Will Idaho Still Be Heaven For Our Children?

On August 18^th in North Carolina Kamala Harris stated: “As President, I will work in partnership with industry (developers—jl) to build the housing that we need both to rent and buy. We will take down barriers and cut red tape including at the state and local levels.” This speech could have been given by Boise Mayor Lauren McLean or Garden City Mayor John Evans.

Progressive pro-development politicians and city planners who have infiltrated the halls of local towns and municipalities see high density housing as a means to increasing their tax base that will further increase the size of local government and subordinate the quality of life of citizens living in the neighborhoods most effected by development. City Fathers and employees have developed symbiotic relationships with out-of-state developers and financiers. After going door to door and asking citizens to vote for them, they turn around and take a large campaign contribution, a round of golf, or lunch at the club from an agent acting on behalf of those who are financing a real estate project.

Pro-development activists armed with strategies learned in “Urban Study” programs taught in almost all major universities across our country, are inserting themselves and most importantly their values onto Idahoans who have for generations valued our rural and suburban lifestyle. Fitting more people into tighter spaces, creating more tax revenue for municipalities, ceding power to out-of-state developers and Wall State financiers, most of whom have never been to Idaho, is a formula that only leads to an acceleration of urbanization, increased traffic, a decreased quality of life, and decreased property values.

The coalition of politicians, city workers, developers, and in some alleged instances citizen groups acting and incentivized by those who have primarily a financial interest, will create a “purgatorio”, a state of limbo, for citizens already living in neighborhoods that have been 40 years in the making. Outsourcing Architectural Review responsibilities to an outside vendor is another example of “tearing down barriers to development”. “The critics fear that the” loosening of rezoning and land use codes will accelerate gentrification and … and undermine democracy by muzzling community input by residents (citizens and constituents)” — WSJ 8/28. This has already happened in Boise and Garden City. In Garden City this process has been “tainted” by elected officials and a City Attorney who have worked hand in hand with developers, while at the same time they have worked hard to hide “the process.”

In California developers and sympathetic politicians have successfully attempted to nullify single family only zoning rules. They are trying to do the same thing in Idaho. Advocates for “Federalizing” zoning laws like Kamala Harris have suggested are placing a “hook” in the open mouth of counties, cities and municipalities, that are “biting at the bait” of Federal subsidies and decreasing regulation oversite by organizations like FEMA and The Army Corps of Engineers.

Just like with our legislature 20 years ago, there will be a price to be paid, not by local governments, but by the people who live in the affected neighborhoods. If 50% of The State of Idaho Revenues comes from the Federal Government, the question may soon be why have a State Government? The same thing can be said about City governments in Idaho. If increasing funds are being offered to municipalities and cities, will the people that pay taxes and vote in those places have less of a say in how they will be represented?

I believe the City Fathers in both Boise and Garden City have already answered that question. Neither Mayor McLean nor Mayor John Evans have done anything to secure the property rights of citizens living in existing neighborhoods. They continue to feed at the trough of Federal subsidies, and they continue to align themselves with interests outside the communities they live in and represent.

Unlike in California where the State Courts have more often than not sided with developers, recent District and Supreme Court Rulings in Idaho have signaled a concern about the rights of existing property owners living in neighborhoods.

The time may have come for The Idaho Attorney General to look into the processes that have been allowed to occur over the past 20 years in many municipalities across our State that have placed the needs of developers ahead of the rights of neighbors and landowners, many times without the knowledge by citizens, of the processes being deployed. Another place to look for the abuse by developers and their attorneys is to review how the State Special Use Permit (SUP) statute has evolved when it is rewritten in many but not all cases and put into City and municipality Codes. I am not a lawyer, but a simple reading of some of the rewrites should be concerning to citizens.

“At the devil’s booth are all things sold,
Each ounce of dross (or a campaign contribution) costs its’ ounce of gold”
Bubbles we buy for a whole soul asking,
Tis heaven alone to be had for an asking” — James Russell Lowell

Soon Idaho won’t be heaven anymore and we should all remember who is to blame.