The Corvallis City Council made the right decision on Monday when it voted in favor of an affordable housing project on Seavey Meadows.

On one level, this was billed as a clash between two public goods: Preserving wetlands vs. affordable housing. But you also can view the Seavey Meadows issue as an early skirmish along the path to sustainability, and that might offer a lesson for a community that's serious about working sustainability into its fabric.

The Seavey Meadows project is a case in which a pair of important sustainability goals come into conflict: On the one hand, it is important to preserve wetlands. On the other, creating more affordable housing is an important community goal for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that having places in Corvallis where people can afford to live helps create a more sustainable community.

One of the important lessons here is that sustainability isn't just about reaching environmental goals. Sustainability incorporates economic goals and social goals as well. It's about being sure that people have places to live. It's about finding well-paying jobs for our residents. We give a lot of lip service to what we call "the triple bottom line" - economic, environmental and social - but the fact is that all three of these goals are important, and in our march toward sustainability, we need to seek a balance between the three.

The council's decision on Monday was a step toward acknowledging that balance.

Next week, the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition gathers for its second Town Hall meeting.

The coalition's numerous work groups have been plugging away at the ideas that were generated by the hundreds of people who attended the first Town Hall meeting a few months ago. It will be interesting to see which ideas have survived the initial cut, and to take a fresh look at the ideas that the work groups have found most interesting and provocative.

We hope that the council's decision in the Seavey Meadows issue provides a bit of inspiration for the coalition, and a reminder that the truly hard work in becoming a sustainable community is in finding the right balance.