The public should be aware of the actions of its elected officials. In this case, it should know what Jeff Sax (in office as a Snohomish County Councilman for just over a month) is saying and doing.
On Feb. 7, he turned up at a meeting of the Snohomish Basin Salmon Recovery Forum as the new representative from Snohomish County. This group was created by local governments to develop plans to protect Chinook salmon in the Snohomish River watershed – after the salmon were officially listed as threatened. Action is required by federal law when a species is listed as threatened to try to prevent it from being listed as endangered.
Mr. Sax, who claimed to be genuinely concerned about environmental protection during his campaign, promptly announced that the forum was not authorized to write a plan because local government – and only local government – should do such planning. Of course, it was local governments that specifically created this committee, but that fact seemed to have eluded Mr. Sax. Having ignored both facts and reality once, Mr. Sax plunged further down hill.
He promptly announced that his study of activities in Snohomish County by the Surface Water Management Division showed that the SWMD was greatly exceeding its authority by looking into such issues as habitat and water quality rather than just drainage, and he would work to rein in the SWMD. As such, Mr. Sax is ignoring obvious links and relationships between human activities and the health of everything around us. Sax’s predecessor, Dave Somers, was genuinely concerned about such relationships, believing that all of God’s creations are important and worthy of respect and consideration.
Mr. Somers didn’t try to ignore obvious relationships, nor has the SWMD, but Mr. Sax apparently believes that only humans count, and his definition of what “counts” is apparently very limited, indeed.
Mr. Sax has another three years, 11 months in office, but he has already shown that he campaigned on a lie. He won when the number of his campaign signs exploded in the last month of campaigning due to immense developer/realty support, and now his actions will repay those developers handsomely for their support.
As for the rest of us – including anything non-human – we’ll have a long 3 years and 11 months to muddle through.
Granite Falls
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