League of Kentucky Property Owners Board Meeting Review

At the January 15th Board meeting, the League met with Kevin Costello of the Boone County Planning Commission. We told him our concerns with the current draft of the 2000 Comprehensive Plan. Mr. Costello offered to include a League representative on an advisory board that the Planning Commission is setting up.

The League looks forward to working with the Planning Commission in the future and are pleased that they asked us for our input.

Cincinnati Post Response

The following is a response from a League member to a series of articles published in the Cincinnati Post regarding the "dangers" of urban sprawl.

Dear Editor:

Urban Sprawl has ignited a national debate over land use. About 20 states have established either state growth-management laws or task forces to protect farmland and open space.

Many cities and counties have adopted urban growth boundaries to contain development in existing areas and prevent the spread of urbanization to outlying and rural areas.

The reality is that urban growth is an opportunity and sprawl is not a problem as the environmentalists and planners claim. Actually only about 5 percent of America's land is developed, and three-quarters of the population lives on 3.5 percent of the land.

At least 38 of the states have more that 90 percent of their land in rural uses. And more than five times as much land is set aside in national parks, wilderness areas, federal forests and federal grazing lands that has been developed for housing and industry. Acreage in protected wildlife areas and rural parks exceeds urbanized areas by 50 percent.

Only about one-quarter of the farmland loss since 1945 is attributable to urbanization. Predictions of the future farmland loss based on past trends are misleading because farmland loss has been moderating since the 1960's, falling from a 6.2 percent decline in farmland per decade in the 1960's to a 2.7 percent decline in the 1990's. Also, with dramatic increases in agricultural output, American farmers are producing almost 50 percent more food than 1970, using less land.

I do not believe we can trust Planners to see the future. Recommendations using a 20, 30 or even a 50 year vision for a community inevitably adopt top down planning tools and government control of land to achieve policy goals. However, there is little evidence that governments are better suited than real estate markets and private conservation efforts to provide the kinds of homes and communities people want. Even many planners have acknowledged that "bad planning" (for example, large-lot zoning) was a significant contributor to the urban sprawl they now want to eliminate.

Let's reject the failed Soviet idea of a centrally planned utopia and instead embrace the truly American notion that tastes and lifestyles change and leave the money in the people's hands in the form of a tax cut allowing them, as free people, to choose their own housing and shopping arrangements. This would ensure the citizens their right to develop their property as they choose (be it for housing or as a private park), and since choice rather than socialism is more productive of happiness, it will increase the general welfare. Now there's a "smart growth" plan our Founding Fathers could get behind.

William Kunkel,
Union, Kentucky

League Survey Results

We mailed 925 questionnaires to property owners with 10+ acres in Western Boone County. The following are the results of that survey:

Do you favor Planning and Zoning restrictions on your property, and that of your neighbor, that disallows development?
Yes: 20%
No: 80%

Should Western Boone County be allowed to grow with the rest of the County without further restrictions from Planning and Zoning?
Yes: 78%
No: 22%

Many believe that Planning and Zoning kept items in the Comprehensive Plan that had been voted down by the Fiscal Court. Should Planning and Zoning be held accountable to the direction of Boone County's elected officials?
Yes: 85%
No: 15%

American Land Foundation Update

Last year, The American Land Foundation launched a bold effort to challenge one of the environmental community's most prized possessions - the Endangered Species Act. Hopefully, their case will reverse decades of abusive decisions, stringent regulations and bureaucratic red tape that has haunted thousands of landowners since 1973.

They believe their case is strong, sound and is one that is long overdue. Their next action will be to file a Motion for Summary Judgment, placing the federal government in a position to defend a law that is not only unconstitutional, but is a law that they cannot prove has ever saved a single species.

And that is only part of our mission at the American Land Foundation. CARA will return and will have to be defeated once again. The Clinton administration has inflicted more damage to the American landscape in the last six weeks of his administration than all of his entire reign in Washington. He has, with the stroke of a pen, locked down 60 million acres of forestland as wilderness, barred the cutting of timber on over 50 percent of all public land, and designated 13 national monuments using his executive powers. Hopefully, the Bush administration will reverse most of these actions.

In a recent interview discussing Clinton's environmental prowess, Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt said: "The radical property rights crowd are anarchists at heart, and I don't believe the American people will buy into that." Since when does believing in the Fifth Amendment to our U.S. Constitution make us anarchists? Arguably, that describes Mr. Babbitt.

Hopefully, with a new Administration in Washington, we will begin to see the fruits of some of our labor, but this will be a very difficult year for private property in America if Congress continues its agenda with CARA and the president doesn't reverse Clinton's travesties.

Dan Byfield, President
American Land Foundation

Urban Growth: An Opportunity, Not A Problem

For some odd reason urban sprawl - which is really nothing more that suburban development outside central urban areas - has sparked a national debate over land use. Indeed, in a survey of 1,000 registered voters, the Competitive Enterprise Institute found that two-thirds of the respondents identified "sprawl" as a concern.

Many people are frustrated with the traffic jams they associate with urban sprawl. Others who moved out of cities to get a taste of country life are disturbed to see the farms neighboring their homes disappear. Big city mayors blame suburban development for the decline of the inner cities. And environmentalists claim that suburban growth - for that's all "sprawl" is - damages the environment by contributing to air pollution and the development of scarce wild lands.

Are these charges true? Not really. Actually only about 5 percent of our land is developed, and three-quarters of the state have more than 90 percent of their land in rural uses. And more that five times as much land is set aside in national parks, wilderness areas, federal forests and federal grazing lands that has been developed for housing and industry - in the scheme of things, cities just do not take up that much space.

By: Pete du Pont, Opinion Editorial,
Idea House