It was quite a show at the Ward 6 council office last night (3/16) for the Houghton Area Master Plan (HAMP) open house, and Fred managed to make everyone from mountain bikers to central city residents furious while trying to take four or five contrary positions at the same time.

There’s a lot to explain, so I won’t do it here. Click on the links of the involved folks below to find out more info. Suffice it to say that there are two groups of concerned citizen activists who are doing some very important work. One is the Fantasy Island Conservation Alliance, a group of mountain bikers who turned a former wildcat dump into a world-class and environmentally sensitive attraction called Fantasy Island for bikers from Tucson and around the world. In exchange for their community service (provided without any government assistance!), the HAMP is recommending blading their work and selling it for yet another residential subdivision. Fred said he would support the park but would refuse to vote to change the zoning that would kill the park. Talk about your flip-flop!

Also present were midtown residents currently involved in a dialogue with government, business, and military representatives to find a solution to the Davis-Monthan AFB noise problem and the changing mission noise profile. Visit the websites of Tucsonans for Quality of Life and Tucsonans for Sound Solutions to find out more. All the possible solutions involve moving the runway further south to shift the flight path over uninhabited land on the southeast side. Unfortunately, the HAMP does not take into account the changing mission and its increased noise, and recommends more residential development in the area that, if it remains open, could allow us to keep our base while reducing noise problems in midtown. None of the city officials last night, including Fred, were willing to even consider this solution in the planning process. The citizens’ efforts at win-win solutions was dismissed.

This is the all-too-typical way that involved citizens are treated in this town, and one of the main reasons I’m running. Shouldn’t our representatives listen to the real issues raised by concerned citizens, and respond by helping to organize their passion into action to make the community better? Imagine the kind of place we could live in if we were listened to and encouraged instead of disrespected and ignored!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 17th, 2005 at 11:47 am and is filed under Politician Watch, Respecting Citizens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.