County faces complex issues | Letter
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, May 6, 2026
I worry about lots of things. Our planet is in flux! Locally, many of the most troubling issues have been baked in for decades. Cause and effect are pretty easy to understand, but new compounding factors are in play. A lot has changed about living well in these islands — fish decimated, unreliable ferry service, soaring property taxes, costs precluding buying local, ad nauseam — since I retired and happily settled here 20 years ago.
I applaud the increase in Opinion Columns and Guest Pieces expressing constructive critiques and suggesting change. The Orcasonian online forum is often informative and helpful in seeing the forest through the trees. Social media most often provides more smoke than heat in fomenting necessary change. Residents like Jeremy Nash of Friday Harbor have penned some excellent persuasive pieces that I am sure energized the spectacular (and welcome) failure of the county levy lid lift and we must expect leaders to effectively administer this clear mandate.
We are not unlike mice scurrying nervously at the feet of stressed elephants. We are vulnerable, at the extreme end of the line of fragile networks of distribution. Everything is and will be more costly. Incremental, diversified economic growth seems outside our abilities and imagination. We seem ineffective in finding substantial solutions toward managed growth and moving the needle toward real community resilience and stability — viable local agriculture, affordable housing, living wage jobs and incubation of worthy small businesses — or at least blunting current summer overtourism externalities.
For a road map, we now have a long-awaited, hot-off-the-presses Comprehensive Plan. This moderate maritime climate is a saving grace. Our incredible per capita wealth should be a powerful tool. Our collective intelligence is unequaled. The pandemic was a dire warning of our fragility.
A knotty, long, bubbling issue key to economic success/growth is electric service. OPALCO, of late, gets way out in front, makes costly errors, then poo-poos constructive member criticism. We don’t do enough to reorganize for wider public participation and conservation and higher consumption disincentives. Small nuclear generation, years away, may be the only viable solution.
Steve Ulvi
San Juan Island
