Your article is right about recognizing the future. But it is incomplete regarding the radical changes to be coming to north county and Douglas County in the whole. From Topaz to Carson City, Douglas County has entered into development agreements approved land uses while leaving holes in the development code to ensure the sentiments of the growth management rebellion could not become the prevailing policy.
Hundreds of homes are approved and the land has entitlements that will not be reversed. The floodplains are not managed, only pushing water to someone else's property.
The groundwater has been contaminated in many places around Carson Valley making it unfit for humans or horses.
The scars we see on the face of the Carson Range will only become worse as the massive developments along the toe take hold and the remaining 3,500 acres of land along the face become pitted with ego homes like acne on a teenage face. The great sage and open vistas along the eastern edges will continue to grow the checkered pattern of more homes.
The highway will be elevated and "a real bypass" will happen. More large walls are going to surround the industrial areas and balloons and gliders will go away as they have in Washoe County and hundreds of other beautiful small communities that became cities. Progress.
As your article states; "the money will trickle in," not enough to support the services or provide the resources needed in this community.
We will be stuck with deficient infrastructure, roads, bridges and sewer with desperate need.
Like our neighboring communities, we will try to tax and grow our way out.
As a community, we fought about the number of housing units, not the quality of our future. In strong and vibrant communities, housing follows jobs and economic strength.
Our economy is like a one-legged stool, built on the housing. As it teeters, the policy-makers scurry to hold it up.
Cut a deal here or cut a deal there; it appears corrupt, it's only inept. Without change, we are destined to repeat these mistakes, again and again.
This is not an indictment of development, it is what it is. By 2027, we may not recognize the physical appearance of the county. We should embrace characteristics that we value, such as, family and neighbors.
But we must change the policy decision-making that set this economic failure in motion. Our energy and investment needs to diversify, a community economy needs to be based upon strong minds with good jobs.
Encourage generous members of our community, such as Raymond Sidney to invest in projects that return to the community again and again, not one-time capital repairs or improvements (the failure of the school funding to maintain their facilities is one more symptom of failed economic strategy - let's cure it).
Inadvertently, he is rewarding our failures.
Teach them to fish ... Invest in thinking and doing; there is no capital in reliving the past.
We need leadership in Douglas County with vision to see a different path and investment in real economic development, not flash.
-- Mitchell Dion is a Gardnerville resident and former Douglas County community development director.
