Planning for a New Neighborhood

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Sustainable Bainbridge

Jon Quitslund

A few days ago, my wife and I took part in a four-hour workshop, in connection with the emerging plans for the Grow Community development.  All told, approximately forty people were involved in the afternoon’s brainstorming sessions.  Some were staff members and consultants associated with Asani LLC, the design firm responsible for the project; others (myself included) were interested citizens who had contributed to the development of a detailed Sustainability Action Plan for the project; still others were intrigued by the Grow Community plans and wanted to get involved.

Marja Preston, leader of the Asani team, said that when it is fully built out, the community will include roughly 50 units for sale and 80 rental units, varying in size and capacity in both categories.  On eight acres, with a significant amount of the acreage dedicated to gardens, pathways, open spaces, community buildings, and space for parking, the residents will be living close together.

Residents will not, however, come together haphazardly, to live on their own in a high-density development as individuals, couples, or families.  Under the auspices of One Planet Living and BioRegional (a non-profit dedicated to ‘solutions for sustainability’), the project asks to be understood as an ‘intentional’ (or, if you will, ‘aspirational’) community, making a truly radical commitment to sustainable living.

From the beginning of the project, a great deal of imagination and discussion has been devoted to the development of explicit design principles, principles of sustainability, and communitarian social principles.  Thursday’s workshop was devoted to furthering, not completing, that process.

We talked about individual rights and the value of privacy, peace, and quiet; we talked about sharing space, tools, and expertise.  We didn’t itemize a bill of rights and articulate a social contract or a set of by-laws, but these needs were recognized: as understandings to be negotiated, not as a ready-made charter.  We discussed how to draw out, and include in decision-making, people who tend to shy away from jostling groups of problem-solvers.

We talked about indoor and outdoor meeting places, large and small; we imagined the difficulties and opportunities that biologically unrelated members of several generations will encounter.  We planned for sharing kayaks, bikes, and cars; we envisioned sheds for shared tools, shelves for shared books; we discussed how to equip and use a community kitchen.  Sketches of fences, gateways, a garden and a lofty community center took shape.

Boundaries of several kinds – physical, metaphorical, mental and spiritual – were recognized as necessary, questionable, and negotiable.  Relationships of the Grow Community to surrounding neighbors and the Island in general are meant to be dynamic, promoting movement in and through and around the neighborhood.

I am keenly interested in the One Planet Community agenda, and I believe that the Grow Community represents a bright new model for infill development, adaptable elsewhere if it succeeds here.  The new neighborhood offers an attractive place for older couples like myself and my wife to ‘age in place.’  More important, I expect that it will appeal to younger individuals and couples – a vital portion of our population that has been declining for decades.

Like any development on Bainbridge that’s new and ambitious, this one is bound to attract misunderstanding and criticism.  I expect that as questions and objections are heard and answered, appreciation for the Grow Community’s ambitious agenda will grow.

The Planning Commission is due to begin its review of the Grow Community development on Thursday, February 9; the meeting will begin at 7 p. m.  Whether you are intrigued or troubled by the prospect of a boldly innovative addition to the population of Winslow, I would urge you to follow the Planning Commission’s review of this project.

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Crisis and Conscience

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Sustainable Bainbridge

Jon Quitslund

“You Americans, you’ve mastered the art of living with the unacceptable.”

– Breyten Breytenbach, quoted by Terry Tempest Williams

This post tracks a topic somewhat remote from our lives here on Bainbridge, but I believe that if we care only about local issues we’ll never make real progress toward the goals of sustainability.

The current issue of Orion (on sale at Eagle Harbor Books, and accessible at orionmagazine.org) begins the magazine’s thirtieth year of publication, and if you’re not already acquainted with Orion’s elegant and often unsettling considerations of nature, culture, and place, this issue is an excellent introduction.

After the photograph on the cover of a polar bear under water (by the world-class local photographer Art Wolfe), the first thing that caught my eye in the January / February issue was a long conversation between the writer Terry Tempest Williams and an activist, Tim DeChristopher.

It’s a deep, relaxed conversation; by the time I finished it I wasn’t relaxed at all, but deeply disturbed.

Mr. DeChristopher, as I dimly recalled, is the young man who disrupted a Bureau of Land Management auction of leases for rights to extract oil and gas from thousands of acres of public lands in Utah.  That was back in December of 2008, in the last lame duck days of the Bush administration.

The auction was held in a hurry, disregarding a law that required the BLM to weigh environmental impacts, on the land and on the global climate, of the resource development that would presumably flow from these leases.  Questions about the auction’s legality and its consequences attracted a number of protesters, who massed outside the building.

Tim DeChristopher was admitted to the auction and seated as bidder #70.  (Google “bidder 70 film” and you’ll find the trailer for a documentary that captures the occasion and its significance.)  At first, he only sought to drive up the prices of some leases, which typically offered very sweet deals to corporate oil and gas interests.  In the course of the day he became bolder, and made commitments to purchase several leases in order to prevent development.  The auction ended prematurely; eventually, most of the sales were invalidated.

Subsequently, Mr. DeChristopher was charged with two felony counts and found guilty in a jury trial; on July 26, 2011, he was sentenced to two years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine.  The severity of his sentence reflects not so much the seriousness of his crime, but his attitude in the course of the protracted judicial proceedings, maintaining his dignity and resisting the government’s portrayal of him as a threat to civil order and the rule of law.  Although his conviction is being appealed, he is in jail today – currently in a federal prison in Herlong, California.

Tim DeChristopher’s conversation with Terry Tempest Williams took place on May 28, 2011.  In it he anticipates prison time, and does so without fear for his loss of freedom and security.  Ms. Williams observes that he “has been in limbo for the last two years,” utterly uncertain about his future.  He replies, “I think part of what empowered me to take that leap and have that insecurity was that I already felt that insecurity. . . . My future was already lost.”

He had already been through a period of despair, having conferred with a climate scientist who said (in his words), “it’s probably too late to avoid any of the worst-case scenarios that we’re talking about.”  In response, he says, “I really felt like I was grieving my own future, and grieving the futures of everyone I care about.”  Adding to what Tim has said about despair and grieving, Terry says, “If you can go into that darkest place, you can emerge with a sense of empathy and empowerment.”

Tim accounts for his ability to move through despair and grief into activism – refusing to accept things as they are in our society – by describing his experience of freedom in the wilderness: in West Virginia, Arizona, the Ozarks, and eventually in Utah.  Returning from the Utah wilderness and going back to school, then attending the BLM auction, “watching parcels go for eight or ten dollars an acre, . . . I had this overwhelming sense that this is not acceptable.”

Loss, and fear of loss, are pervasive facts of life.  We can be ground down by losses, discouraged by fear of an uncertain future.  Or, in a crisis, we can rise up, as Tim DeChristopher did.  (A group of his friends maintain a website, peacefuluprising.org: visit it if you want to follow the ramifications of this story.)

Experience taught Tim DeChristopher that some losses are tolerable, and even to be welcomed. “I thought I was sacrificing my freedom, but instead I was grabbing onto my freedom and refusing to let go of it for the first time, you know?”

Just as Thoreau once invited Emerson to join him in jail for civil disobedience, Tim has encouraged others to follow his example, while recognizing that they may be more encumbered by responsibilities than he is as a single man of 29.  The point is to follow your conscience to your own form of freedom.

The interview in Orion was only the beginning of my learning curve, and you may be motivated, as I was, to go further.  Tim DeChristopher is not only passionate and brave; his experience has made him an eloquent leader.  (Yes! Magazine includes him in the “breakthrough 15” celebrated in the December 2011 issue, and you’ll find more about him on the yesmagazine website.)  After his sentencing on July 26, 2011, commondreams.org published (as “I Do Not Want Mercy . . .”) the long statement that he addressed to the court and the judge: it stands up well beside Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

And on August 30, grist.org published a letter from him, explaining why he didn’t accept the plea bargain that would have reduced his sentence to 30 days in jail.  Here’s a piece of it: “Sometimes it seems that the government has learned more from our social movement history than we as activists have. Their willingness to let a direct action off with a slap on the wrist while handing out two years for political statements comes from their understanding of the power of an individual.”

Words can make a difference, but only if they are allied with action – the more the merrier.

Posted in Activism, Civil Disobedience, Climate Change | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Notes for the New Year

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Sustainable Bainbridge

Jon Quitslund

My contributions to this website were sporadic last year, and attracted little attention.  I am committed to writing more in the year ahead, and I want to attract more readers and other writers to the site, as respondents and initiators of discussion and action.

As I turn over a new leaf, my starting point is a quotation from the late Tony Judt, reflecting on the work of writers like himself: “What we are doing is bizarre. We are engaging in an intellectual exercise that will not have world-shattering consequences, and we are doing it in spite of that. Obviously this is the condition of most people who write: throwing a letter into the ocean in the forlorn hope that it will be picked up.”  Mr. Judt captures well the isolation that serious writers experience, and the longing for tenuous but meaningful connections that moves them to persist in their efforts.

Tony Judt was a prolific and well-connected writer, whose words made waves that reached readers far from his home in Manhattan.  I’m neither so gifted nor so ambitious as Judt, so I don’t dream that what I write could ever have world-shattering consequences, but I still harbor a hope that my opinions will have an impact on the thoughts and actions of others.  I’ll redouble my efforts.

I plan to respond in some blog posts to current cultural events on Bainbridge, especially those sponsored by Sustainable Bainbridge.  Occasional items will precede the events and promote participation, and others will report afterwards, for the benefit of people who were unable to attend.

Other posts will offer reflections on things I’ve read or heard.  Sometimes in my restless reading, a sentence or a paragraph catches my eye and produces a train of thought that’s pertinent to experience and issues here on Bainbridge.  Similarly, conversations with friends and encounters around town may provide an “Ah Hah!” moment.  I’ll try to capture and build upon those random occurrences.  I’ll also be writing book reviews, as I’ve done in the past, and I’ll refer curious readers to online sites for news and opinion.

I don’t plan to comment on City Council politics and the inner workings of COBI: others are better informed about those problems and personalities than I am.  I may comment on matters that come before the Design Review Board and the Planning Commission for review.  Deliberations in those meetings enable citizens to participate in the formation and implementation of land use and community development policies at the problem-solving stages.

I’ll follow this post soon with some thoughts occasioned by the current issue of Orion magazine.

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My ‘Rosy Scenario’ Risotto

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Sustainable Bainbridge

Jon Quitslund

With my wife out of town, I’ve enjoyed cooking for myself – when I’m not eating out.  Last night I made a savory risotto, and today, as I anticipated eating the leftover portion and finishing the bottle of wine, I thought I would write up the recipe and post it, to while away the time before election returns start coming in.

I always approach the evening on election day in a ‘rosy scenario’ mood, hoping that all my picks on the ballot will be winners.  I call this risotto ‘rosy’ on account of the color derived from the red chard.  Fix it for yourself and you’ll see what I mean.  The amounts in the recipe that follows will provide a main course for two or two meals for one person.

Ingredients:

3 to 4 cups of chicken stock (2 cups of a rich home-made stock, diluted)

olive oil (two tablespoons or more)

a medium-sized red onion, or half of a larger onion, finely chopped

most of a large bunch of red chard – leaves chopped after removing the stems, and stems finely chopped to sauté with the onions

a cup of Arborio rice

½ cup or more of a dry white wine

½ cup of walnuts, chopped into small pieces and toasted

½ cup (or less to taste) of Gorgonzola cheese or a rich blue cheese such as Pt. Reyes, chopped in bits or crumbled

salt and pepper to taste

Start by gathering together and prepping all the ingredients.  Have the chicken stock simmering on a back burner as you start to sauté the onion over medium heat.  Use a good olive oil and don’t skimp; you need enough to coat the rice when it’s added.  When the diced onion has begun to soften, add the red chard stems; sauté until they have softened and given up some color.  Add the rice and stir everything together for a minute or so, until white spots emerge in the centers of the rice grains.  Then add the wine and stir until it is absorbed.  Tweak the heat so the cooking and boiling-off of liquid is neither too fast nor too slow.  Warm your plate(s) or bowl(s) in a 200 degree oven.

Add the broth, ¾ of a cup at a time, stirring, until the rice begins to soften (about 10 minutes).  Add the chopped chard leaves, with ½ cup increments of broth; stir for a while, then lower the heat and put a lid on the sauté pan for a few minutes (altogether, another 10 minutes).

When the rice is right between firm and tender, stir in the cheese until everything is creamy, then add salt and pepper and the toasted walnut bits.  Your risotto is ready.

Posted in Food, Recipes | Leave a comment

“Nonconforming” Shoreline Development (Part II)

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Sustainable Bainbridge

Jon Quitslund

I’m bound to acknowledge that the term “nonconforming” arouses some people, and it worries others.  Senate bill 5451 was written in response to a politically significant concern.  In the end, the legislature didn’t deal conclusively with the issue of nonconformity: first they minimized its importance, then they left the matter up to local decision-makers.

The legislature declared, “Classifying existing structures as legally conforming will not create a risk of degrading shoreline natural resources.”  What this says, in effect, is that whatever you call an existing structure – conforming or nonconforming – has no bearing on the real world of shoreline natural resources.

Next, the legislature addressed communities developing new or amended SMPs: they are allowed to decide how to regard nonconforming structures and uses.  The bill itemizes the ways in which existing residential structures might, because of their size or location on a waterfront lot, be nonconforming, and says that local SMPs “may include provisions authorizing” them.

What, exactly, does “authorizing” mean in this context?  I’ve been saying all along that nonconforming status authorizes the indefinite continuation of structures that pre-date changes in land use regulations.

It appears that our SMP might drastically reduce, and maybe even eliminate, references to pre-existing structures and uses as nonconforming, even though they are out of line with the SMP’s requirements.  We may do this, but why should we?

What will be accomplished if the Planning Commission and the Council bow to the exaggerated claims of property rights advocates – if they wave a magic wand and turn nonconforming into conforming properties?

But wait: there are no magic wands.  We don’t live in a world imagined by J. K. Rowling.  I’ve tried to imagine how the section in the SMP draft devoted to “Nonconforming Development” might be rewritten once the concept of nonconformity has been banished, and I’ve come up empty.  I think that trying to eliminate nonconformity (the word, mind you — not the thing itself) will impose a net loss of clarity on our regulations and have a cumulative impact on attempts to treat all the different shoreline properties and property owners fairly.

When I looked closely at the final version of the workgroup recommendations on nonconforming development, I couldn’t find a solid basis for the objections raised by property rights advocates.  (See “Regulatory Regimes and Citizens’ Resistance,” another post on this site, for more on this subject.)

This is how the goal of the SMP section devoted to nonconforming development is described in the draft dated July, 2011:

It is the purpose of this program to ultimately, over time, have uses and commercial structures conform to the provisions of this program. Uses and commercial structures that do not conform to the standards of this program should be eventually phased out. Residential structures which do not conform to this program should, over time, be brought into conformity as completely as possible, with due regard to unique site conditions and property rights.

Notice the distinction made between commercial and residential structures, and the “due regard” given to the rights of shoreline property owners.  This distinction was not made in the draft dated February 9, 2011.  I don’t blame shoreline residents for being upset by the earlier draft, but I have to wonder what part of the current policy statement is objectionable.

Nonconforming shoreline residences are not at risk of being “eventually phased out.”  The Shoreline Management Act, which our SMP must not contradict, is primarily concerned with protection of the environment, but it recognizes private property rights and designates single family residences as a “preferred use” of shoreline property.  (“Public access” is also a preferred use, in those parts of the shoreline not privately owned.)

The enumerated policies in the current SMP draft go a long way toward satisfying those who find nonconforming status an intolerable burden.  Here’s an example:

5.  Legally established nonconforming commercial structures which are located in the shoreline jurisdiction are to be phased out over time. Depending on the extent and intensity of the nonconformity, a primary residential structure and primary appurtenance may be allowed certain alteration or expansion, provided that adverse impacts to shoreline ecological functions and shoreline processes are mitigated or restored.

This policy recognizes that nonconformities are not all created equal; they vary in “extent and intensity.”  Some residential properties may be only technically at odds with the new SMP regulations.  (I would look at intrusions into a buffer zone in that light.)  Some waterfront lots may be too small to permit alteration or expansion, but SMP regulations didn’t create that problem.

It’s been said that nonconformity will make it difficult for shoreline property owners to obtain a mortgage or an insurance policy.  If this is true, it’s a recent development.  (At the bank that holds my mortgage, I’ve been assured that nonconforming status is not an issue, so long as the house was legally built and rebuilding is permitted.)

The Planning Commission and the Council will have to weigh the evidence and arguments brought forward by concerned citizens.  In a community such as ours, policy makers won’t be able to satisfy everyone, but if they aim for the goals of clarity and fairness, we will all be better off.

Posted in Environment, Property Rights, Shoreline Management Program, Shorelines | Leave a comment

Regulatory Regimes and Citizens’ Resistance

Posted on August 11, 2011 by Sustainable Bainbridge

Jon Quitslund

The specific instances of controversy over our SMP update lead me to some general reflections on regulations in our community, and the angry resistance that has been mounted against them.

There’s a broad historical background to this resistance, and I’d like to bring it into focus before turning to the specific local issues.  Let’s note first the growth of a conservative (or, as I would prefer to call it, reactionary) movement in the field of constitutional law.

Property rights claims figure prominently in this movement.  Regulatory regimes at the state and local levels have been subjected to legal challenges that may seem sporadic, based on support at the grass roots level, but many of these challenges have been sponsored by a systematic and ideologically driven effort to change our legal system and the basic values on which it rests.

Within the polarized terms of our current culture, private interests in freedom and economic advantage have been pitted against concern for the good of the general public and the integrity of resources (such as clean air, clean water, forests, wildlife, and open space) that belong to all of us, or to none of us.

It should be said that even necessary and justifiable regulations are bound to provoke reactions and rejection in some parts of our citizenry.  Throughout American history there’s a brave and honorable tradition of protest against bad laws and overreaching by legislators, lawyers, and judges.  There’s also a not so honorable tradition of overreaching by powerful private and corporate interests.

If you believe “that government is best which governs least,” you may consider most forms of regulation to be necessary evils at best, and you’ll like a law when it prevents your neighbor from harming you, but not when it limits your freedom.

Nationwide, many regulatory regimes and legislative and judicial actions have been challenged on the basis that they involve unconstitutional “takings” of property without due compensation.  In Washington state, ever since 1992, early in Christine Gregoire’s first term as Attorney General, local jurisdictions have been formally advised to avoid “regulatory takings.”  The latest version of Avoiding Unconstitutional Takings of Private Property dates from December, 2006.

The memorandum defines takings and counsels against overreaching, but it also acknowledges that valid regulations will have some impact on property values.  I quote: “The constitutional principles discussed in this Advisory Memorandum do not require compensation for every decline in the value of a piece of property.”

Caution on the part of regulatory agencies and local governments has not stopped the most vehement advocates of property rights from claiming that ordinances regulating land use and protection of the environment involve unconstitutional takings.  The notion that to render an existing use or structure “nonconforming” constitutes a “regulatory taking” would be a far-fetched argument if the matter is ever litigated.

Protests against takings were heard during the long ruckus surrounding our Critical Areas Ordinance, and it’s no surprise that they are being heard now in connection with the Shoreline Management Program.

These protests need to be heard; without them, our public process would be incomplete.  And they should be answered cogently, not brushed aside, especially when they are pertinent to specific passages in the draft SMP, and when concerned citizens offer alternative language and present decision-makers with policy choices.

Posted in Community, Environment, Property Rights, Shoreline Management Program | Leave a comment

“Nonconforming” Development and the SMP

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Sustainable Bainbridge

Jon Quitslund

As the updating of our Shoreline Management Program proceeds, one of the contentious issues to be dealt with will be “nonconforming” development.

That’s the terminology used in the current SMP and the draft now under review by the Planning Commission and the Council, referring to “uses and/or structures which were lawfully constructed or established prior to the effective date” of the revised SMP, “but which do not conform to present regulations or standards.”

An intensely interested group of Bainbridge Island citizens wants to eliminate such language from the SMP; they claim that the “nonconforming” label takes something away from the value of shoreline property.

References to nonconforming development have had a place in land use regulations and planning ever since zoning laws were developed early in the 20th century.  Until recently, no one has regarded nonconforming status as problematic.

Plenty of nonconforming uses and/or structures exist, and have existed for decades, in many parts of the Island.  If your house was built before 1980, there’s a good chance that in some respects the property is not in conformity with all current and pertinent land use regulations.  You might not know it, and you’d have no need to know unless you were planning a major renovation that would change the footprint of your house or some other permanent structure.

Nonconformity is not illegal – not now, and not in the future.  State law doesn’t allow you to modify a structure in a way that increases its nonconformity, but you’re still free to improve your property in many ways.  You might find it to your advantage to bring your house closer to full compliance with current regulations, but such a decision is up to you, not to planners or the code compliance officer.

Before considering some of the regulations that will apply to nonconforming shoreline development if the language now in draft form is ultimately adopted by the Council, we need to look at a law that was enacted during the recent legislative session in Olympia.

Senate Bill 5451 provides guidance on nonconforming structures that is applicable statewide and pertinent to the revision of our SMP.  In its original form, SB 5451 stipulated that the following statement must be included in Shoreline Management Plans: “A structure legally established or vested on or before the effective date of a master program must be considered a conforming structure.”  This blunt language did not survive debate, however; the House and Senate eventually adopted a substitute bill that gives local jurisdictions a choice: continue to recognize and regulate nonconformity, or find some way to finesse it.

In the substitute SB 5451, enacted in April, this language appears: “Updated shoreline master programs must include provisions to ensure that expansion, redevelopment, and replacement of existing structures will result in no net loss of the ecological function of the shoreline.”  This is consistent with the established understanding that nonconforming structures may remain indefinitely, so long as nothing is done to increase their nonconformity.

Application of the “no net loss” standard, going forward but not retroactively, provides owners of nonconforming structures with a good deal: even if it can be shown that the nonconforming development had in the past imposed some loss of ecological function on the shoreline, its continuation will not be regarded as a “net loss,” but as a feature of the status quo against which losses and gains will be measured.

Further, in the draft regulations now being reviewed, changes in a nonconforming property are permissible if the owner can show that they add up to no net loss.

So why the big fuss over the term “nonconforming”?  It simply refers to facts of history and present-day reality.  Shoreline conditions change, and our understanding of what’s appropriate to promote beach stability and a healthy ecosystem changes as well, so regulations change too.  The new regulations apply most stringently to new development, of course, and existing development has to be accommodated indefinitely, along the lines described above.

In a community with a history going back to the middle of the 19th century, in which shoreline properties were the first to be developed, there are bound to be properties that don’t conform to all requirements of the current SMP, let alone the update that’s now under discussion.  As we go forward, we should be true to our history and retain the useful terminology of nonconformity.

I’ll have more to say on this topic in another post.

Posted in Shoreline Management Program, Shorelines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Our Shoreline Management Program & the Common Good

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Sustainable Bainbridge

Jon Quitslund

The Planning Commission and the City Council met in a joint session on July 21st.  The event marked the conclusion of a huge effort by groups of citizens, City staff, and consultants to draft a new Shoreline Management Program.  Now the hard work of the Commission and the Council begins; debates and decisions will occur in open meetings, with opportunities for concerned citizens to contribute.

Participants proceeded briskly through their agenda, and the meeting, which included time for public comment, ended ahead of schedule.  The two deliberative groups have developed a tight schedule for working in tandem on a final form for shoreline regulations, hopefully before the end of 2011.

The meeting was routine, even boring, but commissioners and council members went away with big, fat briefing books, and interested citizens like myself picked up maps and sheafs of paper summarizing proposed changes in the SMP.

During the period reserved for public comment at the end of the meeting, Gary Tripp offered some criticism of the work that’s been done so far, and raised a pointed question: “What kind of a community do we want here?”  (These may not be Mr. Tripp’s exact words, but I think I’ve captured his meaning.)

I hear questions like this voiced often on Bainbridge, whenever some kind of change is in the wind.  In spite of the perennial “Here we go again!” reaction, the question is worth pondering.  Mr. Tripp’s implication was that when all is said and done in an updating of the Shoreline Master Program, the City is likely to impose a regulatory regime that will spoil our community, or at least spoil it for the people who, now and in the foreseeable future, reside along our many miles of waterfront.

I doubt that I can reassure Mr. Tripp, but he has prompted me to offer some thoughts about the kind of community we have here.  There’s always room for improvement, but I think that a strong sense of place holds us together pretty well.  A shared delight and pride in our island as a whole, not just the small parts of it that individuals own outright, persists despite our vulnerability to changes that we may not be able to control.

In spite of our problems, Bainbridge Island remains a robust and resilient community.  I doubt that any regulatory regime that makes it through the exhaustive public process designed for our SMP will be able to spoil what we value here.  More likely, it will make us stronger.

Our social fabric and interactions have a lot in common with the nearshore environment that does so much to determine a communal sense of place on our island.  It’s usually peaceful here, but there are storms – heavy rains and high tides, tirades and long meetings in City Hall.  Nothing is entirely stable.  We have to come to terms with flux; in our social and our natural environments we participate in dynamic, somewhat unpredictable systems.

Bainbridge Island, its population, and its local culture have changed enormously since I came here as a child in 1945, but in fundamental ways it is still the same place, and many continuities are evident across the decades of my lifetime.

From the beginnings of settlement here by non-native pioneers, we’ve had a very diverse population, and getting along with others hasn’t always been easy.  In the old days people clustered in close-knit neighborhoods and ethnic groups; now they gather and form committees based on cultural values and political principles.

Local government is certainly more complex and ambitious than it used to be; individual lives here are more complex and ambitious than they used to be.  And there are many more of us, here on Bainbridge and throughout the Puget Sound region, making an ever-larger impact on the natural resources that we hold in common and need to protect for future generations.

The combination of an increasing population and diminishing or degraded natural resources requires more careful regulation of many human activities than earlier generations experienced here.

For some of our citizens, regulations designed to promote the common good are apt to infringe upon individual freedoms and property rights.  Some of these concerns strike me as legitimate; others, especially what’s been said about the specter of “nonconformity,” involve exaggeration and run counter to common sense.

This is the first in a series of posts discussing salient issues pertaining to the Shoreline Management Program.  The views expressed are my own, independent of the Sustainable Bainbridge organization.  I welcome responses from any interested members of our community.

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Resilient and Sustainable

Posted on June 26, 2011 by Sustainable Bainbridge

Jon Quitslund

In a news story anticipating the Frog Rock Forum, Sallie Maron is quoted: “Would you want a sustainable marriage or a resilient one?”  She was justifying the Forum’s emphasis on building a resilient community.  I see some danger that the terms “sustainable” and “sustainability,” having become shopworn from too much handling by touts and browsers in the lifestyle bazaar, will be set aside as white elephants.

This would be a shame.  It’s a shame that “sustainability” became a buzzword before the general public came to grips with the concept’s meaning and implications.   Choices and habits that are authentically sustainable, several generations down the line, will be necessary in the long run – if there is to be a long run in the future for the human race.

Resilience, it seems to me, pertains to our happiness in the present and our plans for the near future: it involves responding to opportunities and solving problems when they present themselves.  Sallie is right: resilience is a more accessible and appealing idea than sustainability.  Just remember the conventional marriage vows: “for better or worse, in sickness and in health” – that’s resilience, and it makes the world go around.

Building a resilient community won’t be easy; we’re only getting started.  But the Frog Rock Forum displayed many of our resources and made them better known.  Here on Bainbridge we have a lot to work with, and I’m happy to see that people are showing up to do the work.

Our resilient community may, if we’re persistent and fortunate, become a sustainable one.  Such an outcome will require long-range planning, leadership, teamwork, and sacrifice: a challenge much more daunting than the ideal of resilience in a marriage and family life.

As you probably know already, the sustainability agenda is threefold: environmental, economic, and socio-cultural.  And sustainable practices in each sector are related to the others; it’s a comprehensive vision of a future radically different from the present.

Why?  Because the future, like it or not, will be radically different from the world as we know it, whatever we do and don’t do.  James Howard Kunstler, who first described the era we are entering as “The Long Emergency,” has identified “the urgent issues of our time – climate change, peak oil, ecological destruction, the crisis of banking and money, population overshoot, and war.”  (The quotation is from “Back to the Future,” an essay about cities of the future in the current issue of Orion magazine: check it out, along with the website, orionmagazine.org.)

We won’t solve those global problems here and now, but in our current cultural and political situation, we can’t expect adequate responses to come from the top down.  That’s frightening, but let’s look on the bright side: around the world, on both national and local levels, examples of resilience and sustainability are taking shape and gaining leverage every day.

We just need to wake up and pay attention.  That includes paying attention to our own inner resistance to change, as well as to the understandable reluctance of powerful vested interests, who must feel they have much to lose, and more to gain from doing business as usual – never mind the consequences and the diminishing returns.

Climate change – to take the first and most momentous of the issues mentioned by Kunstler – has been called “the greatest moral challenge our species has ever faced.”  It’s also been called a “hoax,” of course, but that reaction to all the scientific evidence of inevitable and destructive consequences only adds weight to the moral challenge of climate change.

Here in the Northwest we’ll be spared the worst effects of extreme weather events and changes in seasonal temperatures, but on Bainbridge we’re likely to see gradual and substantial changes around our beloved shorelines.  Responding to these and other changes will tax our capacity for resilience.

So let’s get together now to develop a more resilient community; let’s make hay while the sun shines.  We need a more robust local economy, more cohesive neighborhoods, more ingenuity in our own lives, generous responses to the creativity of others, less waste in our energy usage – make your own additions to the list, and find a focus for your involvement.

Posted in Climate Change, Community, Economy, Environment, Shorelines | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Cuban Sustainability Experience

Posted on May 22, 2011 by Sustainable Bainbridge

Several years ago, Sustainable Bainbridge sponsored a film entitled The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. It was a powerful story about the struggle of the Cuban people following the loss of support from the Soviet Union, focused particularly on the growth of urban agriculture as a means of providing desperately needed food for the populace.

In late March, I was able to visit Cuba on a humanitarian mission, and to observe many parts of the culture.  Flying over the island prior to landing, I wondered at the lack of cultivated fields, other than what appeared to be cane fields.  I had imagined that this island would by now be providing most of the food needed by the resident population, inasmuch as they had been through the experience of having supplies cut off quite suddenly, thus necessitating a new approach.  What I found was somewhat different from what I had expected.  A surprisingly large percentage of food is actually imported from the U.S., in spite of the continuing embargo of Cuba by the U.S. government.  Since 2002, the U.S. has been the largest supplier of agricultural products and food to Cuba.  Other providers are Canada and Mexico.  As the global economic situation has impacted Cuba, the amount of food imported from the U.S. has declined due to a lack of hard currency which must be paid in advance of delivery of products from the U.S.  Cuba’s primary crops are tobacco (for their famous cigars) and cane, both of which are exported, as is the rum that is produced in the country.  These crops are important not for feeding their people, but for generating hard currency which can be used to purchase things which are not manufactured or grown on the island.

What of the basic premise of socialistic equality that underlies the Cuban experiment?  That, too, is shattered by the current reality.  Each person still receives a monthly ration book.  In the past, this provided the basic supplies for a person, including rice, beans, cooking oil, eggs, clothing, soap and other toiletries, and more.  Over the years, however, providing these goods equally to each Cuban has stressed the resources of the government, and the provisions included in the current monthly ration have greatly diminished.  Now the food that is provided barely covers 10 days of food for the person, with the exception of the rice allowance.  And fewer and fewer supplies are included in the ration book; most recently soap, detergent and toothpaste have been dropped.  So people must seek ways to obtain hard currency so they can buy the food and things they need.

Cubans are paid in Cuban pesos, which have very little value, and are only a fraction of the value of the hard currency of the country.  The pesos are accepted only in peso stores, which carry a limited number of items.  The other stores in the community trade only in the hard currency.  Where do people obtain that?  Relatives outside of the country send remittances to them, or they work in jobs where they have contact with tourists who provide tips in the hard currency.  As a result of this dual currency system, there now is a big gap between those who have access to hard currency, and those who don’t.  Not exactly a testament to the socialist ideal of equality.  The need for hard currency is luring people from professions such as medicine, engineering, and teaching to the tourism industry, where you may find a neurosurgeon working as a bartender at a hotel frequented only by tourists.  Our guide for the trip was a former teacher who is now working for the Cuban travel industry.

There are some aspects of the island country which have been preserved by the lack of development, and which are contributing to environmental sustainability.  Chief among these is the high cost of gasoline, which means there are not many cars on the road.  That is augmented by the fact that there aren’t many cars to be had by the average Cuban (all cars must be imported), and yes, it is true that you can see many vintage American cars still running, albeit with totally remade mechanical parts.  But the fact that every Cuban doesn’t have a car means that there are not roads taking up huge swaths of land across the country.  There are lines of hitch-hikers along the roads that do exist, hoping for a ride to wherever they are going.  The buses and train system appear problematic – lines of people were seen waiting for buses which were terribly crowded and which often bypass stops due to being totally stuffed with riders.  The train system poses problems in obtaining tickets for irregular and unreliable train schedules.  And broken-down buses are sighted along the roadways.  The lack of tourists from the U.S., who presumably would come in greater numbers than those from Mexico, Canada and Europe, has also meant that the drive (and investment funds) to develop extensive tourism resorts and golf courses has been muted to this point in time.  One result of that is that some ecosystems are still largely intact, as there hasn’t yet been pressure to develop them.

There is still a very strong internalized (and Committee for the Defense of the Revolution-enforced) prohibition against speaking out about problems, and answers to questions were sometimes evasive.  Given that the government is in control of everything, from owning or in some way controlling every business, to determining where a Cuban works, where s/he lives, how much a person is paid, what can be read or otherwise accessed (there is no internet access for Cubans, the press is what is published and broadcast by the government), it is difficult to imagine how the very repressive aspects of this system are ever going to change.  Being in Cuba at the time of great unrest in the Middle East, I had thought there might be stirrings of dissent in Cuba, until I learned that the scenes in Cairo that mesmerized much of the world were never available to the Cubans.  The outside sources of news gleaned from phone calls from family members abroad become diffused over time and distance as tidbits are passed from person to person – the immediacy of watching world events on CNN is not available to the Cuban residents of this isolated island.

While I came away from Cuba with many unanswered questions, it was surprising to me to realize that even under the aegis of an omnipresent government dictating nearly every aspect of life, this society had not become self-sufficient nor particularly sustainable (especially in the economic realm) over the past 52 years.

Maradel Gale

Posted in Community, Cuba, Economy, Environment, Films, Food, Place | 1 Comment