Posts Tagged ‘sprawl’

From Steve Emerine of Inside Tucson Business – Read it HERE.

The supervisors have partially avoided the problem by giving County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry almost total power to run day-to-day county operations. And when asked, he often announces board members’ policies, even when they haven’t yet set them.

When James Keene was city manager, he had many of those same powers. His successor, Mike Hein, has tried to let bureaucrats he inherited handle routine matters but to refer major policy decisions to Walkup and the council.

Huckelberry won high marks from his county bosses, the daily newspapers, environmentalists and neighborhood activists for his Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan to limit growth in unincorporated areas and buy thousands of acres of land from other government agencies, ranchers or developers.

But his costly anti-sprawl crusade has led to greater sprawl as developers and builders moved to Pinal, Cochise and Santa Cruz counties to build homes that were more affordable for Tucson workers than they would have been if they had been built in this county.

Huckelberry’s efforts to reposition the county from the area’s sewage handler to a major player in regional water policy have met resistance from most of the area’s real water providers while risking lawsuits from the county’s one-time ally, Marana.

Results inside Tucson have also been unimpressive.