Falmouth Citizen

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Background Information
 
   
“It is hard to imagine that more traffic congestion, higher taxes, lower urban services, increased consumer costs, and unaffordable housing add up to a more livable city.”

- Randal O’Tool, In The Planning Penalty -
 
   
Numerous studies have shown that smart growth planning is incredibly expensive and counterproductive. In spite of the glowing stories from those promoting smart growth, this type of planning does the opposite of its claims. Falmouth is in real danger of instituting a process of rapidly escalating property taxes, spiraling cost of housing adjustments and declining economic stability if the greening/open space ordinances are instituted with no way to protect the private home owner. Oregon was one of the first states to implement the kind of smart growth practices in the 1970s that is presently being implemented in Falmouth, Maine. The burden has become so onerous that Oregon citizens voted overwhelmingly to institute a just compensation law called Measure 37 in November of 2004.
 

Below are a list of reports and studies that clearly show how damaging these planning methods can be.
 
 
Glaeser, Edward L. and Joseph Gyourko, “The Impact of Zoning on Housing Affordability,” Harvard Institute of Economic Research, Discussion Paper 1948, March 2002. This study by the Harvard Institute of Economic Research clearly shows the enormous costs of unnecessary planning regulations
 
O’Tool, Randal. The Planning Penalty; How Smart Growth Makes Housing Unaffordable. American Dream Coalition, March 2006.  This analysis provides chilling evidence of the terrible costs of implementing smart growth in communities across the nation — including Portland, Maine.
 
Understanding Sustainable Development, Agenda 21 – A Guide for Public Officials. Freedom 21 Santa Cruz. The booklet defines sustainable development, its origins, how it drives smart growth polices and its dangers. 
 
Coffman, Michael. The War on Property Rights and What It Means. Excerpted from: Mary Alice Davis, Dream Killers by Regulatory Eminent Domain, In Press. 
 
Harper, Reed. Rapanos v. United States: Background, Blog, and Briefs of the U.S. Supreme Court case. Background on how the federal government is extending its authority well beyond any law passed by congress to punish citizens.
 
Click here to view a blowup of this map.  As is demonstrated in the articles above, the socialist concept of smart growth had its origins at the international level with a concept called Agenda 21. Agenda 21 also promotes the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, a plan to lock up about a half of all land area in every nation, ostensibly to protect biological diversity. It is based on the Wildlands Project which as published instructions on how to establish the reserves and corridors depicted in this simulated map. This map, along with most other states was presented to the United States Senate and blown up into 4 x 6 foot posters and taken out on the Senate floor an hour before the cloture vote on the Biodiversity Treaty. It so shocked the Senators, that the vote was not even taken. Although the treaty was never ratified, it has been heavily promoted by environmental and planning organizations under various names such as open space, greening, greenways, smart growth, conservation easements and many more. An example of this is found on the Northern Forest Alliance’s website.