Bridwell – the Pinal County skulkers are at it again!

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It’s not just an assault on our western heritage; it flies in the face of every Pinal County Comprehensive Plan meeting where the citizens have said that preservation of our rural lifestyle is their number one priority.

I am speaking about the changes hidden deep in the bowels of our County’s new 304-page draft Zoning Ordinance revision that will limit horse ownership in the most rural parts of our county to just two per acre.

Once again our elected officials are secretly changing our lives by changing our laws. Their goals are an urbanized City of Pinal with an overriding County authority that was so graphically detailed in their “Morrison Institute – Pinal Plan for the Future.”

The Morrison document was a big government directed narrative that is being followed up with a big government directed Pinal County Comprehensive Plan series of workshops. The end result of that process has already been determined.

This new 304-page zoning revision draft talks about conformity to the Pinal County Comprehensive Plan throughout the document. The zoning plan is scheduled to be adopted into law months before the conclusion of The Pinal County Comprehensive Plan process. Amazing sleight of hand, isn’t it?

The most troublesome part is that our elected officials consistently impose increases in our taxes, abridgements to our liberties and changes in the laws we are required to abide by in an underhanded, skulking fashion. They always do this to us in the dead of night and behind closed doors.

The creation and extension of separate taxing entities like the new Health District and the extended transportation tax assessment are designed to free them from any obligation of their general fund monies. This process allows them to continue to grow our government and fund their pet projects unencumbered. Our already outrageous property taxes are going up at least another 20 percent next year after already going up every year for the last six years.

Their excesses and failure to implement infrastructure has left us snarled in traffic jams and created a reduction in the value of our homes by over 40 percent while the rest of the state has only suffered 10-12 percent reductions during the current housing recession.

They perpetuate their system of government through nepotism, cronyism and good ole boy protectionism. Calculated departures combined with rigged appointments are the hallmark of their masquerade on an unsuspecting public. Their principle architect, Stan Griffis, is locked away from society, but the instruction manual he left behind is still in full play in Pinal County.

The only scheduled public input opportunity for this 304-page zoning document is supposed to occur on Oct 19 and Oct. 25 in Florence at times in the day when we are all required to be working. There will be no further opportunity for public input until the final ordinance is prepared for approval by the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Board of Supervisors. Their typical game plan would be to place the approval in the consent agenda to slip it past the public unnoticed. Without the alert action of a handful of citizen watchdogs, we would never have known about the changes to the rights of our horse-loving neighbors until their orders for horse evictions were delivered.

Who knows what other evils lurk in the text of 304 pages of revised zoning ordinances. We all should click on the Pinal County Web site and read it. Then we should all show up on October 19 to express our objections to all of the changes in the plan that take away more of our freedoms.

If we re-elect a single Pinal County incumbent for any position in 2008, then we deserve this unending barrage on our lives. Don’t let these actions keep happening. Tell your friends and neighbors, read the 304 pages and storm the doors of the County on October 19. Then vote them all out of office next November.