Here is what I will look for in a county commissioner.
1. Independence from development interests. Candidates are known by the company they keep. Development interests have taken us in the wrong direction. You can't chart a new course if you're beholden to old interests.
2. Commitment to our master plan. We have a disconnect between planning and permitting.
We adopt a 45-foot height limit and then allow a casino three times as high. We set a standard that new commercial development be compatible with surrounding neighborhoods and then ignore it when permitting new shopping centers. And we have ranching families who seem to think they have a good shot at getting seven times the allowed development.
We have a good master plan. We need to follow it.
3. Jobs first, then housing. We're suffering from the burst housing bubble.
Just as federal regulators failed to oversee the mortgage and investment banking industries, our local officials failed to regulate residential development to keep it on a sound footing.
The county bent over backwards to accommodate whatever residential development came along. The effect has been to greatly exceed the ability of our economy to absorb that development.
Housing should be paced to job growth in sustainable industries.
Regions that have weathered the housing crisis well are those that have a strong job base. Those that haven't are those with economies, like ours, based largely on speculative real estate development.
4. Implementation of growth control. Had growth management been enacted by county officials as approved by the voters our local housing crisis wouldn't be so serious. Housing growth would more closely match the absorption rate. The county made a feeble attempt to get on board last year but with a watered down version of what voters approved.
The truth is that the recent housing boom was bad for Douglas County.
It brought growth in amounts, at a pace and in locations most here didn't want, and it has now proved to be a poor basis for economic development. The voters knew better.
5. Cooperation, not competition. Douglas County used the oldest trick in the redevelopment book when it built big box commercial on the border of Carson City. It's simple. Use redevelopment incentives to steal sales tax from your neighbors. It can work for awhile, but it eventually turns out to be a game stacked in favor of commercial interests.
Retail developers pit communities against each other to gain the biggest concessions and the region as a whole eventually suffers. We should work with our neighbors to gain the greatest regional benefit from the businesses that desire to locate here.
6. Broad-based revenue enhancement. As communities grow, taxes increase. I don't like it either, but that's the truth. Larger
communities demand both a greater depth and breadth of services. They need more core services. But they also demand new services as constituencies for them develop. The senior center is the best example of that.
We need more revenue to support the growth we've allowed, whether we like it or not. The answer lies in a broad based program of revenue enhancement, where we all pay our fair share. Yes, probably a business tax, but also taxes that impact people like me, who don't run a business.
So that we're all sharing the burden of supporting our community. And so that any specific tax increase is small.
7. Design standards. You may not like the new credit union building (I do), but at least someone has finally attempted to build something reflective of our western heritage. We all agree that it is our mountain and valley environment and the western heritage here that make the Carson Valley special. So why do we continue to allow development that has no relationship to that?
Walgreen's will do what you ask if you insist. But if you don't, you get their generic corporate architecture. We need a design review process that assures that every new commercial development enhances our local heritage.
The same goes for our mountain views. When we no longer see the mountains from town this will cease to be the place it has been. Good design can accommodate both of these objectives. We need to insist on that.
8. Reform TDR. Transfer of Development Rights is good. We move development from where we don't want it to where it's more acceptable.
But our local program is more of a CDR program. Creation of Development Rights where none existed before.
Our TDR program is basically about not building houses in sensitive
areas. Great. But we've allowed a 25-fold increase in the development taking place as part of that process. That's right, to avoid one house "out there," we build 25 more houses "in town" than would otherwise be allowed.
Basically, the development community turned a conservation program into a development program. What the County Commission recently approved as a clustering incentive would be better. That involves a 2.5 times, rather than a 25 times, incentive.
And we need to fix other instances where the master plan has been subverted.
9. Management consistent with residents' vision. Elected officials and citizens rely on County management in setting and executing policy.
The new Commission will appoint a new County Manager. They should pick someone who recognizes the shortcomings of recent management and can help us move in the direction citizens want to go.
10. Openness and transparency. Key to that new direction is transparency of governance. Many feel decisions are made out of the public eye. A good example: the recent airport debate.
Whatever your opinion about airport growth, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the process was made more contentious by an approach where analysis appears to have been made to fit preconceived objectives.
We shouldn't fear information. We should use it openly to make good decisions.
Many of you will see it differently, but I will look for candidates who show the greatest commitment to the above issues.
n Terry Burnes is a retired county planning director and a Gardnerville resident.
