< PREVIOUS ] [ 2000 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Late Monday afternoon I got a call. Get to your TV
set, Quillen. You've got to see this. The Front Range
Stupid Zone is going up in smoke.
He was right, although it was hard to tell from the TV coverage just what was going on near Pine and Drake, except that there were wildfires and some worried homeowners.
Since then I've received more than a dozen calls and emails about the Stupid Zone. As best I know, I'm the one who coined the phrase, so I get to explain it.
The Stupid Zone, as I would like to see it enacted, represents a compromise between two American principles: economy in government, and private property rights.
As it is, when people exercise their rights to chop up rural land and build whatever they want wherever they please, they cause considerable costs to society.
The Custer County cost of community services
study that I wrote about last Tuesday was one effort to
quantify those costs: for every dollar that local
governments collect in taxes from new rural residential
developments, they spend $1.16 on roads, law-enforcement
and the like.
In other words, the young couple living in a trailer park in town on $8 an hour gets to subsidize the folks with the 8,000-square-foot trophy house in the woods that they occupy only a month or two each year.
That's the American way, of course -- observe how metro families making $30,000 a year get taxed to pay for arenas for teams owned by multi-millionaires -- but that doesn't mean it's right.
Back to Stupid Zones. There's an old saying that
Floods are acts of God, but flood damage is an act of
man.
High water will happen from time to time, but it
causes real damage only if there are structures in its
way.
The same holds for other hazards, like shifting soils, avalanche runs and forest fires. They'll happen, and there's not much we humans can do about it. People do own property in such places, and they want to build on that property.
But why should the rest of us pay higher taxes to subsidize their follies?
Thus, the Stupid Zone. Under my plan, each county would be required to consult with experts -- geologists, foresters, hydrologists -- and delineate Stupid Zones.
People who wanted to build in Stupid Zones would still have that right. But local government would practice economy by refusing to provide any but the most minimal services inside the Stupid Zones.
The sheriff would still serve warrants, but that would be about the size if it. No road plowing or maintenance, no school buses, no routine law-enforcement patrols, no fire-fighting.
In other words, you could build whatever you wanted on your parcel in a Stupid Zone, but the rest of us would not be obliged to spend $1,000 an acre, and put a bunch of people on fire crews at risk of their lives, to protect your investment.
Perhaps this sounds hard-hearted, but at least it's
consistent. I grew up near Greeley, and we took many
Sunday drives up Big Thompson Canyon from Loveland to Estes
Park. All along the way, there were houses along the river
whose yards were posted with No Trespassing
and
No Fishing
signs.
Fair enough. It's their property, and if they don't the public, that's their business.
Then came the Big Thompson flood of 1976. And there were all these property owners with their hands out, asking for public money so they could rebuild. If we weren't welcome before the flood, why did they think they had any right to our money after the flood?
Last week we saw plenty of public spending, from state
and federal taxpayers, to protect property that bristled
with No Trespassing
signs, build in a forest that
was ripe for fire. The declaration of a Stupid Zone years
ago might have averted some of the heartaches and loss, and
it certainly would have saved money.
So, the next time you run into a candidate for public office, especially one who supports economy in government, ask him how he feels about Stupid Zones. They're the ideal way to cut taxes and preserve individual rights, but I'll bet you won't hear much support for the idea.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2000 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >