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As an alternative to the zoning approach to land use restrictions, Houston, TX has always had used a free market approach. There are benefits and drawbacks, but the important thing is it puts property rights in the right place, the hands of the property owner.

Michael Ennis of the Washington Policy Center (WPC) attended a conference in Houston where the subject came up. He points out some interesting aspects of the system in this blog entry.

Our Neighborhood Council meeting recently had visits from the city’s planning commission staff and from a lobbyist group that is lobbying the city for more restrictive land use. This article seemed a good way to start the conversation on this blog.

I’m not advocating a radical change to our land use and zoning laws. However, I do want to make clear that a) there are alternatives, and b) that more restriction isn’t the best approach.

Update: Robert Mak, probably the closest thing that Northwest TV news has to an objective reporter, did a segment on this issue (here’s an online synopsis). He spoke with a UW professor who, without outside funding or support, did a study on the impact that land use regulations have on housing prices.
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They took the plunge today and opened for business. This is a great place. They call their coffee shop/bistro ‘Fishtales Bistro’. They’re not allowed restaurant style seating, but there are plenty of choices to take to nearby picnic tables and enjoy.

At the walk-up window is an espresso bar with soups and chowders plus some cool stuff like seafood cocktails. Inside are all of the fish products you’d expect and some more. It’s a good mix of ready to eat, prepped for cooking and unprepped selections.

The location makes it a good place to stop to pick something up for dinner whether I feel like cooking or not (I do like to cook). They’re right on the Ruston Way waterfront in Old Town with plenty of 15 minute parking out front.

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Whenever I talk with a city employee about how they can spend money on pet projects while important issues (like potholes) go unresolved, I get the same answer: buckets. It’s every day’s excuse du jour.

I posted previously about watching crews bury electric wires from tree to tree so that the city could put up Christmas lights when signs were posted across the street telling us to vote ‘Yes’ on funding for emergency services. And when I asked a city employee about it, the answer was ‘buckets’. There was money in the Christmas bucket but none in the emergency services bucket. So everyone who didn’t need an ambulance would have a brighter holiday.

So imagine my surprise last night as I listened to the city council respond to a citizen who brought up the issue of how they were taking money out of one bucket to fill another bucket, which was empty because that bucket was used to fill another bucket that was empty because of a bad decision by city council.

I guess creative bookkeeping can only be used when it’s to cover the mistakes of the city council. But when it’s the public that needs money from an empty bucket, it’s up to the taxpayers to refill it.
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I stopped by the new waterfront location of Northern Fish Products on Ruston Way today and chatted with the folks getting ready to open it up. They’re hoping to open before the copper river salmon show up just after the15th of this month.

They’ll be selling fish products in what appears to be a market style, and will be selling things that will appeal to the foot traffic. It’s a great idea since that street probably has more foot traffic during the summer than even the busiest streets downtown. I’m guessing only the mall can compete with the numbers they’ll see going by each day during the summer.
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Tacoma’s city council, Economic Development Board and some special interest groups continue to cling to failing fantasies of a financial district in downtown Tacoma. All the while they’re wasting taxpayer money and letting opportunities slip through their fingers.

There have been so many warnings they can’t even be referred to as harbingers anymore. The list of businesses that have left Tacoma is long and represents thousands of jobs. The latest company to announce their intent to depart is Davita, a health services company that has a data processing center in downtown Tacoma.

The dream has been to build a financial services district in downtown Tacoma, and with that comes a number of other exploits that are supposed to build the kind of atmosphere that will attract the kind of companies that these people are looking for. The problem is that the people in charge of our tax dollars can’t tell the difference between a good idea and a bad idea.
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Union workers shut down the Port of Tacoma today for an illegal protest of the war in Iraq.

What do unions have to do with foreign policy? The short answer is nothing. So why do they think they can protest on company time and the taxpayer’s nickel?

In case you weren’t aware, it’s illegal for public employees in the state of Washington to strike. Unions do it all the time, but just because public officials and judges don’t do anything about it doesn’t change the law. These people should be put on trial for breaking the law. Not that it would do any good. The union would hire their lawyers (and probably get money from other unions to support their cause… exploiting employers and members) and the judges would likely dismiss the charges or suits after lengthy and costly appeals. But I wouldn’t mind my tax dollars going to strike a blow against these union thugs and in support of the rule of law in our state.

They claim they’re supporting the troops in this protest but that’s just double-talk. Nothing about what they’re doing is supportive of the troops. You can’t support the troops without supporting their mission, you can’t support the troops when you’re wasting money for the businesses that hire our troops when they’re not deployed and you’re not supporting the troops when you waste taxpayer dollars to do something that won’t do a bit of good for anyone.
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Op-eds by pinheads.

They actually got to paragraph two before going way, way wrong:

With RTID’s failure at the polls last November, we threw out highway expansion as the answer to our congestion problems.

No we didn’t. ‘We’ threw out an expensive and massive expansion of Sound Transit. Maybe they didn’t notice but there were two gas tax-roads packages approved by voters in the last few years totalling 14.5 cents per gallon of gas. People want roads and they proved it.

Gov. Chris Gregoire and the Legislature have changed the way we look at transportation and global warming – making huge strides towards dealing with the problem.

Who is this ‘we’ they keep referring to? Gregoire didn’t change anything, well, other than increasing spending by 33% in just 3 years. But there’s still time to overturn this garbage, pandering legislation.
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Transit Oriented Development (TOD) is an idea that liberals support to justify exorbitant expenditures on mass transit projects. It starts when they spend a bunch of money on a mass transit (usually rail) claiming that it will bring more development to the area around train stations and bus transit centers. Then, when it fails to do so, they have to pump a bunch more money into development so they can justify their original waste of money on the transit projects.

Portland, OR is a prime example of this liberal folly. The most recent problem is that they’re facing a lawsuit from a developer who bought a piece of land near a transit center for just $1.

TriMet officials originally said they were in favor of the Allegro partly because it would have stood right next to a light-rail station, which would have encouraged more MAX ridership.

So, at this point, I’m a little confused. Wasn’t MAX supposed to encourage the development? But they need to pump money into development (in the form of the $1 sale of land) to encourage MAX ridership? What if they had just relied on buses until the development came about. Then they would only have had to pay for half of this chicken-egg equation.
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Earth day. In the 70’s it was a bunch of aging hippies trying to fight their growing insignificance. Now it’s a political firestorm being used as a way to gain support for raising taxes and stripping land owners of their property rights.

In case you are too young to remember, the last climate change scare was ‘the coming ice age’. The Washington Policy Institute put together a list of climate change quotes about the last climate hoax (Earth Day 2008: Predictions of Environmental Disaster Were Wrong). Just one example:

• Because of increased dust, cloud cover and water vapor “…the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born,” Newsweek magazine, January 26, 1970.

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Frank Rogers, a long-time Pierce County Republican and active member, has written an open letter to the state party chair, Luke Esser, regarding the handling of a vote at the convention last week.

I’ve been mulling over some concerns about that vote for the last week and couldn’t settle on how (or whether) to blog about it. Since this post is available, I guess I have a way to talk about it. What held me back from commenting was that I’m not well versed on parliamentary procedures at this point, so I wasn’t sure what to focus on. This open letter helped me find a way to address it.

After reading the letter I spoke with the convention parliamentarian (Alex Hays, see our discussion about another matter at the convention in the comments here.) His points about the County Executive endorsement vote were basically:
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