An interesting exchange here between Spokesman-Review reporter Jonathan Brunt and City Council candidate Jon Snyder regarding the “big box” development on the South Hill approved by the Council last year. Snyder had stated that he would not have approved the zoning change which will allow the development. (Exchange begins ~ 37 minutes).

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Brunt: How do you judge when to keep a business out and when to allow a business in?

Snyder: I want to reframe that question . . . the question is, How do we plan or create development that is good for everyone . . .? There are some really great examples in other parts of the Northwest of creating an urban village that is walkable, bikeable, doesn’t involve the maximum amount of square footage, that integrates a mixed-use approach, that allows people to live near where they’re going to be walking to . . . that is the question — how do we create that up there? In order to do that is why we need leadership on the City Council. The City Council should not wait until a developer comes to them and says, “We want this . . . how do we change the Comprehensive Plan to get it?” The City needs to be out front, working with the neighborhoods and developers trying to come up with a planned solution that makes sense for everybody.

Brunt: Is there a place say, south of I-90, that would be OK for a Home Depot, or a Walmart?

Snyder: I don’t see any place that would be great for a Walmart. We have plenty of Walmarts in this town. We don’t need any more.

Brunt: What about a Target or a Home Depot?

Snyder: I’m not interested in advocating for any one of those particular national chains. I mean, people may have their favorites and what not, but what I look at is, I see a Manito Center and a South Perry district. Those places really need some support. You know, Manito went through this whole planning process a couple of years ago, which really didn’t go anywhere . . . That needs to be started up again . . . But unfortunately we have a situation where a lot of retail energy is going to be sucked away from Manito because of the Southgate development.
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Well, that’s about as clear an example of what Hayek called the “Fatal Conceit” — not to mention bureaucratic arrogance — as you’re likely to find anywhere.

Most of the considerable opposition which has emerged to date to Proposition 4, the so-called “Community Bill of Rights” which will appear on the November general election ballot, has focused on the measure’s fiscal implications for the City and its implications for the local economy. These are certainly serious concerns. Indeed, the measure is likely to have adverse impacts even if it fails, unless it is defeated overwhelmingly. A narrow defeat will still discourage investment (and encourage disinvestment) in the city of Spokane, because investors and entrepreneurs will worry that Prop 4’s leftist backers will soon try again. It will stigmatize Spokane as a risky place to do business.

But an even more compelling reason for rejecting it is the moral one.

This “Bill of Frights” (a “fright” being a fiat right) declares that persons have “rights” to “affordable” health care, housing, energy, to be paid a certain wage, and various other goodies on every leftist’s wish list. The trouble here, of course, is that all these goodies must be provided by other persons — health care workers, builders, energy producers, employers, et al. So a claim to a “right” to such things entails a claim to the services of other people — to their time, talents, energy, and the fruits of their labor.

Some new additions to the Encyclopedia of Political Nonsense. After a few more I’ll give the Encyclopedia its own page.

Greed. The standard leftist term of disparagement for the drive, common to all living organisms, to thrive, i.e., to survive, increase its security, reduce its discomforts and risks, and provide for its offspring. For humans, thriving means securing as many of the things they value as possible. Leftists hold the term in contempt because they labor under one or both of two common fallacies, the Organic Fallacy or the Fallacy of Value.

. . . on the Spokesman-Review’s “Matter of Opinion” blog, here. Yours truly is a participant, of course.

Well, this being a political blog (although one which tries to focus on local issues), I suppose a post or two on the hot topic of the moment — health care — is de rigeur. And there is a local connection, after all, since access to “affordable preventive health care” is one of the fiat ”rights” asserted in the “Community Bill of (F)rights” City Charter Amendment — that wish list of free lunches hoked up by the local Green/Left cabal — which will appear on the November ballot as Initiative 2009-2.

Perhaps because there is no Whole Foods outlet in Eastern Washington or Idaho, the local cabal seems to be ignoring the matter, but their comrades across the country are all in a snit these days over Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s Aug. 11 Op/Ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he pointed out the obvious: that there is no “right” to government-provided health care, and that the problems with the health care system in the US are mostly of government making. He even had the lack of sense, considering his customer base, to quote Margaret Thatcher: “The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”

FreeSpokane today adds a new feature — the Encyclopedia of Political Nonsense. It will be a compilation of words, phrases, and statements frequently encountered in social/political discussions which are either empirically false or rest upon assumptions which are empirically false. The qualifier “empirically” is important here: the Encyclopedia will not include statements with which I merely disagree or which assume values I don’t happen to share. It will not include statements around which there is genuine controversy and uncertainty (e.g., most of the debates concerning global warming). It will only qualify as “nonsense” if the statement or its underlying assumptions can readily be shown to be false by straightforward empirical methods — by observation, or as logically derived conclusions from observations.

Gadfly attorney, intrepid blogger, former Spokane City Councilman and current Council Candidate (District 2) Steve Eugster today on his blog laments the decision of a South Hill neighborhood group to abandon their efforts to block a “big box” retail development on S. Regal St (S-R story here). Eugster calls the decision by the City Council last summer to allow the development “senseless,” and “contrary to good comprehensive planning.”

Steve must have held up his finger and determined that the political winds were blowing in that direction (the projects in question are located in his Council District 2). Though usually quite astute concerning the proper scope and role of city government, he is also a fairly astute politician.

Charlotte, NC ♦ Photo © Team Alliance Global

During a recent conversation over coffee an acquaintance posed the question, “What does Spokane have going for it?”

My immediate and glib answer was, “Not much.”

No, I’m not a reluctantly relocated Seattleite, nor an exemplar of Spokane’s alleged inferiority complex. Spokane does have a number of significant assets, which Greater Spokane, Inc. and the Visitors Bureau regularly tout: affordable housing, minimal traffic congestion, decent schools, first-class medical services, outstanding outdoor recreational opportunities, and so on. The thrust of the question, though, was, “What does Spokane have to offer that other mid-sized Western cities don’t?”

Brad Read

At its Aug. 3 meeting the Spokane City Council considered a resolution to place a pair of advisory questions before the voters in the November elections. The two questions were, (1) Should the City seek “new funding sources” (e.g., new or increased taxes) to pay the costs expected to result should Envision Spokane’s “Community Bill of Rights” be approved by voters?, and (2) Should the City reallocate funds from other City programs to pay those costs? (Link to the meeting is here, select Part 2 of the August 3 Council meeting).

Naturally a number of “Bill of Frights” supporters were on hand to oppose the resolutions, accusing the Council of attempting to subvert the “democratic process” by misleading and scaring voters. Supporters of the resolutions (i.e., opponents of the “Bill of Frights”) and some Council members accused Envision Spokane, in turn, of misleading voters by repeatedly telling them that the BoF would impose no costs on the City — a claim stubbornly repeated by several boosters at the hearing, which no Council member swallowed. Even some of the BoF supporters seemed to find that claim a bit implausible, but suggested that voters could decide for themselves whether there would be costs — an equally implausible claim. Very few voters have the information or expertise to estimate the cost even of something as specific and and concrete as paving a block of street, much less the costs of something as broad and ill-defined as Envision Spokane’s menu of free lunches.

But the most telling testimony of the evening (which should have been the focus of the S-R’s coverage but wasn’t) was that of Brad Read, former chair of Spokane’s Human Rights Commission and ES’s Board President. As did other BoF proponents, Read accused the Council of “acting out of fear . . . of being afraid of democratic decision-making,” and of improperly attempting to influence the vote on the BoF initiative.

One of the questions asked of Spokane City Council District 2 candidates at the League of Women Voters forum (first shown on July 23, link  here, “Other Video Programs“) was, “Sometimes the Council grants developers exceptions to the Comprehensive Plan or zoning regulations. What would be your criteria for granting these exceptions?”

Interestingly, while the other candidates proceeded to set forth the criteria they would apply, only Steve Eugster pointed out that the Council cannot grant “exceptions” per se to the Plan or to the zoning ordinance. It can grant variances to the latter, provided one of the grounds for doing so specified in the ordinance is satisfied. It can also grant zoning changes, which are merely amendments to the ordinance, usually accomplished simply by redrawing a zone boundary. Such amendments, however, are required to be consistent with the Comprehensive Plan.

Therein lies the rub. What is and is not consistent with the Comprehensive Plan is very much a matter of opinion. That is because the Plan consists of a vast number of “Goals and Policies” which are ambiguous, vague, often inconsistent, and sometimes irreconcilable. There is a principle in logic that from inconsistent premises, any conclusion follows. Hence for virtually any proposed amendment to the zoning law, an argument with some plausibility can be advanced that it is consistent with something in the Comprehensive Plan.