Below is my rebuttal to comments made by Mayor Hiremath at the April 4th Town Council meeting when discussing the rezoning of Saguaros Viejos. Scroll down below this article to read Part 1 (including the mayor’s comments) that LOVE published on Thursday.My rebuttal
Mr. Mayor, I’m well aware that you had the opportunity to purchase the golf course property but not the Saguaro Viejos property and you knew that I was well-aware of that, so your answer appears to be nothing more than an attempt at creating a diversion to avoid answering the actual question.
The question was why does the Town Council believe that they have “an obligation” to preserve man-made golf course views to protect the views and property values for one group of residents but no obligation to preserve natural desert views to protect the views and property values of another group of residents? Why the concern for one person’s views and property value but not another’s?
In your response, you admitted that there were already entitlements on the golf courses for single family homes and that you wanted to prevent a developer from building those homes which would destroy the golf course views of hundreds of residents. But when it comes to those of us with desert views, you (and Councilmember Solomon) are always quick to say that the landowner has a right to develop homes on his land because the entitlements are already there and there’s nothing you can do.
Well, in the case of Saguaro Viejos, there was something you could do. You could have denied the rezoning for 7,000 sf lots. The current entitlements on that parcel were for minimum lot sizes of 20,000 square feet with custom grading (no mass grading). The Town Council (your council) already approved a development plan for that parcel in 2014 for one-story semi-custom homes on lot sizes ranging from 1/3 acre to 1.5 acres and no mass grading. You could have stuck to that plan.
Mr. Mayor, if you and Councilmember Solomon care so much about preserving the views that people paid for when they bought their homes, why didn’t you paraphrase Councilmember Solomon's comment from the July 2017 Golf Study Session about preserving golf course views and tell the applicant:
“We have to be very sensitive to what happens to that parcel because you’ve got homes backing up to this land. They bought to have desert views. We can’t just go off and put in 7,000 square foot lots with 2-story homes and mass grading. I mean that’s just not acceptable…We have an obligation to maintain, at minimum, the current 20,000 square foot minimum lot size and the conceptual site plan that those neighbors agreed to and the Town Council approved in 2014.”Summary
The quotes from Mayor Hiremath and Councilmember Solomon regarding protecting residents’ views [published in yesterday’s article below] clearly show that they are implementing land use/rezoning policies that favor one group of residents over another. This is yet another example of the low moral and ethical standards of this Town Council.
Four of them are up for re-election in August. We need to vote them out and elect people who will treat all citizens equally and with respect and who will place citizens’ desires above the requests of the wealthy developers who repeatedly fund their election campaigns.
