Property Rights 101
The evolution of our county's Comprehensive Land Use Plan marks our participation in a classic struggle. When certain traditional rights of individuals are at odds with the interests of the broader community, do individuals have to give way? The answer is generally, yes, painful as it can sometimes be. The story of civilization is chapter after chapter on people defining fresh ways to cooperate as they become increasingly interdependent. Our current land use planning effort is an exercise in seeking a revised way to live together that will preserve the preferred, rural nature of this small county in the sea. In a few ways the rural goal may be at odds with the economic ambitions of some landowners. Such conflict is not new.
Communities are the products
of population pressures and needs or opportunities that cannot
be satisfied by individuals acting alone. Members of a community
tacitly agree upon a set of rules for living together. Normally
the intention is to promote harmony and mutual benefit. It takes
a community to define what is social and anti-social behavior.
For example, in recent memory the broader, national community
of which we are a part has decided that smoking in confined spaces
(restaurants, offices, airplanes) is no longer acceptable behavior.
It is anti-social. Individual smokers' rights, therefore, have
been downgraded in favor of the community's right to breathe
smoke-free air. Such a restriction would have been unthinkable
fifty years ago. Likewise, our county's 1997 rules on the use
of personal watercraft are another example of a community curtailing
individual freedom for the benefit of the greater good. It is
important to note, too, that no one suggested or suggests that
the community needs to pay the smokers or the PWC operators for
any rights they lost.
As the number of people in a community increase, the number of
rules increase. More people mean more complexity that leads to
more restrictions on free-wheeling, individual behavior. This
is inevitable. If you prefer to minimize infringements on your
personal freedoms, you had best work for the adoption of a tight
(low build-out population) Plan for our county. The prime issue
we currently face is whether we, the people, should basically
eliminate the further subdivision of land in order to preserve
the ruralness of San Juan County. It is clear that the general
community wishes to retain the rural character. This wish is
spelled out explicitly in the islanders-generated Vision statement
that is the preamble to Plan. The community has the legal right
to eliminate further subdivision. And it is certain that under
State law (Growth Management Act), the community has a mandate
to eliminate such subdivision or come up with the massive public
works necessary to accommodate the population that further subdivision
will encourage. The major unknown is whether we islanders have
the courage to do what needs to be done. Even with no further
subdivision we will experience a doubling of our current population
of 13,000.
The loudest voices against eliminating further subdivision are those who feel individual property rights are more important than community rights. Philosophically, property rights are a noble concept. But in the current Plan debate they are being misused. The word property means "something tangible or intangible, possessed or owned." Land is one form of property, but there are many others. Privacy is a form of property. Copyrights are a form of property. Peace and quiet are a form of property. Feeling safe is a form of property. Uncongested roads are a form of property. You and I own land, privacy, peace and quiet; collectively we own the current state of ruralness that is San Juan County. Just because the value of our intangible properties is hard to measure in terms of dollars does not make these properties less important. Collectively, our intangible property rights far exceed in total value the economic interests of the few people wishing to profit from selling subdivided San Juan County land. Besides, the hue and cry about potential economic losses on selected parcels here and there is mostly shallow rhetoric anyway. Everyone's land values are increasing. It is true that some landowners will lose some flexibility in terms of what they can do with their properties. But they will get over it. And we in the broader community won't owe them anything for their troubles-real or imagined.
A tight Plan for the years ahead is about the only protection for the "values prized by islanders," expressed in our Vision statement, namely, "independence, privacy, and personal freedom." No valid case can be made that further subdivision in San Juan County is in the community's interest. Of course there is going to be some pain produced by a new land use Plan-any new Plan. The purpose of government (of, by, and for the people) is to advance the interests of the community while giving full respect to due process. Government takes and gives with every important decision it makes.
Copyright © 2000, 2003 Steven C. Brandt.
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