'Welcome back, Smart Growth'

Pat Durkin's column in the Green Bay Press Gazette sports section puts the Smart Growth issue into perspective:

All hunters, anglers, trappers and anyone else who cares about the resources, beauty and commerce of rural Wisconsin should feel relieved that Gov. Jim Doyle used his veto powers this week to restore the state’s Smart Growth Program.

Even so, one wonders why this program ever required rescue. As laws go, Smart Growth is one of the few that can be embraced by liberals and conservatives alike to justify their beliefs on how best to maintain rural Wisconsin’s values, culture and economic strength.

The law directs communities to use public forums and meetings to adopt comprehensive long-range plans for land-use and development by 2010. But halfway to that target date, along came the legislature’s increasingly infamous Joint Finance Committee. On a 10-6 vote in May, the JFC killed the program’s modest $2 million in grants to help communities create and adopt the plans.

Whew. Why not just go to the estimated 40 percent of Wisconsin’s communities already taking part in this process and kick their chairs and spit on their copy machines?

Some of us naively believe cooperative long-range planning is the only chance we have to maintain rural Wisconsin’s character and increase its economic strength. We can only marvel at the mental gymnastics required by the program’s opponents to transform Smart Growth into a big brother, anti-realtor, green-powered conspiracy against the little guy.

Let’s not forget that Smart Growth came into being in 1999 when Tommy Thompson occupied the governor’s mansion. No one ever worried that Thompson might stare down a bulldozer or lash himself into the treetops to make a statement against urban sprawl.

I would think a fiscal conservative would look at rural traffic jams and ponder how to get all those SUVs off the farmer’s back so he doesn’t have to wait so long to cross the highway and get back to plowing. Or maybe this tax-pincher should wonder how much school districts could save if they weren’t continually expanding bus routes and stopping each bus every 100 yards to pick up one kid per every 5-acre parcel of subdivided land.

As those thoughts marinate, the free-market philosopher might consider the road itself and ponder the mounting maintenance costs of bridges, gravel, cement, snow-removal and upgraded power lines as commuters replace farmers and cattlemen, and Marts replace tractor-supply dealers.

He should also question those folks who profess love for rural living but never noticed its seamier side until their septic backed up, the wind shifted, or they had to tote their own garbage to the landfill. Didn’t they realize rural living costs more time, money, patience, planning and routine labor?

Smart Growth isn’t just about managing urban sprawl or dictating which house colors won’t clash with scenic vistas. The reality of rural life is that everyone and everything is connected, whether it’s through wildlife, tourism, forestry, agriculture, forestry, housing or commerce. Only by working together to accommodate shared or competing interests can we have any hope of sustainable growth and thriving rural economies.

Most people who grow up in rural Wisconsin know intelligent, profitable land use requires interaction and planning. After all, the silent anarchy of inaction and neglect has never proven itself a good business model.