Comprehensive plan

Open Letter to the Coalition for Property Rights (CPR), Citizens of Okanogan County, and Appointed and Elected County Officials.

This is to inform you that there is a significant portion of the county population who agrees with neither the philosophy nor the tactics presently being exhibited by the members of the Coalition for Property Rights regarding the Okanogan County Comprehensive Plan.

We thank the County Commissioners and Planning Department for taking on the difficult task of developing a new Comprehensive Plan for Okanogan County. The comprehensive plan process was initiated to ostensibly head off potential growth problems that will arise with new, unchecked growth in the county. This is the kind of unbridled growth and sprawl that many of us have seen destroy numerous small, friendly, quiet farm communities throughout much of the United States during the last 10 or more years. The movement by urban people to rural areas is driven by many factors, but a desire for a simpler, quiet, safe lifestyle is a leading consideration for most. Okanogan County is in no way immune to this growth pattern - it's only been somewhat slower in happening here due to our geographical isolation and recently weakened economy. But that influx of urban refugees is coming and when it does, our quiet, peaceful, secure and simple lifestyle will surely suffer greatly as a result. Our farmlands, our environmentally sensitive lands, our water availability and quality, our clean air, our open space - all are in jeopardy if we don't plan for it now.

An Okanogan County Comprehensive Plan is a tool, one that will allow county citizens to craft a plan that truly secures the dreams, desires, needs and individual/social responsibilities of all our county citizens. We support a comprehensive plan that:

•Defines and encourages sustainable growth;

•Supports sustainable agriculture and wildlife habitat so that there is adequate food for all of the county's human and wildlife population - now, and into the foreseeable future, and even in the event that there could be a major disruption of our normal food supply;

•Defines and promotes sustainable development of, and access to, public lands, free of noise and pollution;

•Defines and protects the major county watersheds and allows those areas to develop sub-area, self directing capabilities that are consistent with the local residents chosen way of life; and

•Prevents urban and suburban sprawl through thoughtful, innovative planning processes, which include continuous input from all of the varied interest groups within individual county towns and villages.

The CPR appears to currently be doing its best to derail the county comprehensive plan process to form it into its own image of individual property rights - at the cost of the rights and values of many other individuals in the county. The CPR is headed by those who profit financially from extensive subdivision, small lot sizes, large-scale development and elimination of environmental protections. These folks have removed the community input that was already part of the early drafts of the comprehensive plan. Those whose philosophies exclude the public benefit as a legitimate concern are doing their best to convince property owners that sensible community planning and regulations to control unbalanced, unsustainable growth, is not in their interest. They are trying to convince people that their property rights trump individual, community and social responsibility and ethical behavior - not to mention just plain good neighborliness. And these CPR leaders are doing this so they can make profits by chopping up as many pieces of productive agricultural and natural land as possible, while using the catch phrase "individual property rights." As local farmers fail in the bad economy and progressively unpredictable weather, these people seeking fast profits are leading the charge to divide, subdivide, and create sprawl - all to the detriment of the quiet, peaceful, secure and simple life many of us have chosen.

And that is where we, also people of Okanogan County, desperately disagree with the CPR. The CPR chose to ignore the well-publicized neighborhood meetings for the Comprehensive Plan, and now want to eliminate the two years of work by those citizens who cared enough to attend. But we do have our rights, our dreams, our needs and our sense of individual, social, and environmental responsibility. And we do not want those rights and aspirations supplanted by the CPR's own very undemocratic agenda.

We are also small business owners, small organic and conventional farmers, teachers, nurses, doctors and everyday citizens who insist on having an equal voice in the comprehensive plan process. County Commissioners, please know that the CPR does not speak for all of us. To the extent that we can all find common ground in this contentious planning process, we welcome open dialogue and even third party arbitration if necessary to fairly settle our differences.

We ask the elected officials of Okanogan County to take a stand for the dreams and hopes of the average citizen instead of the development interests that have a history of destroying community values.

Buck Orndorff,