Tucson Weekly: The Skinny (January 15

Skinny THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS! It's hopeless. We're depressed, and we feel like whining about it. So go read something else right now. You heard us--beat it.
The really sad thing about this brewing pygmy owl debacle isn't the pending inevitable demise of the cute, itty-bitty little birdy-poo. Species go extinct every friggin' day on this planet. Tough shit.
No, the thing that really depresses the hell out of us about this current cause célèbre du jour is the way people fool themselves into thinking there's a solution. It's a character flaw in Homo sapiens; and, increasingly, it appears this flaw will lead to our collective downfall. Anesthetized by our own good intentions, dazzled by our own ever-spinning minds, we come up with various well thought-out schemes to minimize the impact of our increasing populations, both locally and globally. Of course, nobody ever seriously talks about not reproducing or not growing.
Proof of the bloodbath to come? We haven't any. But there were a few hints of it in a recent edition of The Arizona Daily Star, the local heraldic angel of depression. In one issue last week, the paper editorialized about how warm and tingly good it is to see the community coming together to figure out how to accommodate growth and the pygmy owl. Headlined "A good day for the owls," the piece was a prime example of the short-sighted, self-serving thinking that has brought our ditzy, egomaniacal species to the brink of destruction: Gee, everybody's cooperating, everybody's talking, the rules are being looked at, governments are coordinating, property owners will be allowed to build--as long as they consider the owls.
Great. All this really means is one more round of environmental destruction will occur, however tempered by our supposedly good intentions. And when this generation of squatters passes away, the next will come, with their own needs and their own set of good intentions which will allow them to rationalize their patterns of destruction. You want to know what the owl habitat will look like in 100 years? Stand at Broadway and Alvernon and look around. That was once desert, too. Successive generations have turned it into Anywhere, USA.
And we're just as guilty as you. And our children's children will meet the same end as yours. In the same section of the same edition of the Star, was the usual annual report about how crappy we treat our children in this county. Every year it gets worse. Every year there are more people, and more of them are poor. So, the reasoning goes, we need more jobs and more people to build more wealth, which will be spread around. Growth is good, people are good. We're all good people, aren't we?
And also in that issue was a story quoting scientists as saying global warming can now be tied directly to human activity. But we're sure the governments will coordinate their policies one day soon, people will alter their behaviors, and every single human on this planet will do his or her best to feel really, really concerned. Hell, if it looks scary enough, we'll all agree to refrain from farting dangerous greenhouse gases into the atmosphere on alternate Tuesdays.
Face it--we're totally and utterly screwed, and you can rest assured that as species after species succumbs to our self-centered "good intentions" and coordinated efforts, we'll not only be screwed, but increasingly alone on this planet.
Will the last bipedal, hairless, delusional, moronic ape fuckwad please turn off the lights?
A CONDO DIVIDED: Just how divided is the Democratic majority on the Pima County Board of Supervisors? Well, last week Republican Mike Boyd landed the post of the board's new chairman. The outgoing chairman, Democrat Raul Grijalva, said he didn't want the job back; which is just as well, because he didn't have any votes besides his own. Republicans Boyd and Ray Carroll took advantage of the split and wouldn't support Grijalva, with Carroll nominating Boyd. Democrats Sharon Bronson and Dan Eckstrom didn't want Grijalva, and Eckstrom nominated Bronson. Grijalva chose to second Boyd as opposed to Bronson. Bronson, able to count to three, graciously withdrew and supported Boyd. Eckstrom was a little less gracious, so Boyd was chosen four to one.
Boyd then nominated Bronson for vice-chair, and Carroll for the number three slot of acting chair, both of which passed unanimously.
The supervisors are far from agreement on important issues such as transportation, growth, and healthcare. With no clear majority on much of anything, this board has lacked both leadership and cohesiveness. And we've been critical of Boyd since his election in 1992, when he made book with former GOP Supes Ed Moore and Paul Marsh, a decision which ultimately cost taxpayers millions of dollars. OK, it's a new year and we may have a new board majority, so we'll carefully judge Boyd's actions. We hope he does a good job, and we wish him well in his new leadership position.
HEALTH PROBLEMS: There's a subterranean war going on between Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry and the county's new health czar, Dr. Richard Carmona. Under the county's new integrated health plan, Carmona doesn't report to the Board of Supes or Huckelberry, but to an independent commission. (And if that sounds sort of like what Jack Jewett, Oliver Drachman, and the Growth Lobby are trying to do with water, you're very perceptive.)
Carmona is paid $180,000 a year--$40,000 more than Huckelberry. And Huckelberry has some problems with a guy who's in charge of 40 percent of the Pima County budget spending so much time off campus being the physician for anything that will get him some publicity.
The real problem is that under the new system Kino Hospital is back to a whole lot of red ink, and it's Carmona's baby, not Huckelberry's. The whole "integrated healthcare" plan may turn out to be one of the bigger blunders in county government, as Supervisors Sharon Bronson and Dan Eckstrom warned.
BALLOT BUST: In their latest cheap shot against the incorporation of Casas Adobes, The Arizona Daily Ad Space editorially claimed the inability of council candidates in that community to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot for the March primary election proved "apathy" was rampant, and meant those folks really didn't want to be a town anymore. That allegation is absurd.
Casas Adobes was incorporated in mid-November. The process of setting up an election kept council candidates from circulating petitions until almost Christmas, and the deadline to turn in those petitions was January 9. The law required 600 signatures for each candidate in about three weeks, a Herculean task. The candidates' inability to gather the signatures proves absolutely nothing. By comparison, Tucson City Council candidates need far fewer signatures and have several months to gather them. Consider the Star's cheap shot just another biased and ignorant political belch.
And we're also getting tired of the two dailies' constant reference to the narrow margin in the Casas Adobes incorporation election--almost 52 percent of the votes cast--as a "narrow" victory. For the record, the following presidents of The United States were all elected with less than a majority of the votes cast: Lincoln, 1860; Hayes, 1876; Garfield, 1880; Cleveland 1884; Harrison 1888 (lost to Cleveland in the popular vote); Cleveland 1892; Wilson, 1912 and 1916; Truman, 1948; Kennedy, 1960; Nixon, 1968; Carter, 1976; and Clinton, 1992. So what? They all got to serve.
"Close" only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and among losers who didn't like the results.
MEANWHILE, NEXT DOOR IN TORTOLITA: The Tortolita Town Council--Mayor Lan Lester, Vice-Mayor Steve Shochat, and Council members Carlotta "Scotty" Bidegain, Elaine Cooper, Kathy Franzi, Al Lathrem, and Barbara Smith--have all filed for re-election. They're all running unopposed.
While they needed fewer signatures and had more time to gather them than did Casas Adobes council candidates, the near unanimity among Tortolita's 1,900 registered voters made the task relatively simple.
Regardless of the repeated stupid comments of the two dailies, both towns still legally exist, and both towns have major constitutional questions yet to be heard by the courts. It ain't over 'til it's over.
SLOPPY SLIP-UP: Tucson Weekly Senior Editor Jim "Numbskull" Nintzel apparently had a little too much eggnog over his Christmas break. In last week's "At The Gate In '98," Nintzel made at least two glaring errors: He misidentified northwestern Pima County's District 12 as District 13, and then referred to Districts 10 and 12 as a "safely Democratic," when in fact he should have said Districts 10 and 11. Now you know why Nintzel can only find work in the alternative media.
HONEYBEE STING: The Oro Valley Town Council recently amended its General Land Use Plan to allow for more homes and a resort in the Honeybee Canyon area, the better to accommodate the Scottsdale-based ITC Corporation, which hopes to build as many as 200 homes and a hotel on a 480-acre parcel bordering the sensitive riparian area.
The ITC Corporation initially asked Pima County to rezone the land to allow the development, but the supes shot the idea down and voted to keep the current zoning, which allows about one home per four acres. So the spurned ITC instead courted Oro Valley, offering to allow the town to annex the property if council members would approve the rezoning. Well-known as a cheap date, the council agreed to amend the town's general plan as a first step toward a long-term relationship with the developers.
Now a group of Oro Valley citizens, led by Allen Wright, have launched a referendum drive to reverse the Town Council's decision. The group must collect at least 418 signatures in the next three weeks to force a public vote on the change in the general plan, which is sure to give ITC hives.

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