The frustration of a maddening, blaming mindset, and how we need to face reality – together
Two guest columns in The Bulletin this week sort of make me wish I were in another profession, so I could submit my own response for publication. But considering I’m in the local media biz, that’s not really a good idea.
So I have my own thoughts to share in a blog – some familiar to those who’ve read my occasional debates with the folks online who blame “corrupt city government,” “evil Californians” etc. for Bend not remaining the wonderful place it once was.
“Unbridled growth is destroying Bend livability,” one headline reads.
OK, well we can’t all agree on what “affordable housing” is defined as, beyond “one I can afford.” Here’s a definition I found of livablity:
“Livability is the sum of the factors that add up to a community’s quality of life—including the built and natural environments, economic prosperity, social stability and equity, educational opportunity, and cultural, entertainment and recreation possibilities.”
That sounds like a nice goal, but like company mission statements it’s broad enough to mean something different to everyone.
The devil is in the details. Always has been, always will be.
It is frustrating to hear so many people who think Bend was so much better decades ago. Deb and I moved here in 1991, and to think back to the city then, one where the start of hunting season felt like it emptied out the town, when Division Street was undivided, when red cinders and woodstove smoke were part of the feel … it’s easy to get wistful for those days.
But I return to a familiar statement: Everything has tradeoffs, including growth.
Why do places seem better in our distant memories? Could it be, in large part, because we were a lot younger back then? Of course it is!
Both of the columns picked some familiar targets. “Stop advertising Bend. You have been beyond successful!” Bill Eddie wrote.
So answer honestly: Did YOU move here because you saw an ad? Or was it for a job being offered, or word of mouth, or did you visit a friend or family member, or hit the slopes or river or trails, and love what you saw? Did anyone in your circle of friends and co-workers really move to Bend due to an advertisement? Or does the place “sell itself?” (Despite how awful you may think it’s gotten!)
And even if you DID convince city leaders to “stop selling Bend,” in other words, to stop funneling room tax dollars to tourism promotion, they couldn’t do it. It’s STATE LAW that a hefty portion of room tax funds go to tourism promotion. And the tourism industry has plenty of clout in Salem to keep that in place – they’ve shown often that lawsuits will follow if govt. folks don’t give them their due.
Some of the other “ideas” are equally ludicrous: “Resist state-mandated growth.”
People! It doesn’t work that way. Government does NOT have a magic “growth dial” they can turn up OR down. The state land-use laws – which voters enacted and have upheld when asked again – REQUIRE cities and counties to plan for 20 years of growth. Not “sought-after” growth – PREDICTED growth, based on past and current trends and projections. Because not planning for growth is even worse!
I bet most folks, when speaking more broadly, would agree that people have the absolute right to move to and live (and build!) where they want, if they can afford it (and some might say, even if they can’t!)
And it’s patently obvious that no matter how “horrible” you think Bend (or any city!) is, it’s still “heavenly” for many moving from places they’ve found to get too crowded for their liking.
And so, the process repeats itself. We all hear from people fed up who say they are moving someplace smaller, quieter, more like Bend used to be. You think the residents THERE are welcoming them with open arms? Some will, some won’t.
We’re talking about a mindset, here. A way of looking at life, and your neighbors. If you generate sour attitudes because the place has “gone to hell,” YOU are making it even worse, today, for those around you.
Of course we need to keep trying to work TOGETHER to find REALISTIC solutions to some very challenging issues.
Preserving more “natural” space in developments? Sure, but remember, NOTHING comes without a cost. That will push the price of development up even more! Why? Because the less land you can build on, THE MORE IT COSTS to build there! Why do we not think of these little messy, devilish details and unintended consequences?
Feel-good blameism is WAY easier than actually working with those evil govt. folks and evil developers to come up with realistic improvements to the rules that WON’T get overturned in court by folks who feel they go to far, thus costing us more tax dollars and wasting time that could be spent on more realistic goals.
But just how does Bill, who’s probably a nice chap, expect us to “resist state mandated growth” – if you even believe it works that way? The state doesn’t mandate GROWTH. It mandates that we PLAN for the projected growth, which is based on … well, growth rates! Of course.
And then Bill says “say ‘NO’ to urban sprawl”! Um, that’s WHY we have state land use laws in the first place, and urban growth BOUNDARIES. Which are very costly and take many years to expand. We can’t grow OUT easily, so we grow IN (infill) and UP (multi-story buildings are getting to be more common.)
So when he says to “update our road infrastructure before building more homes and large hotels,” it’s again asking the wrong questions, the wrong way. It’s like those who say government has all the money it needs to do all the things we want if they just “cut waste.” (Sure, easy to say.) More efficient cars have reduced the gas tax the state gets from each vehicle.
And again, you can’t tell folks they can’t build on their property, if they buy it fair and square and follow the rules. There’s no way the rules can say “we don’t want you here, go away.” (It’s like the ’90s, when one oft-voiced argument against destination resorts was, ‘we don’t NEED them!” Says who? How is government supposed to base the rules on what’s “needed”? Where’s that consensus supposed to come from?
Charles Boyd delivered the second op-ed, reflecting on the first. He talks of Bend being “unrecognizable” for those born and raised here way back in the ’30s and ’40s. Well that seems probably true for most cities in America, except ones that have been in a downward spiral of decay. No one wants that, right? But we expect a place to stay frozen in time, with only “good people” quietly moving in and making it what we love, just more so. Seriously?
“We do need to stop advertising for tourists and discourage the construction of more large hotels,” Charles writes, noting the low salaries paid to people in the tourism industry. So first, yet again, blaming the ads for growth. Sheesh. (We make a lot of top 10 lists that no doubt Visit Bend has never heard of before they came out, much less “paid” them to include us – they are based on various factual statistics. Sure, some are based on actual visits, and maybe a tip from the locals.)
But “discourage” more hotels? How? The companies that build them do their research, and see a thriving town and want to be part of the action. Who can blame them? (I know, many can – but is it really fair to do so?)
Bend is still special, in its own way. But it never was or will be unique. Growth, like life, brings its share of good and bad.
The year I moved to Bend to join The Bulletin, I interviewed a couple who wrote a book about “Fifty Fabulous Places to Retire” or somesuch, and Bend, of course, was on the list, for the usual reasons.
It was an enlightening start to my life on the High Desert. Because they had a list of like 200 or more cities to start with, then started interviewing residents – and in the end, almost couldn’t come up with 50!
Because in EVERY community, the longer someone had lived there, the more incredulous they were that ANYONE would even THINK of retiring or moving there!
Sadly, their sour attitudes about the changes to the town they once loved — which are ALWAYS a mix of good and a wistful longing for bygone days — had infected their mindset. So the authors had to talk to the newcomers to hear the pluses of those places, before the all-too-human erosion of good vibes soured their views.
So yep, Bend is special. But not unique, then or now. Human nature is pretty universal. So is cognitive dissonance, such as: I should be able to do whatever I want on my land, but my neighbor shouldn’t.
Or as my Blame Society Slogan for years has put it: “I want to have my cake, eat it too, not get fat, have someone else pay the bill — and if I can’t, it’s the (fill in the blank’s) fault!
Living a life of blame can be fulfilling for some, I suppose. It takes the guy or gal in the mirror off the hook. We expect our leaders to wave a magic wand and freeze a place in time, when national and global economic factors play a far bigger role in who moves where and why.
If we don’t ask the right questions, and move on from the finger-pointing, we can’t get anywhere close to the right answers. And “simple’ solutions are usually simplistic, feel-good, knee-jerk “non-answers” that just create more problems than they solve, so we can blame the government some more.
So, want developers to save more trees? Be ready to see home prices rise even more, not just because of less developable land – but because those neighborhoods will be more attractive – in other words, petitions don’t change market forces any more than governments do.
We can’t build a glass dome over the places we love, or put in guarded checkpoints. Yes, the wilderness area fees are understandably controversial) but what easy answers are there for loving a place “to death’?
It’s like saying “growth should pay it’s own way” — great for a bumper sticker, but that means housing gets even more pricey, because those costs of more fees will get passed along, inevitably.
Note I am not saying we should throw up our hands and give up. We have to keep tackling the issues, but that takes a large measure of give and take, being willing to listen, being open-minded, not buying into the fear-mongers and … yes, I’ll say it, having a positive attitude.
And it also takes being aware that quite often, we are nibbling around the edges of something way bigger than any one politician, construction company — or city/region can change to any large degree.
It’s really quite silly to blame “rampant growth” for our woes, as if it’s something that has a secret Master Control somewhere that we can turn up or down, rather than 1,000s of people making 1,000s of decisions, of their own free will — or to believe it’s “allowed to happen” because unmarked bills get passed under the table to a city councilor or state lawmaker is proven wrong by anyone who takes the time to actually look at the land-use and related rules, and see why they evolved into what they are — complex and imperfect, but a balance of competing goals, wants and needs.
It’s that simple, and that complicated.
But we need to resist the ease of blame, and when we hear someone say (or write) that “some are lobbying for new housing developments,” we have to ask who, and why (to meet demand!?) and what they mean – do we want to have homes for those who want to move here, or not? Do we think that restricting the supply (even if we can find legally defensible reasons to say no!) will stop people moving here, or just drive up the price of housing so much that more folks can’t afford to live here? Do we think Bend is immune to the forces of supply and demand?
In other words, it’s easy to blame. It’s far harder to resist, to realize that just about everyone is trying their best, and to look for ways to truly come together and tackle the problems in ways that are legal, politically palatable and will withstand the test of time.
Otherwise, we’ll just sink into a quagmire of blame, divisiveness and anger. And then Bend really WILL be “unrecognizable.”
Especially when we look in the mirror.
