Promoting City Goals

["Wiliam K. Medlin" <dev-plan@moscow.com>]

Dear Visionaries:  City Govt's action once again to thwart any kind of
citizen-based goal-setting initiatives seems evident in Council's and Com.
Dev. Dept.'s posture in opposing a broader, citizen-linked base which would
bring more thinking and perspectives into urban planning and development
(M-PDN, 6-13-00). What indeed is wrong in providing for broader inputs,
requiring local govt. to consider all possible options when addressing the
issues that determine the future configurations -- landscapes, traffic
patterns, open spaces, congestion-generating actions, recreation, etc.--
that is, our overall "quality of life" here?
    Without pointing fingers, one can presume that whatever public policy
action tends to constrain in some way the hands of those who make the final
decisions on physical development here becomes "suspect". There is
political aversion to building broader support and trust in govt., the very
elements on which good govt. rests. These are the patterns that have led
American urban development over the past century, and esp. snce WW II, to
bulldoze our landscapes, promote megalopolis on each coast and the Great
Lakes basin, and more recently in the Southeast region. Goals? Where are
the goals that reflect peoples' concerns for quality of life.
    Every physical indicator of economic development shows steady
deterioration of the environment and human sustainability of life based on
present "models" of economic development. (I'll supply anyone who cares
with Goals don't imply some arbitrary, brain-twisted set of iron-clad
requirements, but rather a flexible array of guidelines whose
implementation can be checked against a set of standards that translate
into greater satisfactions in safety, health, food supply, recreation and
related life-fulfilling aspirations grounded in wholesome economic
pursuits. It means conservation, from the ethics of the Teddy Roosevelt era
and their rearticulation by ecological research findngs today, and uses of
our non-renewable natural resources in ways that can sustain our quality of
life.
    Moscow-Pullman and the Palouse remain one of the few islands left where
people can truly enjoy the best of our culture without having to submit to
the steady erosions of its natural and human bases carried out by
piece-meal development, without any perceptible goals, of our environment.
But govt's present course will lead ultimately to the same outcomes that
now scar most of the American landscape, scars that may never be removed.
    Who really cares about how we are drifting onto dubious paths, from
which there may be no turning back/  What do you say, visionaires, about
our present lack of vision?  Ken M.