Straight from the heart

I loved growing up and living in Kitsap county for the last 60 years, but
Kitsap County is losing the battle for its heart and soul.

County government is continuing its assault on traditional private property rights by adopting rules and regulations from “state and regional councils” that are happily delivered by Josh Brown to protect our “local quality of life” by crowding people into smaller and smaller spaces and throwing our rural way of life under the bus.

Commissioner Brown has a self proclaimed passion for government. I remember passion. It’s wild and fun and reckless. Government passion = more regulation and Josh especially likes the nearly half a million dollars we paid him over the last four years to echo the other two democratic commissioners (I’m Darryl, this is my brother Darryl and my other brother Darryl) and to put into play his “Vision” that “For the public good, all land should be owned by the common*. All we have to do is change the state constitution.”

*Common means government.

Property owners should be scared spitless. (That’s spit less with a P) Especially waterfront owners. We used to be the “Gold Standard” and now they just want our gold.

Don’t raise taxes. After years of supersizing government, a simple performance audit will show that the county can save millions of dollars by using the Wal-Mart strategy of downsizing by simplifying regulations, opening up road projects to competitive bidding and downsizing management instead of firing “worker bees” that actually do the work.

How about a few horror stories to illustrate the problems at the dysfunctional (DCD) Dept of Community Development: The tip of the spear which controls growth in Kitsap County.

A 91 year old man and his wife, who is recovering from back surgery, were in the permitting process for over three plus years to build a master bedroom on the main floor and stop having to walk up stairs to go to bed.

A house at the end of Sylvan way. The permitting process took over fourteen months from the county. Two years later, the lot next door was annexed into the City of Bremerton. The house permit took six weeks and they apologized for being slow. Fourteen month vs. six weeks.

Chastising a citizen. An Elementary principal went to the county two days in a row to talk about his house permit. They told him “If you weren’t always bothering us we could get more work done.”

Let’s try Wally Vision 2010. The future is now. Let’s clean our own house first; downsize county government, make it accountable, more economical, efficient and friendly.

We have to stop selling Kitsap’s rural soul for state money.

I know how to fix county government. I’ve run a construction business for 45 years and deal with county government on a daily basis. It’s easy to see the flaws when you stand at the bottom and look up into the bureaucratic maze.

Government needs to downsize, use competent people, be accountable, transparent and we have the technology to protect the quality of life of the people and the land, which is the heart and soul of Kitsap. I’ll donate part of the $110,000 salary to fund a “peoples advocate” that will be able to go behind the government counters to “get ‘er done.” Things are changing fast, but I want to go slow and get it right.


Some say it takes $100,000 dollars to run for county commissioner.

I say. “You can’t buy love.” Everyone knows that.

Wally

Wallycarlson.com