BY DAVID NORTH
White Rock

The recent general-purpose letter to the editor by Stephanie Nakhleh was kinda fun if a bit prolix. Yes, letters do take time and serial offenders do need all the help they can get, but she forgot to include stuff that could make her considerable load a bit lighter. There’s really only one general topic, so it can be short.

With that in mind, here’s one designed to make it easy to delete the parts that don’t matter on any given day:

We Desperately Need More Housing Because:

1. Our community mission is to compensate for federal blunders.
2. People who work here should be able to live here.
3. If we get to 20K population we’ll get a Wendy’s.

Our Housing Problems Would Be Solved If:

1. The county has By Right permitting*.
2. You put a casita in your front yard so I don’t have to.
3. We turn parks into housing developments one by one.
4. We suddenly realize we don’t need a golf course.
5. We upzone* other people’s property.

Downtown Should Have Eight Story Buildings Because:

1. They cost a lot more to build per unit but you can charge more for the top floor.
2. The bottom four floors can be parking.

We Should Have Less Parking Because:

1. They use space that could instead support eight story buildings.
2. Once people can’t go to Santa Fe they’ll spend more locally.
3. Lots of times most of the spaces are empty.
4. When the spots are all full, there are too many people in the way.

I’ve probably left out some important stuff but it’s a start. Glad to help.

* Buzzword alert: look these up.