Failed builders collect county cash

Do other counties reward failing developers as richly as Snohomish? Should developers hold county governments/taxpayers hostage, through lawsuits, every time they do not get their way? As I learn more about the Hooven Bog case and others, I can see that it is much more lucrative for a developer to propose a shoddy and illegal project, get it denied for good reason by the hearing examiner and then sue for damages. Rather than defend its lawful decisions, standard procedure is for the county to settle for a portion of the sky that a developer claims.

In the Hooven Bog case, after a citizen, state, county and other wetland experts proved that the developer had illegally destroyed a rare and valuable ecosystem, and the hearing examiner put a stop to further carnage, he found a way to ignore them. He sued the planning department (PDS) for giving him erroneous permits! Rather than making him prove himself in court, PDS settled as always, by erroneously permitting his expired project of illegal carnage.

Or how about the Highbridge Estates developers who proposed a plat of 34 illegal wells? After battling three hearing examiners for a permit finally, they sued the county for damages for its condition to find a legal water source. The county would have won, but settled for $350,000, but wait. If the developers cannot obtain easements for a legal water system within 18 months, they win another $50,000. Ka-ching!

Laura Hartman

Snohomish

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THis is an editorial cartoon by Michael de Adder . Michael de Adder was born in Moncton, New Brunswick. He studied art at Mount Allison University where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting. He began his career working for The Coast, a Halifax-based alternative weekly, drawing a popular comic strip called Walterworld which lampooned the then-current mayor of Halifax, Walter Fitzgerald. This led to freelance jobs at The Chronicle-Herald and The Hill Times in Ottawa, Ontario.

 

After freelancing for a few years, de Adder landed his first full time cartooning job at the Halifax Daily News. After the Daily News folded in 2008, he became the full-time freelance cartoonist at New Brunswick Publishing. He was let go for political views expressed through his work including a cartoon depicting U.S. President Donald Trump’s border policies. He now freelances for the Halifax Chronicle Herald, the Toronto Star, Ottawa Hill Times and Counterpoint in the USA. He has over a million readers per day and is considered the most read cartoonist in Canada.

 

Michael de Adder has won numerous awards for his work, including seven Atlantic Journalism Awards plus a Gold Innovation Award for news animation in 2008. He won the Association of Editorial Cartoonists' 2002 Golden Spike Award for best editorial cartoon spiked by an editor and the Association of Canadian Cartoonists 2014 Townsend Award. The National Cartoonists Society for the Reuben Award has shortlisted him in the Editorial Cartooning category. He is a past president of the Association of Canadian Editorial Cartoonists and spent 10 years on the board of the Cartoonists Rights Network.
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