Wants planning in county

Would you want to be part of a military unit or football team heading out onto the field without a clear strategy? How about buying shares in a company that didn't have a business plan ready for the years ahead?

Should the citizens of Flathead County have to live and raise families without any sense of what their valley's future will look like? Nobody's property rights are assured when every kind of development, no matter how big or noisy or dusty, is allowed almost everywhere, including right next door.

America's current economic crisis is a pretty powerful example of what can happen when people avoid regulations in order to make quick profits in the markets.

Here in the Flathead, while real estate development has been allowed to run rampant, the rest of us just keep paying the costs in the form of ever-higher property taxes to handle extra schools, fire and police personnel, sewage treatment, and road maintenance.

One Flathead County Commissioner candidate's policy seems to be "do whatever you want, and tough if the neighbors don't like it." I prefer "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That's really all good planning is.

As Steve Qunell also points out, working together to keep the special qualities of life in the Flathead is the best protection for our pocketbooks, too.

Douglas Chadwick

Whitefish