[Vision2020] Building and development planning

[Bill London]

P-
Your concerns about sprawl in this county mirror my own.  The mantras I've
heard over the last decade or so here in Moscow as I have questioned this
direction  are "growth is good" and "growth pays for itself."
It seems pretty obvious now that neither are true.
And now we are stuck with a bunch of subdivisions without parks or good
transportation connections to the rest of Moscow.
The same thing has happened in rural Latah County.
It's time for a new way of approaching the development question.
BL



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Nisbet" <pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Sunday, August 14, 2005 1:08 PM
Subject: [Vision2020] Building and development planning


> It's kind of the paper and others to let us know that there is strong
> movement afoot to increase the property development in Latah County and
that
> such activity is a major economic engine for growth on the Palouse.
Couple
> that with the desire in Whitman County to expand and get more houses built
> in the non-urban realm of the rural setting and you can see the joys we
get
> from build all those new houses and housing developments.
>
> That they note that the thrust of this development is advertising that we
> are an excellent location of out of area retirees is also interesting.
>
> The problem with all of these calculations is that retirement housing is
not
> a long term economic stimulus.  The reality is that retirees pay less in
> total taxes than they receive in services and they are replacing people
who
> pay more in taxes than they require in services.  Study after study of the
> long term effects of transition from rural business, be it logging, mining
> or farming, to retirement community status show that from a base of about
> 0.7 tax to service requirements for rural business and families, rural
> counties experience a change to about 1.6 tax to service ratio as
retirement
> community status is attained.
>
> And the problem of groundwater is compounded with all of that development.
> The compaction of soils and the alteration of the groundwater infiltration
> from development has been identified by the EPA as the largest single
> contributing factor to groundwater quantity reductions in the USA.  From
the
> amount of estimated construction in the recent articles, we are covering
> hundreds of acres of critical ground a year and what exactly are we
getting
> out of the economics of that?
>
> As the articles note, outside developers are very interested in building
> here, so even the little economic benefit derived from the building phase
is
> being siphoned off.  You can see the same thing from the building projects
> that U of I just completed, in which Spokane and out of area contractors
> received most of the work.
>
> The whole thing is a prescription for sprawl, in which only if we continue
> to attract more and more retirees can the area sustain an economy and with
> each new batch that comes in we need higher and higher taxes to give them
> the services that they want and need.  It's a Ponzi scheme that works so
> long as a new and growing list of victims is acquired annually, but what
> happens when the music stops?  What happens once they have built across
the
> entire basin and do not have enough water?  What real businesses will be
> here to carry the tax burden?
>
> Some people might think that it's a wonderful idea to take the Palouse and
> turn it into a regional Phoenix Arizona, but I remain to be convinced.  It
> seems to me that covering the best farmlands in the Pacific Northwest with
> houses and driving out the rural things that make the Palouse a wonderful
> place to be is short sighted.  But that is the direction we are traveling
in
> and recent events and preferences for development are driving this train
> full speed to that destination.
>
> Phil Nisbet
>
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