Fire district resorts to bullying
What has happened to free speech in this country? I had a neighborhood meeting at my home in regard to the Golder Ranch Fire District's annexation of our area. Evidently this really bothered the district.
A fire truck was driven up and down our street several times. The district had fire officials on the road outside our home handing out what I would consider scare-tactic information sheet. And if that was not enough, Oro Valley Town Council member Terry Parish came to my door. When I told him this was for our neighborhood only, he said I was "closed-minded."
Obviously this bully behavior must be standard procedures for both Golder Ranch Fire District and Parish. Is this the type of organization/town councilman you want representing you?
Michael Dayton
Retired, Oro Valley
13 comments:
Councilman Parish, Sherrif's Deputy Parish - does this person have the right, the authority to combine his positions in order to bully the citizens of this town into submission? I think not! His muddleheaded thinking, his self-indulgent puffery discourses, his pushing and shoving in his attempts at control, are most indicitive that all is not well in the Town of Oro Valley. As has been previously indicated, this person, a supposed 'law and order'
advocate, a person who should be most adverse to some of those TECHNICALITIES which might allow, in a criminal situation, the guilty to go free, this person seems not to be able to understand that perhaps he himself appears to be 'on the take' by virtue of a TECHNICALITY which allows him to gather large sums of money from 'big business' by shreding up large 'donations' into 'smaller bits', thus avoiding an 'illegal' act. Does anyone else see a blatent contradiction here?
IS THIS WHAT WE WANT IN A COUNCILPERSON?
IS THIS WHAT WE WANT IN OUR LAW ENFORCEMENT COMMUNITY?
Zev,
NO NO in answer to both questions?
How come our Mayor has no problem with this behavior but seems to have big problems with members of council who speak up at council meetings.
One more violation of our 1st Ammendment Rights... Freedoms, Petitions, Assembly
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Will the PIMA COUNTY SHERIFF'S Department please reel in their employee, this is another documented attempt at violation of our first ammendment rights by your sheriff...
One more question, was Parish wearing his PIMA COUNTY SHERIFF'S BADGE???
It is no small wonder where Parish gets his ideas, inspiration and the authorization to harrass OV residents with the use of a Golder Ranch Fire Truck, employees, and intimidaton.
Here is an article written by Jim Nitzel Published in the Tucson Weekly in 1996. Cox-Golder sounds like she may have opened up an academy for crooked politiians and Parish was her first pupil....
It's Time Cementhead Vicki Cox-Golder Ended Her Masquerade.
By Jim Nintzel
MOST OF US, at some time in our lives, have enjoyed the thrill of putting on a costume to celebrate Halloween.
But few of us have carried on the masquerade as long as Vicki Cox-Golder.
Cox-Golder, who is facing incumbent Ed Moore and Democrat Sharon Bronson for the District 3 Board of Supervisors seat in next week's general election, has treated Pima County to a command performance over the last year.
When Cox-Golder first began preparing her campaign, she hired the local queen of Republican consultants, Vera Marie "Bunny" Badertscher, a spin master who helped Gov. J. Fife Symington III portray himself as a successful businessman even as his real estate empire was crumbling around him during his first run for office.
After spending thousands of dollars on polling, Badertscher and Cox-Golder have crafted a careful image. When I first sat down with Cox-Golder last summer, she told me all this talk of her being part of the Growth Lobby was untrue.
"I'm being very careful who I'm taking money from, especially from the so-called development interests," she said. "In fact, SAHBA is very concerned about my candidacy because they know how I have lobbied for years on impact fees up at the Legislature.... To say I'm going to be the front man for the development community, I'll absolutely deny that. Most of them are afraid of me because I happen to be more pro-environment, I think, then I am pro-development."
Methinks Cox-Golder doth protest too much--even a casual glance at her whopping $80,000 warchest shows she's gotten tens of thousands of dollars from homebuilders and construction firms in Pima County, including employees of A.F. Sterling, Coventry Homes, U.S. Homes, Coscan Homes, Dominion Homes, UDC Homes, Becklin Homes, Pepper-Viner Homes, Canoa Builders, Borderland Construction, the Sundt Corporation, Caylor Construction and many more.
The only concern SAHBA has about Cox-Golder is that she wins the race. SAHBA's Alan Lurie has given Cox-Golder at least $150, and the homebuilding organization, along with the Arizona Association of Realtors and the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, put financial muscle behind an independent campaign committee which is spending thousands of dollars to get her elected.
The Growth Lobby is firmly in Cox-Golder's corner.
Still, she continues to hide behind her disguise, because polling has told her District 3 voters are sick to death of the unending bulldozing of their once-rural neighborhoods. She told the morning daily just last week: "It's not that I think growth is good. It's just that growth is going to happen."
But the mask does slip sometimes, as it did when Cox-Golder addressed a group of mortgage brokers this summer:
"Growth is important to every business and every industry in Pima County," Cox-Golder told the crowd. "In fact, I think growth is important to the government, because if you don't have growth, what you have is failing infrastructure. Or, to keep the infrastructure current, you have to raise taxes. You have to have steady growth to just maintain what we already have."
Does that sound like someone who doesn't believe growth is good--even vital? Nevermind that Pima County's raging, rampaging, out-of-control growth has not only failed to keep up with our infrastructure needs, it's left us with a road problem that will cost about a billion bucks to fix.
How does Cox-Golder--the woman who says "tax and spend has never solved any problem facing us"--propose solving these road problems? With tax increases--she supports higher gas taxes and sales taxes, both regressive taxes that sock the middle class.
Kind of funny, given Cox-Golder's own pledge on the stump: "I don't believe growth needs to be subsidized on the backs of existing residents."
But ask Cox-Golder how to find a way to pay for all those roads without squeezing it out of the folks who live here now, and all she can say is: "I'm not quite sure how to do that, but I know, having worked with builders in the past, they are willing to help out the community so that burden isn't passed along."
Sure they are--that's why they opposed even the token $1,550 impact fee imposed by the Board of Supervisors last year.
Sometimes, Cox-Golder's comments are so breathtakingly ludicrous it makes me question if she's giving an ounce of thought to what she's saying.
Radio talk show host John C. Scott asked her last month if her husband's family members were pioneers.
"They first came to Arizona in 1957 and bought Rancho Vistoso," Cox-Golder said, "so, yes, they're a pioneering family."
I wonder: Did they come to Tucson in a covered Chevy wagon?
At other times, Cox-Golder is simply--but utterly--disingenuous.
During that same interview on Scott's show, Cox-Golder said, "I am not a real estate developer. I am a real estate broker.... To say that I am connected somehow to new-home development is not true."
Five minutes later, Cox-Golder was boasting to Scott how she and her husband had sold the 1,400 acres that became the Saddlebrook development.
It's easy to see the results of unplanned growth in our community: rising taxes, packed classrooms, an exploding juvenile crime crisis, jammed streets, brown skies and acre after acre of bladed-and-graded desert.
Vicki Cox-Golder won't change any of the policies that have brought us to this sad place. With the election just days away, it's time to look beyond the mask. Don't be fooled by her disguise: Vicki Cox-Golder is just a slick '90s version of the cementheads who have called the shots around here long enough.
Like ZEV said before... The Ties that Bind....
For all that don't know Vicki Cox Golder sold all the land to Golder Ranch Fire Department and is also sitting on the Board as the Chairperson of Golder Ranch.
So many conflicts of interest... so little time....
Websleuth and Zev
I checked the Golder Ranch web site and saw that Vick-Cox Golder is on the board of the Golder Ranch Fire district.
So I would assume that she knows and approves of the fire company employees using intimidation tactics.
When these things happen in other states, the Attorney Generals office will do an investigation.
Why does this type of thing continue unchallenged?
Don't we have any public officials with integrity?
MsCoyote---Not only is Vicki Cox-Golder on the GRFD Board, for the last 16 years she is chairperson.
Talk about "sweetheart deals." GRFD sure has one. Without even annexing many Oro Valley communities, the GRFD still charges their "annexed rates," which in some instances is 100% or more than the property owner was paying to Rural-Metro before their merger.
No wonder, GRFD wants to keep the citizens from knowing what's going on.
Want to know who to thank? None other than our three incumbents; Parish, Dankwerth & Gillaspie who voted to allow GRFD to take over.
And who gets "the short end of the stick?" None other than the poor citizens.
How many more reasons to we need to vote for ONLY Bill Garner & Salette Latas?
Enough is enough!!!
The basic parallel between Cox-Golder and Parish is that neither of them has the intellect to be able to think and convey in any kind of a logistical manner. As a result they both come off as con artists; are they?
GOOD POST, SLEUTH!
Thanks Art.
Also interesting is the fact that Vicki-Golder Cox is also the Vice-Chair of the Governmental Affairs Division of the Tucson Chamber of Commerce
Tucson Chamber of commerce recently
endorsed Parish, Gillaspie &Dankwerth.
Does Vici Cox Golder support or have knowledge about what is going on. Does she approve of the firefighters campaigning on taxpayer time?
As the Director she should know what is going on.
I would think it would be against some law or rule to be campaigining on taxpayer funded time.
How do these people get away with this.
Why no public outcry, why no investigation by a government agency?
I don't get it.
mscoyote
WE are the citizens that must rise up and cry out against this type of abuse of power, resources, and our 1st ammendment rights.
One way in which we can do this, is to go VOTE for BILL and SALETTE!
Another is to attend the Golder Ranch Board meetings, they also have an open call to the public... as I believe Zev has been there before.
Another is to not spend our monies with those businesses in which we disagree... Walmart..Harpolds.
Another is to keep publishing this info on this blog, the AZ Daily Star and Northwest Explorer and anyone else that will print it!
Another might be to introduce a written complaint against Parish with Dupnik (probably authored by Michael Dayton), as I am sure that he wouldn't want the face of PCS muddied by such seemingly controversial and possibly illegal activities of one of his sheriffs.
Hey Art..
I wonder if Jim Nitzel would be intersted in a non-profit job on this blog. As he seems to know the "skinny" as far back as it goes. Sometimes I feel like I need an FBI Crime and Relationship chart to sort it all out!
The corruption runs deep... and is founded in some old-timers and their money.
Terry is just a little minow, from the wrong sides of the track - a trailer park in Marana. He is swimming in a VERY big pond of filth and scum. He is small-minded man, pliable and easily attracted by the "lure" of power and prestige. Unfortunatly once he has done the big fish's bidding, he will be made a quick meal...one gulp and he will be gone...! If only HE could see this...
If Arroyo Grande becomes a reality then it would stand to reason that
the Golder Ranch Fire District would
be building more stations.
I read that Vicki Cox Golder lives on a 3,000 acre ranch in Catalina.
Any connections, I wonder.
Vicki Cox Golder was also on the Amphi school board and ran for county supervisor.
There is a website in which you can look and see the amount of grants Golder Ranch Fire has received.
go to http://www.fedspending.org/
and go to the "grants" tab and do a name search on "Golder Ranch".
For those of you that do not want to take the time, I will publish for you...
For the years 2001 thru 2006 Golder Ranch Fire has received a total of $1,175,672 in federal funding!
2001 - $ 52,488
2002 - $ 0
2003 - $133,686
2004 - $ 37,242
2005 - $656,910
2006 - $295,346
So the answer is, WE can make them accountable, they are using yours and my tax dollars to bully the neighbors and stomp on our rights!
GRFD is accountable to US! Not only do we pay EXTRA for their services in OV Taxes, but we also fund them Federally with our Taxes!
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