For the candidates that are carrying a sort of isthmus vote around with them this year (Amy Tousley on the planning commission, Jeff Kingsbury and Joan Machlis), its probably important to address the vote in a way that puts them past it. Machlis makes a good effort in her piece this morning on growth:

I want to acknowledge that feelings about land use are some of the strongest that emerge at the local government level. I am not satisfied that as a community we have found the best ways to discuss our differences concerning land use. As these differences will continue to occur throughout the community, I will work to improve the public process and the quality of these discussions.

This is the kicker for me:

The Thurston Regional Planning Council estimates that to accommodate 120 units of housing in Downtown with structured parking it takes 1.4 acres, while the same amount of housing would take 11 acres in the South Capitol Neighborhood, 39 acres in a suburban area, and 580 acres in the rural area zoned at 1 unit per five acres.

Its a good explanation of the facts and the dire situation we really are in that forces the kind of hard decisions that Joan and the rest of the council had to make. I’m certainly not proud of the decision, but I supported it, it was the best of a bad situation.

If there’s anything wrong with the post, its the formatting. Its on the long side, so changing up the formatting (section headers, bullet points) probably would help the reader slog through the entire piece.