After we located here to Sultan three years ago, my husband sold his home of 20-plus years in order to pay down our new mortgage. After sales commissions and all expenses, the profit he netted on that home amounted to an average 10% per year increase on his initial investment. That's a profit that, up until the dot-com explosion of the last three or four years, any investment house would have been proud to boastfully advertise.

However, the current mindset in Sultan would argue otherwise. Let's look at some numbers. If someone purchased a home with five acres of land here 20 years ago at, say, $15,000-20,000, and they netted a 10% increase on that initial investment each year it was owned, they could sell it for around $140,000. What if their initial $20,000 investment increased at a sane and steady 10% per year, but in the last four years, due to a healthy real estate market, gained 20% per year, resulting in $175,000 or more? Would that be enough? Or, let's take a third scenario: Suppose their initial $20,000 investment – because of an unusually healthy economic or real estate environment or because a city came down with "development fever" -- morphed into an average increase on investment of 20% per year, or a sale price of $638,960? Would that be enough? Or would that figure constitute an obscene profit? How much profit is NOT enough?

Well, the answer, of course, is this: Whether or not the individuals involved would be satisfied with their profit would depend, as do most things in life, upon what type of people the are and their underlying "moral infrastructure." For some people, there is NEVER enough profit.

We have also heard it said that some of the older residents in town are literally "living on their retirement" in the form of the investment they have accrued in their land. And, while we realize there are certain isolated incidences where this is true, for the most part, people of integrity, foresight and responsibility have long planned for their future old age, and selling their homes out from underneath them was never a prerequisite for their retirement.

We are not saying that everyone selling land here is greedy. What we are saying is that it is the greedy few who are shaping our future for the rest of us. After their land has been sold, the wetlands plowed under, the trees uprooted and the concrete, asphalt and ticky-tacky houses have sprouted, we who remain are the ones who will live with the ruins they have created. One of our Planning Commissioners, Ron Kraut, said it best: "We should plan for those who live here, not for those who leave here."

To tear and shred the rural lands and verdant forests to "develop" something manmade is NOT progress. How can we as human beings produce anything as lovely as what God has wrought by destroying his creations? God's function shames Man's Art.

We can never – NEVER – replace what we tear down. We can NEVER mitigate the wholesale slaughter of wetlands or streams. And, to "mitigate" a stream buffer by setting artificial boundaries at whim – to build within 10 feet over here, only to stay 300 feet away over there -- is like saying to someone who has a lifetime restraining order against you, "I will punch you in the nose today, but I will make up for it by staying ½ mile away from you for the next month."

We have two choices: Those of us who moved here to "get away from it all" can either pack up and move further away – again; or we can insist that our quality of life be maintained, with our voices raised in protest against the unrestrained development occurring here at every open city forum, at every council meeting and with a steady flood of letters and emails to City Hall. We can ask that our city officials first ASK US WHAT WE WANT before planning and building a city that none of us ever envisioned.

G.R.I.T., in the embodiment of Loretta Storm and Ray Kistenmacher, respectfully request that the City revisit the 1995 Comprehensive Plan – now -- by holding public hearings and public debate on these issues. Before the City's greed destroys our precious natural assets and environment.