The county planning commission has been wrestling for literally years with a long-overdue update of the county’s comprehensive planning document.
That’s the commission’s job, but the last minute addition of an ode to “property rights” preamble was just bizarre, if predictable. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging property rights, even if it smacks of Tea Party paranoia. The decision to include one commissioner’s line about the “sanctity” of landowner rights flies in the face of what the comp plan was supposed to be, a document guided by state laws, planning expertise and citizen input. What the heck, as long as we’re including frivolous language, why don’t we make Deschutes County a U.N. Free Zone, too. Just in case.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2011.
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I thank the Planning Commission for all of the work the have done on behalf of the citizens of Deschutes County. And I thank them for the preamble. It really should have been called a disclaimer. What the Planning Dept gave them to work with was not a Comprehensive Plan, but a remnant of the feel good times of the last bubble. It is not the place of Deschutes County Planning to tell how how we should live, or what their vision of our lives should be. It is their job to outline zoning, planning and land use according to the impossible laws our great State has in place. Nothing more, and possibly less. Deschutes County has in many ways surpassed the State of Oregon in restrictive land use laws. I am not against zoning, but I am against restrictive taking of private property owner’s rights to their land use.
Thank you, Planning Commission for having the guts to acknowledge a flawed and failing system. I thank you for your countless unpaid hours trying to reign in our governing bodies.