County commissioner Harlig to step away from public life after 16 years
as commissioner
"Growth is certainly the most critical issue facing the county
because almost everything is a consequence of growth."
Leonard Harlig, Blaine County commissioner
By KEVIN WISER
Express Staff Writer
At the Old County Courthouse in Hailey, in the public meeting room where
he has made too many decisions to count, Blaine County Commissioner Leonard Harlig
reflects on his decision to retire after 16 years in county government.
"It will end on Jan. 8, 2001, at 9:01 a.m. when they swear in the new
commissioner and I hand over my keys," the 67-year-old Harlig said with a chuckle,
grin and sigh of relief.
Sitting at the courthouse table, leaning forward on his elbows with his
fingers locked thoughtfully together, Harlig talked with a Mountain Express reporter
about the policies and ordinances he has helped put in place over the last 16 years and
his hopes for the future of the Wood River Valley.
To begin with, Harlig doesn’t like being called a politician. To many
who view Harlig as the most powerful politician in Blaine County, that view is something
of an irony.
"I think there’s a basic difference in big city politics versus
what goes on in small communities," Harlig said. "There’s no reason that a
person should run under the banner of a donkey or elephant…. What you should be here
is a person working for our community and trying to make it better or keep it as good as
it is."
His public service career, as Harlig prefers to call it , began in a sort
of "baptism by fire fashion" with the Blaine County Planning & Zoning
Commission in 1985.
"The first night I was in public office we had a big public hearing
and made a decision and half the people loved us and the other half hated us," Harlig
said. "The next night we had another hearing on a different issue and many of the
same people were in the audience and we made our decision and the half that loved us on
Monday hated us on Tuesday. So within two days we managed to piss everybody off."
Many of Harlig’s constituents applaud his efforts to manage growth.
Others claim that the policies he has authored act to control growth rather than manage
it, thus restricting the rights of property owners and tying the hands of developers.
"My greatest disappointment is that in spite of trying to look at
things on a community wide basis rather than the narrow self interest that a lot of folks
use to measure things, that I haven’t been able to get more people to look at things
in a larger scope," Harlig said.
"We still have people looking at their specific agendas and interests
rather than the communities wider interests."
Growth is without a doubt Harlig’s greatest nemesis and concern.
Always conscious and aware of its finality, he has said in the past that "you
can’t undo growth" once you allow it to take place.
"Growth is certainly the most critical issue facing the county
because almost everything is a consequence of growth," Harlig said. "All the
infrastructure limitations and concerns we now have about water, capacity of the highway,
schools systems….almost everything is impacted by the sheer volume of people that are
here."
Always mindful of the inevitability of growth and the drain on public
services that often accompanies sprawl, Harlig stresses that the key is to manage growth.
"It’s not just growth per se, but where the growth is going to
take place," Harlig said. "The further and more scattered the growth is, the
greater the impact on the infrastructure and the less this place [will] look like what it
is now and the more it will look like all those areas that have lost the battle to
sprawl."
The solution to dealing with growth, Harlig said, is to manage it in such
a way that allows for growth to occur in an organized and orderly fashion.
"Perhaps one of the things we should be looking at is some kind of
urban growth boundaries.
"Such an approach doesn’t prevent the problem from eventually
overwhelming you, but it gives you a longer period of time to develop the infrastructure
that matches the growth. The protection of the infrastructure by managing growth in an
orderly way will continue to be the primary challenge of the county. I’m hoping that
we’ve set some standards for that but there’s still quite a bit of work to
do."
In the county’s battle against unmanaged growth and sprawl, Harlig
points to the mountain overlay and riparian protection ordinances—which restrict
development on hillsides and along rivers and streams—as two of the most important
policies put into place during his time on the commission.
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Harlig said water and sewer capacity in Blaine County will continue to be
critical issues in the future.
"The other thing we need to keep a close eye on is the protection of
the scenic corridor from billboards and advertising," he said, "and protection
against sprawl development in the rural county and along the highway.
"There’s a lot of pressure to put a commercial store here or a
convenient store or gas station there because it will save people from driving to the
towns. But I would say if you do that for one you won’t be able to stop for the next
one, and then you will have changed the character of the valley forever."
As for the future of growth in the Wood River Valley area, he said,
"we’re going to continue to have issues that need to be dealt with, problems
that need to be managed, growth that will come no matter what we do.
"But if we stay the course and don’t get distracted by what I
call irrelevant noise I think we can continue and do the job in the future the way we have
in the past. The place will obviously grow but I don’t think we have to make it
change so much that it’s no longer the place that all of us came to originally."
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Harlig said that when he came to the valley from California some 27 years
ago, there were 5,200 people in the county and probably a couple hundred vacations homes.
"Now I’m sure we’ve got 20,000 people in the permanent
population and probably several thousand vacation or second homes.
"Is that a change? Yes, it’s a huge change. Is it the same place
I came to 27 years ago? No, it’s different.
"Is it great still? Yes, it’s still great.
"When I go back to Los Angeles or another metropolitan city and see
what’s happened there, I come back here with a renewed sense of how absorbingly
beautiful this place is and how well we have managed our growth in spite of the trials and
tribulations.
"This is still a great place to live and can continue to be a great
place to live if we don’t loose our focus."
