Schnaubelt Comments to Diane Jacobs

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Fred Schnaubelt

Supervisor Dianne Jacob, economic freedom is up to you

Supervisor Jacob v. Federal Reserve Freedom Index

First published in San Diego Transcript Feb. 11, 2011

The St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank published an Economic Freedom Index for employment growth for individual states in its January/February issue of Review. The study, "Economic Freedom and Employment Growth in U.S. States," by Thomas Garrett and Russell Rhine, "finds that states [and local governments] with greater economic freedom -- defined as the protection of private property and private markets operating with minimal government interference -- experience greater rates of employment growth." (research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/11/01/JanFeb2011Review.pdf)

Supervisor Jacob: It's up to you with the most underdeveloped supervisorial district to determine if "economic freedom" is in the county's future, and if that future will be one of prosperity or malaise?

Throughout many public hearings on the new General Plan (GP) your colleagues seemed not to comprehend the anxiety of landowners over the GP Update: That it will crush our children, raise "all" housing costs, constrict our economy in which they'll mature, limit affordable housing opportunities, make San Diego poorer, and do in the American Dream.

Rural landowners are alarmed over the new GP not because they are developers, or greedy as often charged, not because they are cheap, not because they are selfish, but because they care about what will be left for their children when they are gone. Land they have preserved, protected and stewarded in some cases for generations is to be controlled and future use determined by unaccountable bureaucrats who neither own anything in the back country, live in the back country nor understand the back country.

County planners, in the worst of all embarrassments, incur the ridicule of having to have their explanations explained. In thousands of pages they criticize everything, analyze everything, argue upon everything, dogmatize upon everything, and show no more concern for the hopes, dreams, feelings, habits, foibles and pursuits of rural landowners than they would for a bunch of old clothes left on a doorstep for disabled veterans.

The current General Plan has resulted in a waiting list of 41,000 families for housing (Union-Tribune, 1/25/11). Some plan! Incredibly, the new General Plan proposes to eliminate 42,000 currently zoned potential dwelling units that can't help make things worse. This is not planning, this is not planning for adequate housing, this is not planning for "employment growth" -- this is planned chaos.

It is a plan for Ramona, a plan for Alpine, a plan for Valley Center, a plan for 30 communities, a plan all worked out that dooms trustful back country folk, and of course, for the "environmentalists." A plan Daniel Webster would call, if alive today; "a detestable fraud on the community; a double fraud; a fraud which is to cheat people out of their property, and out of their equities, by first cheating them out of their understandings."

                                         Schnaubelt, president of Citizens for Private Property Rights, has been a commercial real estate broker
                                         for 39 years and was a San Diego city councilman from 1977-81.

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