More on community wind

As reported in today's Daily Record, Cascade Community Wind Company is asking the Board of County Commissioners to reconsider their unanimous decision against individually owned commercial-scale wind turbines. I don't think the BoCC should reconsider, but I do think the issue could have been handled better.

Here's what happened: the county was approached with an idea by a group of local farmers and by an engineering firm from Bellingham. Over the course of a year-and-a-half the county held who-knows-how-many meetings, all of which were attended by local farmers and a company engineer who drove almost 4 hours one-way each time. In the end, not even the commissioner who organized and led the open houses and public hearings voted for the proposal.

Let's say the engineer made a dozen trips, and ignore the time local people invested. That means he spent a hundred hours just driving to meetings. Of course, he viewed his time as a worthwhile investment, because he expected there was a reasonable chance that if he did a good job, all his effort would pay off. That's how business works.

Being in business is about managing risk, but being led on by the county isn't a risk anyone should have to accept.

I followed the community wind ordinance process, and went to two of the public meetings, plus the final one where the vote was taken. It seemed all along that the county wasn't putting much effort into making the ordinance work -- it had an unfinished feel to it, and it had some strange parts. For example, it would have allowed lattice wind towers. At one meeting I commented on this, saying I thought it was a bad idea.

Lattice towers were still allowed in the final ordinance -- and were cited by Commissioner Jewell as a reason he voted against it. Apparently the proponents of the ordinance wanted flexibility in tower design.

It doesn't matter if you were for or against the proposal, we should all care if and when the valuable time of so many people -- not to mention taxpayers' money -- is wasted by a process. Those in favor of the ordinance seem to have made a good faith effort, and the final ordinance largely reflected their wishes.

Virtually no significant new business development can happen in this county without the Board of County Commissioners' say-so. Any new business is going to look at what happened here and think twice about bothering to jump through the hoops. There are plenty of other places to locate business without having to play risky games with the BoCC.

Is Kittitas County open for business? It sure doesn't look like it.