Don't be surprised when ideologues turn on the people who elect them
When you elect a property rights ideologue as county supervisor, don’t be surprised when she turns on you. And turn she did.
Last week, with a dramatic 3-2 vote, the Board of Supervisors buried the ill-conceived Santa Margarita gravel quarry.
The board chambers overflowed with townsfolk sporting placards. Someone had hand stenciled atop a Debbie Arnold campaign yard sign: “We voted for you. Now vote for us. No Quarry!”
Isn’t that adorable? As if Arnold’s vote wasn’t predictable as the tides.
Deliberating beforehand, Arnold tried to convince worried townspeople that her vote against them wasn’t a vote against them.
Rather, an industrial-grade gravel mine just outside town, and 270 noisy gravel truck trips through town all day long, was actually a vote for “affordable housing,” or inevitable change, or the greater good, or something. It was difficult to guess which, given her nearly incomprehensible argument.
Wise land use decisions require thoughtful judgment based on findings of fact and a careful balance of competing interests. It’s a difficult task for any politician, much less ideologues who believe property owners can do what they want with their land, no matter what the neighbors say.
Arnold’s soul mate, Supervisor Lynn Compton, delivered a magnum opus of verbal irrelevancy. Trying to fabricate a justification, she went to peculiar lengths to argue that the gravel mine would satisfy a desperate, urgent, statewide need – for gravel.
Proffering slides, graphs and personal “research,” Compton argued that this gaping gravel gap – and the need to fill it with the wrong kind of gravel – warranted ruining daily life for the town’s inhabitants.
Actually, said county staff, there’s no grave gravel shortage, especially of the kind coming from that mine.
Inconvenient truth notwithstanding, Compton shifted gears and launched an hour-long filibuster, machine-gunning questions and self-said facts, besieging her staff captives with mind-numbing explorations into traffic count minutiae and “scenic road” trivia.
No one, not even Compton, appeared to fathom where this train was headed – as it had clearly jumped the tracks. It was, indeed, one of the most god-awful, tortuous, extraneous inquisitions inflicted upon a public assemblage in this county in decades, if not ever. No one was better for it. Especially not the project applicants, who, like everyone in witness, saw the exasperation cementing into the faces of the three supervisors – Frank Mecham, Adam Hill and Bruce Gibson – from whom one vote needed extracting.
Filibuster finished, Compton abruptly moved to approve the mine without hearing a word from her colleagues. Arnold – who, as board chair, willfully abetted Compton’s unabated word purge – of course seconded.
Upon Arnold’s turn to promote the mine, she served up a slide show featuring old family photos accompanied by non-sequiturial bromides about love of community and how we all need to get along.
This apparently was meant to convey her deep conviction that since the Arnold family got to town before most everyone else’s, the community should just accept diminished property values, a degraded environment, traffic hazards and numerous other unfixable problems caused by the mine. Because old timers rule. Says she.
Next, she showed an “affordable” house under construction. With no supporting evidence, she asserted that gravel from this mine would make local housing more affordable. That was it. End of thought.
Obvious that she and Compton hadn’t secured a third vote, Arnold asked for a recess – an hour, a day, a week, whatever – so mine supporters could supply some “compelling findings” legally required to justify overriding the Planning Commission’s denial of the project. With no cheatsheets at the ready, she and Compton could find no findings top of mind.
Parliamentary masterminds they weren’t. After that stunt flopped, Compton’s motion for approval failed 2-3, leaving the board and audience fixed in astonished stillness.
The mercy kill came seconds later. On a motion by Gibson, seconded by Mecham, the gravel mine was euthanized 3-2 and the public finally put out of its misery.
Compton and Arnold came fully prepared to justify their vote against the town. They arrived with minds made up, regardless of what they were to hear from citizens.
What citizens witnessed was an unashamed exhibition of ideology overriding the community welfare by two supervisors who told everyone that’s exactly what they’d do if elected.
Nobody should be surprised when ideologues turn on the people who elect them.
It’s like a pit bull that bites you in the face when you cozy up for a kiss after a loving belly rub.
She can’t help it. It’s just her nature.
This story was originally published May 23, 2015 at 11:20 PM with the headline "Don't be surprised when ideologues turn on the people who elect them."