Full Transcription of Ed Hussman’s Comments Regarding Wild Sky During Sultan Council Meeting March 9, 2005

I'm Ed Hussman [gives address in Sultan].  Most everybody knows I'm on the Wild Sky thing, and Wild Sky is back for another turn at us.  The, uh, the issue is coming up in both the Senate and the House in Washington (D.C.). As the record stands right now, there are a lot of endorsements from public officials and cities from throughout the state; Spokane, Whatcom County, King County, a lot of people in southeastern Washington.  Sultan’s not on the record yet, although I'm pretty sure that most everybody -- at least, I hope most everybody -- feels like I do, very strongly that this is a very bad thing for this area.  I've prepared a resolution for the City in opposition to the Wild Sky that I would like to give to you for your consideration.

The...the issue is (sic) certainly been talked about and I don't know if I could add anything to it.  I certainly could talk for hours and I guess I only have three minutes, so... Real short, they keep talking about preserving and protecting something up there, but they've never talked about something that's going to cause anything to change.  There's no threat to the area.  Currently right now, that part of the national, the national forest here in Snohomish County's already 46% designated wilderness.  Throw in Wild Sky, you've got 66% of our national forest for our children to play in, locked up in wilderness.  And I don't think that's right.  My, myself, I think that 25 years, and I've ridden bicycles and everything else up there, there's a lot of things that people think they know about wilderness and there's a lot of things that people don't know about wilderness. I'd certainly entertain any questions here about that.  The, the simple matter is, is that wilderness pretty much locks up the land for any use whatsoever other than walking or horseback riding. And that's it.  It's for observation of nature.  And that's the only use of a wilderness area.

If they go in up here and want to make this into a wilderness area, what they're actually doing is changing the Wilderness Act.  The actual Wilderness Act is to preserve and protect areas of wilderness that are already currently wilderness. This area is not wilderness.  They intend to spend $18 million worth of our tax funds to rip out roads and culverts and things to kind of change it back into a wilderness.  I think that's bizarre.

I don't know why this is back again.  It started in 2002.  It hasn't made it out of the Congress in all of those years. We hope that it won't make it again this year.  And I would like to ask Sultan to be on the record as opposing the Wild Sky wilderness area.  It certainly isn't a good thing for us, the residents here that use that area.  It's certainly not going to help the economy.  And it's certainly going to impact Highway 2, according to the, what their, the figures they're putting out.  And with that, I would close, unless somebody wanted to ask a question, because it certainly is a very unintelligible [last two words obliterated as Mayor Tolson indicates there is no Q&A allowed during the public comment section of the meeting.]