[Vision2020] RE: Tribune uncovers new Moscowpro-growth gro

[g. crabtree]

Bruce, It's clear from your post that you do not feel that the MCA is a "no growth" organization. But it's equally clear that it's a long way from being pro growth. What it appears to me to be is a growth by strangling committee group. A here is our vision of how property that is not ours should look and be used club. If you stand in the way of the kinds of development that developer's actually are willing to put their money on the line for, can you honestly say you're in favor of growth? To proclaim yourselves as "smart growth" advocates is to say that you're in favor of a set of confused and contradictory goals design to leave everyone dissatisfied. It would seem to me that pro growth is to let the people with a real vested interest in any given project move ahead under a straight forward and not overly restrictive set of guidelines and let the community vote with its patronage. In a society where failure is seldom rewarded, mistakes will likely not be repeated. To try and make everybody happy on the front end of every project is to create needless road blocks and stagnation.

Gary Crabtree
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bruce and Jean Livingston 
  To: Matt Decker ; vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 12:45 AM
  Subject: RE: [Vision2020] RE: Tribune uncovers new Moscowpro-growth gro


  Whoa Nellie!

  Matt, I think you need to stop buying what certain "growth at all costs" types are selling in their inaccurate smear of the MCA as an organization favoring no-growth.  We are by no means a "no-growth"-seeking organization.  

  We seek to bring open public discussion and planning -- long range planning especially -- back into the process.  We seek to incorporate into our City better pedestrian and bicycle corridors, sidewalks, mixed uses and cluster developments that use forward thinking combinations of higher densities, and more shared, open space.   We seek sustainable community development, not stagnation.  There is a continuum of positions on the growth spectrum, from no growth on the one hand to unregulated, absolute power to develop one's land without regard to the effect on one's neighbors on the other.  MCA is not for the former;  I would hazard a guess that GMA is not for the latter.  Time will tell.

  Up until recently, this City has operated on a basis that had relegated the zoning code to an advisory document, spot-zoning and re-zoning property willy-nilly at the request of any developer -- regardless of the conflict any particular proposal may have had with the Comprehensive Plan.  Evidence of that sad pattern can be found with the prior council's frittering away of the West A street commercial property that has been turned into one apartment complex after another.  The "pro-growth at all costs" crowd decries the current "lack" of motor business land in the City and uses that alleged "lack" as a basis for asserting the necessity of re-zoning the Thompson property.  Those same "pro-growth regardless of the costs" folks include those who spent much of our best motor business land on short term, short-sighted, frenzies of granting every request to turn A Street into apartments  -- in an area that has no adequate pedestrian crossing of the largest road in our City for the numerous pedestrian students who were locating in those apartments.  

  Smart Growth we advocate, not "no growth."  http://www.idahosmartgrowth.org/

  The best place for heavy commercial growth was always along the Pullman Highway and behind Third Street on A, as was set forth in the Comprehensive Plan.  The recently annexed university-owned land north of the Palouse Mall is an obvious motor business area, and it serves far wiser planning and strategic needs by its location as close to Pullman as we can place it, while retaining a Latah County location.   The good folks of Troy will drive through Moscow and past our downtown to get to the Moscow motor business developments near the state line.  The Pullmanites and WSU students, particularly those using the bus, seem much less likely to drive or hitch a ride to the far side of eastern Moscow, especially as their choices expand in Whitman County.  

  Being opposed to a misguided and ill-conceived, 77 acre motor business re-zone on the east side of town does not make one anti-growth.  It makes one opposed to that particular development.

  Likewise, as evidenced by prior discussion on this list, expressing concern and seeking solutions about water usage on the Palouse is not anti-growth.  In fact, it is pro-growth.  The Seattle model, referenced by Nils Peterson and Mark Solomon on V2020 discussions, is worthy of pursuit here.  Seattle was able to grow -- substantially -- while actually cutting its water usage through thoughtful, long-term conservation policies.  We, too, can do the same.  Given our scarce and declining water supply, why not seek to implement water conserving policies that will enable future growth, rather than blindly play a game of chicken with an aquifer of unknown size and dimensions?  Preserving our water through thoughtful and proven conservation methods preserves our ability to grow for the long term.  Our County Commissioners, two of whom are Republicans, have listened and learned from Diane French, Mark Solomon and others on the water issue, so don't be so quick to dismiss Diane and Mark as having ideas that take root only on the left, when the evidence is to the contrary and their hard work on water management benefits us all.

  Personally, I also welcome discussion of a reservoir.  I oppose injection of the pristine waters of the Grand Ronde aquifer with relatively filthy runoff from muddy fields laden with various herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, and assorted other pollutants.  But opposing injection of the Grand Ronde does not make me anti-growth, Matt, it makes me opposed to that particular water management option among a myriad of choices that enhance the possibility of and favor long-term growth.

  I am pro-growth.  Most in the MCA are as well.  Several years ago the MCA Board took a position favoring growth.  We accepted the Smart Growth model, and rejected a no growth alternative.  That position has not changed.

  We in the MCA welcome the GMA to the discussion; undoubtedly the community at large does, too.  Informed and open discussion is enlightening and useful to all.  Overall, my sense is that the Moscow community is glad that the MCA arrived and changed the discussion from private conversations of a few policymakers, movers and shakers to a much larger group of people throughout the community who are all engaged in the discussion.  The GMA will undoubtedly add its voice to the discussion, which can only be a good thing.  Let the marketplace of ideas percolate and see what happens.  But don't mis-apprehend the MCA as being anti-growth, for we are not.

  Bruce Livingston


  Matt Decker said:
  | Remember this(GMA) group was established because of the Mark Solomans, Diane 
  | Frenchs, and the MCA groups that back up their no growth attitudes. Smart 
  | Growth, Please. Disguise it however you like, but it just adds up to little 
  | or nil growth. The attitudes of these people are just to aggressive for 
  | Moscow. Yes some of the people in the group have lives outside of the 
  | computer, that depend on growth, including myself.
  | 
  | See what we can do first before belittling us to a bunch of money crazed 
  | good ol boy. This group also wants what is best for Moscow.
  | 
  | MD
  | 
  | Matt



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