Ed Wolfe is sounding more and more like a lobbyist for the realtors and home builders. They, of course, are the ones funding his campaign. I’m reminded of the old saying: “When you get to the ball, you’re expected to dance with the one who brought you.”

Their clamor for “balance” sounds more like code talk for wanting more power and control over the county’s land-use and environmental policies. But these groups are represented by paid lobbyists and already have more than enough influence on county policies, but they always complain that they should have more.

Nobody disputes the need for a healthy, sustainable economy, but these groups have always been too ready to sacrifice our quality of life for short-term profits. The rest of us pay for their profits with traffic congestion, costly expansion of fire and police protection, overtaxed sewage treatment facilities, a degraded environment and ballooning demands on our very limited supply of fresh water. Yet they continue to resist reasonable measures to rein in urban sprawl and unsustainable exploitation of our natural resources.

Ed says we already have more parks, open space and recreational lands than we can afford and should stop adding more. His supporters believe that new construction and paved streets would be a better, more “productive” use of those lands than preserving them as forests and recreational lands.

Frank Mandt
Kingston