Sustainable Growth Initiative Committee Co-Chair John Garvin's comment "pandering to the development interests by way of excessive amendments ruins the master plan" is made without knowledge. The facts are since 1996 when the master plan was finalized, there have been 111 requests for amendment. Of the 111 amendment requests, 21 were text corrections, 38 were map corrections, 23 were denied land use and 29 were approved land use amendments. That's 2.9 land use amendments per year average over the 10-year period. How is that "pandering to the builder/developer?" Fact - Developer/builders must meet requirements imposed by Douglas County.
I object to Garvin's attacks on the Settelmeyer family and Kelly Kite (the only commissioner on the board since 1996). These are honorable Valley residents who have contributed since 1991 to compile and document the master plan. The Settelmeyer project (on land owned by the family since 1880) had no master plan amendment. In fact, part of the approved agreement included bringing water and sewer from the 7-Eleven at the corner of Pinenut/Riverview Road and Highway 395.
That's a win for the county.
Some of the SGC comments have been to vilify the building industry for "not providing infrastructure." The facts are that each building permit requires the payment of $1,000 park tax, $1,600 school tax, and $500 road tax. This doesn't include the six acres of park land donated to Douglas County Parks & Recreation. valued at over $176,000. Nor does it include the $1.47 million builder's portion of Muller Parkway extension. It doesn't include the cost of water/sewer hook ups from $5,800 to $6,800 per home. The total for one project in county/city fees and requirements exceeds $3 million. This figure does not include the cost of underground, power, gas, storm sewers, roads, gutters, sidewalks, etc. required within the subdivision itself. To state that the builder/developer does not provide infrastructure is just plain wrong. It seems to me that the SGC does not care that their numbers don't match their words - they just want to throw out unsubstantiated comments hoping the populace will buy it.
Not many voters have the time or interest to really investigate the comments. I have. I also object to the continued efforts of this group to polarize the populace. Very few are what could be considered long term residents. They moved here and don't want others to do the same.
With a national populace of over 300 million, we are looking at a situation where our children won't have homes here in the future - where the cost of those homes will be beyond the average consumer to purchase - and where the service industry employees will have to live outside the county. I have been to numerous commissioner meetings where projects with more condensed housing or the bypass road have been brought forward. The standard comments from near-by residents have been "not in my backyard." The SGC group gets up at every meeting to smear whatever project comes forward and to attack the integrity of the elected commissioners. I, for one, am very tired of all the negative attitude.
When are we as individuals going to realize that polarizing the community is not working. For this valley to be the place that we all wanted to move to, we must work together. To attack and vilify, yet not expound sound, legally defensible solutions doesn't work. For most of the SGC crowd, the very people they vilify provided the homes they live in.
n Linda K. Hilton is a resident of Topaz Ranch Estates.
