Economic Development Plan #3,000

On the schedule today was a visit to the monthly Taxpayers’ Association (TA) here in Point Roberts.  I don’t often go to their meetings because I think they must meet when I’m not here.  But they met and I’m here.  And there is news, of sorts.

When I got there, a tad late, one attendee was waxing—well, not rhapsodic, but perhaps the opposite of rhapsodic: frenentic?—on the topic of Whatcom County’s desire to kill us all by urging us to get H1N1 vaccinations, even though the County doesn’t have many doses with which to target us, and even though we are feeling deprived about not having them.  Just the gentleman’s point, though: the County was encouraging us to have shots that would risk our lives, and he wished the Association to protest this County action.  If anyone produces minutes of the meeting, I imagine the gentleman’s views will be accurately recorded, if not in full detail.

It is very hard, I find, to know quite what to do when people up here—and not just a few of them—wish to convey their somewhat unusual views at considerable length to others.  You nod (that’s the yes-yes nod), and then you think about responding but decide ‘not a good idea’ very quickly, and then you begin to nod (as in the dropping off to sleep nod).  The only honest response I could make would be so profoundly impolite that I could not probably make it.  So there you are.  You just put it in the minutes.

And then we talked about trash (that is, trash collection or more specifically no-trash-collection) a bit.  Is there light at the end of the tunnel?  ‘None whatsoever,’ was the reply of the TA Director most attuned to the topic.  But we talked about it some more anyway.  One of the things I like about the trash collection problem is that we are stuck with a problem which appears to be so profoundly unique and complex that it can never be solved.  Everyone wants to solve it but no one is able to solve it; not even the people who appear, more or less, to have the power to solve it.  Perhaps it is actually insoluable; perhaps there is no actual trash collection anywhere else in the world and that is why the problem is so hard.  I seem to remember that we used to have it, but then I get things wrong in my memories now and then.  Perhaps it is only a dream; perhaps we have never had and thus very probably never will have trash collection.  First, let us focus on going to the moon, say, or requiring people to have their septic systems inspected.

And thus did we segue into the TA's final topic of the evening.  Some time ago, the County, along with other counties in Puget Sound, I was told, passed uniform enabling legislation requiring that everyone in those counties with septic systems be required to have a septic system inspection from a certified inspector beginning this year.  Presumably, they’ve spent the last year getting those inspectors certified.  They’re employees in the private sector and the County did not establish fees for this service, so you pay what they charge which, according to the street, is in the vicinity of $200-$250, which is a little steep for a simple inspection. 

Up here in Point Roberts, there are no sewers; there are only septic systems, so every house and business on the Point must have this inspection.  In mid-October, we got a letter saying we had till early December to get the inspections done and if we didn’t do it by then, our moms were going to be very disappointed and our dads were going to be very angry, and so just get it done.  It also sent us a list of local certified outfits: four of them in Point Roberts.  Now, there are maybe 1800 water hook-ups (at least that’s the number I got from the Water Board in 2004, and more have been added since then).  I assume if you have a water hookup, you are likely also to have a septic system.  Which means that in about sixty days, 1800+ inspections are to be conducted by four companies/individuals (none of them employ even tens of inspectors, certainly).  That's going to be a scheduling nightmare, I'd think.  And if you figure an average charge of $200 (which is underestimating, from what I've heard), that looks to me like almost half a million dollars of new spending in Point Roberts and on Point Roberts businesses in only two months.  Merry Christmas, indeed!

Now that’s an economic development plan if I ever heard of one.  Although it’s a little narrowly focused, I’d think.  It will have spillover, of course, because if systems fail, then systems must be repaired or replaced.  Good economic times in 2010, as well.  This, I’d think, is an issue with very long legs.  We have not heard the end of this.

And if the letters to us from the County were the first act, in two weeks we are going to get the second act when a member of the County Council and a member of the County Counsel’s office come to explain this to us in one of those big community meetings.  Monday, November 16, 7 pm, Community Center.  After that event, everything will be illuminated.   If I were a betting person, I might believe we'd be illuminated, but I doubt if we are going to be pleased.