Planning for the future of our community

We can all agree on some core characteristics that are important in our county. Some are rural character, wildlife and clean water.

We all know that property is not created equal, and all property can not be treated equally if we want to maintain those characteristics. This requires management.

Once those characteristics are lost, they are lost forever, and if we do not want our county to be just like all those counties we escaped from, we need to start now to do something different.

Historically, all counties have fought to preserve individual property rights - until the result of random development and incompatible uses has forced regulations to be enacted after the core characteristics have been lost.

People may blame the regulations - but it was the poorly managed development that caused the problems that created the regulations.

We need a balance between individual freedoms and preserving the core characteristics of our community.  The current revisions to the comp plan being proposed are not adequately looking at preserving the quality of our community for the future.

There is a public meeting to review the comp plan amendments at 1:30 p.m. March 18 at the Extension office.