruled too sacred to be entrusted to the individual, power being hereby transferred to a “guru-ship” of enlightened biologists, hydrologists and environ-social engineers who can rationalize the seizure of property rights and civil liberties in the name of shade for fish and habitat for frogs and slugs.
At the same time, the county is buying up land with the tax dollars we pay as our only remaining privilege of land ownership.
The county has purchased in its entirety the 104,000-acre former Snoqualmie Tree Farm, which as we know reduces the supply of available land for would-be private land purchasers. Like the feudal dukes and earls of yore, they seem to wish to be masters of all they survey, and they alone are uniquely qualified to appreciate the complex ecological nuances, and no peasant shall alter his plot without the blessing of his or her excellency, or panel of excellencies, as the case may be. Ah, but they are saving forests for our children; perhaps the ones who can’t afford a house can live in the woods.
The autocrats of the county land-use bureaucracy are emboldened by recent success at seizing land and power, and their greed and arrogance knows no bounds.
Right here is where we must stop them, or they will set precedents that will outlive us all.
Please support the referendum for the repeal of the CAO.
Clark Bowen
Snoqualmie
