Uncontrolled growth erasing an entire way of life
I have written previously regarding the rampant growth in our area, and the solution one community found and voted into their city codes. I have provided this to our county commissioners to no avail.
Recently I provided this information to the City of Post Falls, in an envelope addressed to the City Council. I received a reply from the Legal Services Director which reads in part “Idaho cities have not been authorized by the legislature to limit growth in this manner ... In Idaho, cities only have what authority has been granted to them by the Idaho Constitution or by state law and there is nothing in those documents that would authorize such a step."
My question is, what specifically prohibits this? Later in this response he references Idaho code 67-6511 and states “capping the number of building permits would likely run afoul of this requirement and is the equivalent of a moratorium." They LIKELY will run afoul of this requirement? Also, the word moratorium is defined as “a temporary prohibition of an activity.”
How is limiting the number of building permits prohibiting anything except unrestrained growth? That makes two ambiguities in the first two paragraphs. Legal semantics aside, what this is telling me is that the citizens, the taxpayers, the very people financing every aspect of Post Falls city government have absolutely no input into what kind of community they are to live, unless the State specifically says we can. This is not representative governance. I defy this gentleman or anyone else to find any individual who feels the area just isn’t growing fast enough.
We are constantly told to “get involved” but when something as universally agreed upon like controlling growth is met with indifference and stonewalling by our elected representatives, or gets passed to an unelected bureaucrat I am inclined to believe our votes DON’T count.
An entire way of life is being erased and the people we have elected offer platitudes and excuses to explain why they won’t make a decision or, in this case, even bother to reply. We are no longer being represented. We are being ruled. This growth controlling ordinance or something like it needs to be put on the ballot and let the people paying the bills decide in what type of community we are to live. There are always reasons NOT to do something, the vast majority of which involve following the path of least resistance. A path too often preferred by our elected “representatives.”
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Jim Cook is a Post Falls resident.