Measure A: What Does It Conserve?

Some thoughts on Measure A: The "Santa Clara County Land Conservation Initiative". I'd have a hard time pulling these thoughts together into a common theme, but that's fitting: Measure A itself is scattershot in its approach.

Proponents of the initiative claim it will "preserve our region as a desirable place to live and work." Opponents claim it "threatens the survival of farming in our county, endangers our economy and jobs, and encourages premature annexation of rural lands and sprawl." After reading the actual text of the initiative, my impression is that it doesn't have the potential to do as much good nor cause as much damage as either side claims.

Many parts of the Santa Clara landscape that probably pop into your mind when you read the word "conservation" aren't covered by this initiative: Coyote Valley, the 101 corridor to Gilroy, the open space around Stanford University. Furthermore, most of Measure A's changes are tweaks to existing county land use policy.

Still, it's a poorly thought out proposal and should be rejected. If we're going to undertake the serious business of mucking with people's property rights, which ultimately means mucking with their livelihoods, we should know what we are doing.

I think most people would say that one of the major goals of land conservation is environmental protection. How Measure A's bumping up an already large minimum size for rural parcels by an arbitrarily-chosen factor would necessarily translate into more environmental protection is fuzzy. Also, a lot of the measure is concerned with preserving sight lines and other aesthetic concerns. While an uninterrupted view of a ridge line looks more environmental-ish, it shouldn't be confused with actual environmental protection. Intelligent land use planning for environmental protection would, for example, be more concerned with limiting pollution, preserving habitat, and establishing easements for wildlife migration routes for wildlife than setting arbitrary size and building limits on uncoordinated parcels of land.

Section 9, which lays down some rules that say you can't develop where there's fire danger or inadequate plumbing makes some sense. But, I imagine there are already regulations covering that kind of thing.

Finally, if you are concerned with high housing prices in Santa Clara County, think twice before voting for Measure A. The biggest driver of high prices in our county are all the restrictions we have on converting land to residential use, and restrictions on housing density. I'm not advocating runaway development of all our remaining rural areas, but I do want to point out that land consevation entails serious economic tradeoffs.

A Big Me-Too To WGLA's Initiative Recommendations

Once again Allen Rice and the Willow Glen Libertarian Alliance have come out with excellent recommendations on the upcoming ballot initiatives. And once again have saved this lazy political blogger from the shame of having no idea what the current crop of initiatives are, let alone having any opinion about how you should vote on them.

Usually, I agree with all but one or two of WGLA's conclusions. This time I agree with the whole lot of them.

For Governor, I recommend you leave that part of your ballot blank. I wish I could recommend the Libertarian candidate, Art Olivier. An often-repeated simple definition of a libertarian is someone who is "fiscally conservative and socially liberal". Olivier is certainly fiscally conservative, but, if his Archie Bunker-worthy us vs. them stance on immigration is any indication, he is also very conservative socially. Let's see ... fiscally conservative ... socially conservative ... that would make him a ... conservative.

For those of you who live in Mountain View, I recommend my friend, John Inks, for city council. I'll be writing more about Inks later.

And remember, never, ever, ever vote based on anything you saw or heard in some political ad on TV.

[10/22/2006] WGLA has changed their recommendation on Measure 1E, the "Disaster Preparedness and Flood Prevention Act" from Yes to No. Without doing some further study, I can't say whether I back up their conclusion or not. After Katrina, it came out that California had some of the most at-risk levy systems in the country. However, I'm not sure of the current state of our state's flood control plan; there have been stories in the papers the last few days saying that the state government gave the go ahead for some of the worst parts of the system to be fixed, at least temporarily, before this winter.