About the only local political issues worth talking about these days are the massive new developments planned by YarrowBay in Black Diamond and Maple Valley. Sorry, employee non-salary benefit review; you’re just not sexy enough for the front page.

Black Diamond is on the front burner this season, thanks to the council upheaval and the firings of the city attorney and city administrator (or resignations, depending on who your ask). They also get the spotlight thanks to their recent review of the environmental impact of 6000 or so new homes.

The actual impact isn’t that difficult to answer. We’re going to cut down a lot of trees, maybe dirty up a few lakes, create some new ones to collect the rain, push off some animals a little further into the woods, put a lot more cars on the roads, hook up some pipes to bring in clean water and hook up some more pipes to send our toilet goodies down to Renton.

What is difficult is the process to satisfy everyone. The corporation handling the development is motivated by profit, and is only satisfied with the maximum profit available. The citizens and their elected officials are motivated by reducing their inconvenience.

When you hear, “We don’t want to lose our small-town charm”, what you’re really hearing is “I got here first and bought my land; now I want to control what you can do with yours.” It’s just the latest skirmish in the long war between the rights of the individual and the rights of the group.

In this case, the individual in question is a corporation, which makes it easier for us to demonize them. If a couple decided to split up their acre of land into four lots so their kids and their aging parents could each have their own house, it makes for a compelling story. If there are 100 couples just like this one, well that’s OK; it is their land after all. Get your permits, pay your fees, and build baby build.

But corporations are different, right? They’re only motivated by profit, they ignore social contracts in the name of these profits, and they absolve themselves of personal liability by hiding behind their corporate shield. (Disclosure: I also hide behind that shield as a partner in two corporations).

Sorry citizens, but if you don’t want these developments to happen, then buy the land for yourself. You can have complete control over building or not building there. In the case of Maple Valley’s Donut Hole, you could have a lovely 150-plus acre pine forest for the low price of only $52 million. Besides, the meth lab people need a bigger place to hide than the 50-plus acre Legacy site non-development, and could use a new location.

There’s plenty of precedent for this in Maple Valley. In 2006, the city council spent $4.5 million to buy the Lake Wilderness Golf Course (for more than its appraised value) to protect the views and house values of a few hundred homeowners, and to keep 200 cars or so off a main road. Sure, it still loses money, but it’s a small price to pay to avoid being inconvenienced and to protect the golfers’ natural habitat.

That’s more difficult to accomplish in Black Diamond, which has a much smaller population and can’t afford to shell out millions to create a tiny town preservation project. We’re all slowly learning that it’s darn near impossible to maintain this undeveloped oasis within the shadow of the 15th largest metro area in the country.

So instead, we’ll keep up this conservation dance to get concessions from the corporation (individual), while they attempt to disprove legitimate concerns of the cities (group). In any good negotiation, one side expresses appreciation for the other side’s concerns and needs, asks them to do the same, and if both sides agree, a compromise can finally be reached.

Maybe we’ll get there soon, but it sure doesn’t look like that now.