Greg Mecklem answers voters’ questions about Smart Growth

• Q: What is Smart Growth?
• A: It’s a way to grow without sprawling.  Smart growth keeps cities thriving and well served with transit, walkable neighborhoods, and housing choices near workplaces.  Smart growth protects rural resources and economies, so we still have clean air and water, fresh food and beautiful scenery around us.  Smart growth asks citizens’ help in designing improvements they’ll want to live with.  Smart growth saves our scarce tax dollars.
• Q: Aren’t we already doing Smart Growth here?
• A: Not well enough.  Precious farmland and natural areas are still at risk, and some are already designated as Urban Reserves.  If we expand urban edges rather than re-invest in urban improvements, we’ll all lose out.
• Q: Most voters do want to protect farm and forestland.  How can we make the changes we want to see in Washington County?
• A: We need Commissioners who will restore meaningful citizen involvement in all stages of planning.  County officials regularly confer with city officials, as they should, but it’s not enough.  Thousands of people living outside cities have no representation in critical discussions.  We need more than late-stage open houses and formal hearings to assure Smart Growth.
• Q: As District 4 Commissioner, what will you do to improve citizen involvement?
• A: I’ll work to set new priorities:
  1. Use our official, voluntary, Citizen Participation Organizations as intended: to advise, as well as to publicize, county projects.
  2. Change ongoing advisory committees (on transportation and other public projects) to include a range of stakeholder groups; foster balanced, thoughtful problem solving.
  3. When improvements are to be made in their areas, involve the communities in design and planning.
  4. Cultivate courtesy and good communication skills in all the County’s interactions with citizens – in phone calls, meetings, hearings, offices, clinics.  And I’m happy to lead by example.

Smart Growth Checklist
Smart Growth DOES…			Smart Growth DOES NOT…
	Use infill and redevelopment to make the best use of existing infrastructure.			Pave over more farmland and natural areas.
	Give communities a meaningful voice in community decisions.			Power-through bureaucratic ideas that respond to outside developer requests.
	Allow both urban and rural economies to thrive.			Destroy a stable, productive agriculture industry for speculative short-term profits.
	Support new jobs and new businesses, as well as old jobs and old businesses.			Leave factories empty when companies move overseas and locals are laid-off.
	Create walkable communities, served by transit, close to workplaces.			Cause more traffic, congestion, and pollution.
	Provide many opportunities for recreation and interaction with nature.			Leave the county with only one public park that requires a full tank of gas to get there!
	Conserve energy and protect resources.			Waste our land and water while others profit.
	Save taxpayer dollars.			Require exorbitantly expensive new infrastructure.
	Build a stable, sustainable, green economy, with energy- and food-independence.			Force us to depend on unstable world markets for our needs.
	Protect clean air, clean water, and the health of ours and other species.			Risk illness and wasted resources for lack of vision or courage to choose a better way.