I'm going to buy the house next door to Greg Nickels and build a 400-story residential tower.

I expect to be compensated by the rich property developers if they don't want it built - they can use the money they plan to steal from us for their underwater tunnel we can't afford.

Okay, so by their own admission property zoning laws cost land owners billions of dollars (which cost would be shared by all tax payers under the proposed law). Why shouldn’t that expense be shared by all who “benefit” from such property zoning, instead of being bore solely by those “victimized” by such property zoning? Unless of course you fear that the public may not place a value on the zoning commiserate with its expense and elect to forego the zoning all together (or hold the elected official who permit it responsible)? Sounds like a good idea to me. Let the people know what it will cost to change zoning and let them decide if it is worth it to them as a community (and the payer) instead of just sticking it to the poor bastard that’s going to be stuck with the devalued land.

Are you kidding me?

Devalued land because a community says they want residential housing on this block, multi-use on another block and commercial on the third? don't you know that when you buy it?

933 sets up the most jacked up way of planning...ever been to Houston (a city without zoning).

Beyond that, people aren't going to be filing for loss of the value of the land in a buffer or setback. Instead they are going to be filing claims against taxpayers for "potential value" of what they might be able to build.

For example, if someone owns a 4-plex, but wants to build a 50 unit condo building, the taxpayers of that area will have to pay the difference in the value OR let that the developer build.

Now who is the poor bastard? Answer: Under 933, it would be the guy next door.

933 would not bar the state form following its standard screwed up zoning “logic”. All it would do is make the State (you and I and everyone you know) share in the expense associated with that “logic”. If you want to rezone your neighbor’s property as a wetland, and you can convince the authorities to do it, it will be zoned as a wet land, but you (and the rest of your neighbors) are going to have to share the burden of the expense that results from so doing. Isn’t it funny how it gets all personal once it costs you money, instead of just your neighbor?

Why should I pay you not to build a garbage dump in my residential neighborhood, when building said dump will adversely affect everyone else in the neighborhood (smell, and lowered property value), and only help one person (selfish old you)?

Should I pay you not to punch me in the face also (cuz if you're not allowed to punch me in the face, isn't that taking away from your personal liberty?)

933 is just a huge protection racket ("It'd be horrible if someone were to build a gravel mine right next to your house - just a shame - I'd hate to see something like that happen to such a nice neighborhood. You know, if you pay me, I could make sure that no one builds that gravel mine on that property I own...") being pushed by a new york developer and his cronies.

Oh right, either my neighbor gets the wetland protection waived OR I have to pay him not to fill it in and flood my property out.

That doesn't sound like a sensible solution. It sounds like 933 should be called the "Screw your neighbor" initiative.

Also, if my neighbor already has a house on their property and we live in single famlily zoning, is it a loss if they have a corner of their backyard as a wetland? They are paying less in property taxes on it. They have already built to the zoning capacity.

Oh that's right, this is the initiative about building subdivisions.

Zoning doesn't take value away from property owners. Property owners take value away from their community when they build offensive uses. By destroying that wetland, your hypothetical property owner is destroying a part of an ecological whole that doesn't belong to him, and profiting from it. He is, in fact, stealing that value from his neighbors. But he's not going to pay for that; no, in fact, he wants to be compensated for not doing it. Your property owners are holding the state hostage for ransom. And making it out to be the only moral point of view. Sweet. Like 933 is Crazy says: move to goddamn Houston if you don't like zoning and don't give a shit about your community.

Oh, looks like it got to be past poor You_gotta_be_kidding_me's bedtime.

no, just bussing home from work.

your all fucked. Who the hell is going to put a gravel pit in a resi area. Do any of you have any concept of property ownership? Owners are motivated to maximize property value, not diminish it. Fact is, the zoning crap this is supposed to protect from is the county deciding to rezone land to less valuable uses (going from resi to wet land). Land owners are the best stewards of the land, they have ean investment to protect.

Maximizing property value does not always mean doing what's best for the community. Doing what's best for me doesn't always result in me doing what's best for everyone else. You need to get past this "me first" mentality. I'm pretty sure I grew past that in Kindergarden.

Don't take our word for it, just look to Oregon. http://www.friends.org/issues/documents/M37/m37ns283.pdf#search=%22molalla%22

Some people are responsible neighbors, some just want to make a buck on the backs of everyone else's property values.

That is a gravel mine going in a rural residential neighborhood. It could just as well be an 800 home subdivision. Either way, your neighbor loses. And just think, 933 is worse than Measure 37.

Hey. I never said I was against all zoning hard stop. Just that I think that if the responsibility for the unintended financial remifications of zoning are ditributed accross the community, we will get better, more thoughtful zoning.

What financial ramifications? The one's where you're property values have gone up under managed growth and zoning?

I hear that there are some issues in rural King County, but overall, their neighbors are being served by not having the 5 acre lot next door turn into 20 houses.

That would hurt the neighbor's property value, cause more traffic, noise and make it harder to sell their place because of 20 other houses that could be sold at the same time.

Fine, but if you want a five acre lot next to you instead of 20 houses, then buy the fucking lot (or atleast your share of the loss to its owner when you rezone him out of using it to build 20 houses like he one your living in.)

and if the 20 houses and the traffic noise lowers your property value, you would have an avenue for remedy... sue the State (who changed the zoning to allow it)

That's your solution?

Do whatever you want and if you don't like it, then sue the state? At least you're in agreement with the Seattle Times today - In regards to what will happen if 933 passes:

"I don't know how all this gets resolved," she said. "Presumably a lot of litigation."

The costs of zoning already are distributed across the community. Zoning means that my neighbors and I, together, give up the right to maximize individual profit for the greater good. It's a societal covenant that we all benefit from. I-933 would change the deal from live-and-let-live to dog-eat-dog, I-screw-you, you-screw-me.

"Compliance with the law is demanded as a right, not asked as a favor." - Theodore Roosevelt

Corporations have more money than I do, so the must be smarter than me. They do really neat commercials AND AFTER ALL IT'S MY LAND!!!!

I intend to vote for I-933. It's not like Boeing is going to open a factory next door to me. But if they did, I'd be cool.

It's time "we the people take things back from the libanazis. I PAY TOO MUCH IN TAXES and social security should be mine to invest because I can do better than any government burocrat.

And the sooner we get rid of the death tax the better. I work hard and am not going to see my social security left to the government.

THIS WOULDN'T BE A PROBLEM WITH DINO ROSSI OUR REAL GOVERNOR!!!!

Hey I love 933: Would you like to pay back the amount invested in your education as well? As for Social Security, I'm more than happy to give it to you as in reality if you live more than 3-4 years you'll burn through that nest egg and start living off my contributions. But then again you're one of those Americans that think of no one but yourself and completely discount the roads, health care and educational systems society as a whole has for all of our benefit. As a final note, once you're dead, its not "your" land anymore. It'll belong to someone else and in all likelyhood, your relatives or whomever inherits what you have will simply sell it off to the highest bidder.

I'm going to use the Federal law that permits me to mine anywhere - and I do mean anywhere - to file a claim to dig a really really big pit looking for any diamonds and gold on the land including Bill Gates house.

Any diamonds or gold there will be mine.

Want to stop me? Pay me $10 billion.

So, if what you do in the lot adjacent to mine lowers the price of my land, do you have to compensate me for that?

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, zoning is the worst form of land use control, except for all others that have been tried.

Both groups of people are right. The community is getting benefits that they don't pay for by imposing land use controls. On the other hand, the government largely does not charge homeowners for windfalls that they create. Additionally, to take your neighbors to court for nuisances due to their use of their land (flooding, noise, etc.) would overwhelm the civil court system.

Altogether, I-933 is friggin' awful. To go from some planning to none in a short period of time would be disastrous and grossly irresponsible, regardless of what libertarians would like you to believe.

The fundamental issue seems to be whether or not land-use laws are bullshit. People who think they are bullshit think that landowners should be compensated for all these silly restrictions the government wants to enforce - sort of like being compensated for the opportunity cost of your time when you do labor that someone else asks you to do (earning a wage). If land use laws aren't bullshit, 933 amounts to aggressive socialism by trying to make all land of equal value. If land use laws are there for a reason, and a piece of land is less valuable than it would be (in the short term) in the absence of land use laws, that simply IS the value of the land, period. I think socialism would be great - if some people weren't fucktards who would game the system to their advantage. But some people are. That's the great thing about capitalism - license to be a fucktard. There are some things we do as a society already that have a bit of socialism in them, like public education. And I think we could do a better job of that, with educations more specialized for each student, and an effort to disabuse everyone of the desire to be among the "best". And my pet idea: a "crime tax" for compensating victims of crime for the damage done, so that a crime against one person is a crime against all, and everyone has a solid grasp on the cost of crime to society. But my point is, if we're going to move toward socialism, there are better things we can do than try to make all land be of equal value.

I have a hunch, though, that the backers of 933 think land use laws are bullshit, particularly environmental regulations. I have a further hunch that land use laws are, in fact, not bullshit.

instead of debating with idiot slog trolls, i'm simply voting no.

Here's a real example. Someone I know owns a house in far north King County with a stream running through it. When the bought the house, the stream was a meandering trickle, more than 25 feet from the house, with one of King's few historical covered bridges over it.

In subsequent years, development further up the hill, which runs all the way to the Alderwood Mall, has paved away almost the entire drainage basin for the stream. In order to control the resulting torrential runoff, the folks up in Snohomish have culvertized the creek. As a result, by the time it gets to my friend's house, it is now a raging torrent, and has taken out most of their property, and is threatening the foundations of their house.

Who has to pay for this damage? She does. She has no recourse against anyone upstream. Salmon stream regulations only apply to HER, not upstream, because they have no real teeth. She is in fact being required by King County to mitigate this damage caused by other people, at horrific expense (close to a hundred thousand bucks so far). Her recourse? Nothing.

I-933 would ensure that even the lightest regulations to protect people from this happening to them would be impossible. What you do on your land can and does affect other property miles and miles away. It doesn't have to be a gravel mine next door; something as simple as a parking lot or cluster of new houses can destroy far more property value elsewhere than it creates at the site.

I-933 is simply a way to avoid responsibility for your actions. This is in fact the new "conservative" mantra. Republicans and "property rights" advocates are bulls in the china shop, laying waste to all that surrounds them, and denying any responsibility that might cut into the profits they expect from raping our state. Vote no.

Let's not forget that I-933, as written, is retroactive, meaning people will be able to sue the state for things they didn't do, but wish they did.

In the interests of actually educating readers, instead of just yelling at each other, could someone please post pointers to rational analyses pro and con for I-933? Also, I'm still not clear on the essence of the con position, beyond "this will be expensive". Perhaps someone could answer the following?

I-933 purports to compensate land owners when governmental restrictions are imposed that diminish their property's value. Please pick and defend one or more of these statements:

a) I-933 is bad because it lets land owners claim compensation when their property's value hasn't actually been impaired.

b) I-933 is bad because it's assymetric: it lets land owners recoup damages from the government, but when government restrictions enhance property values, land owners get to keep the profits.

c) I-933 is bad because, although it lets land owners recoup damages from the government when their propery value is impaired, this will cost the government a lot of money.

Objections a) and b) seem legitimate to me if, in fact, they are supported by facts. c) does not.

my view from la la land.

the gist of the con:

the populace should not have to bribe developers to not fuck over their land to the detriment of surrounding lands.

"hey asswipe, you're part of the community. listen to your peers and stop being such a prick. and don't EVEN try blackmailing our asses."

the gist of the pro:

developers should be allowed to fuck over their land regardless of impact on surrounding lands.

"hey neighbors, butt the fuck out. it's my property--i'll do what I want, biatch."

People buy property to make money. What's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with making money because the market eventually sorts everything out. Even The Stranger exists to make money. If you asshole really believed in a Marxist-Communist state you'd be reading Eat the State instead of a the more amusing Big Tobacco broadsheet known as The Stranger.

People in Seattle love to get upset so they can feel morally superior. Does telling other people not to make money off their property make you feel more moral?

Vote NO on I-933.

Is it just me, or does there seem to be an ever-increasing number of hare-brained initiatives on the ballot each year?

that's funny, i'm going to vote no on this initiative, so i must be a communist.

but isn't voting yes, to allow compensating land owners, a very socialist notion? I meant, you're not doing anything to deserve pay, but you want us to pay you?

how communist.

If you own property you can do whatever you want with it. The Stranger strongly supported overturning downtown building height restrictions. Communists said "the air and views above Seattle buildings belong to the people", but the Stranger correctly pointed out that if you own land you should be able to build what you want there.

Why should rich developers be allowed to build and some poor farmer not be allowed to sell for a housing development?

The Stranger exists to make money. So a farmer or rural land owner ought to be able to make money too.

Mark: I-933 is bad because it allows and encourages landowners to damage the value of their neighbors' land, and requires the state of Washington to pay them if they are prevented in any way from damaging their neighbors.