When RAID is not demanding that their voice is added to the opinion pages, or setting up photo opportunities when they pull paperwork at the city offices, you will see them lecturing the City Council and other city commissions at various meetings. This may surprise you, but I think they are doing a good job for a political action committee. RAID is Kingman's own version of 'moveon.org' and 'Swift Boat Veterans against John Kerry'.
Lately I've noticed some backlash against RAID coming from many other residents in the Kingman area. There are responses to RAID's columns and letters on the KDM website, and the total number of folks writing back against RAID is large and growing, and those numbers do not only include the contributors here at MOCO Real.
I thought I'd share a couple with the readers here.
The first one adds some humor, much needed humor to the mix. See the letter here. My favorite couple of passages follow...
Residents Against Irresponsible Development (RAID) is just that vague. They need a more specific and well-defined acronym so we all know where they're coming from.
I've come up with some I hope they will consider. It's tough to beat a snappy name like RAID, and my first attempts fell way short of the mark. ERAWWV (Elderly Residents Against Whippersnappers With Vision) just doesn't have RAID's zing.
and
Then came KRINGE - Kingman Residents Intent on Negating Growth and Economics. I have to admit that would be a tough one to beat. It has all the elements; A name with real zing that basically tells everyone what they're all about. I think they should consider it. But I don't know, maybe it's too long. Short and sweet, that's the ticket. You know, keep it simple and to the point. Kingman Residents Against Progress! This baby has it all! When people tell you they belong to KRAP, well, that says it all!
Somebody gave me a better acronym for RAID, try Radical Activists Inhibiting Development on for size... but I must say that KRINGE and KRAP are really good. Nice creativity out there.
You may have run into a little tussle on the letters to the editor page recently involving a sitting city P&Z commissioner (and a Mohave County P&Z commissioner as well, but that person is not addressed in the response).
I guess it all started with the following article about a current City Council member attending a RAID meeting. Article here. Some telling quotes from RAID to follow.
"Tom is the only one who will go into enemy territory," said Marvin Robertson, one of RAID's founders.
Nice to see that RAID admits that they are the enemy.
RAID member Loyd Peterson said he thinks Council has an attitude that, "We want it all right now and to hell with the future."
This from the same group that begged us all to wait a year before doing anything about the future. Nice. Well, I beg you to read that entire article again and keep in mind that the article appeared before the last local issues election. You will see that RAID is adamant about putting non revenue generating applications on the resident owned 168 acres of land along Interstate 40 instead of conditioning the property to be in a position to sell or lease for top dollar AND to generate much needed sales tax dollars, impact fees, and other benefits.
Moving on now, the article helped produce a response from a few Kingman residents and you can see the entire letter to the editor here. The following is a sample from that letter...
We have yet to see a viable solution to anything from this group. In our eyes, all they do is worry about their neighborhood and try to create chaos so Nick Wilbur has something to write about.
The personal attacks on the mayor and City Council members are outrageous and unfounded. We would like to see one shred of evidence that any member of our current Council has benefited from anything on those silly little signs that are getting plastered all over town. Until we see some proof, the RAID crew will, in our eyes, be the ones that have no integrity and can't be trusted.
RAID, your 15 minutes is up.
Of course that meant that RAID would have to stick up for themselves and now a response was posted on the KDM website and you can see that here.
It was also interesting to see RAID fire back at the call to the public portion of the last city council meeting last Monday night. It appears that they believe that if they speak on a zoning issue in front of the Kingman P&Z commission, they will want P&Z commissioner Jim Cave to recuse himself because he exercised some free speech.
I told you so... I told you that RAID would want us all to kiss the ring, to get their blessing, to make whatever new commission they want to form now to be satisfied before anything positive can be considered. Yet... we haven't seen a one of them put their name in the hat for any of the positions available on City Council. RAID appears to be satisfied in their role as 'armchair QB' or 'side-seat driver'.
We've seen enough from RAID to know that they offer hypocritical arguments. When I asked the community groups to work together late last summer to come up with some needed solutions, I was 'rebuffed' by RAID. Now the day after the election they are asking everyone to work together for solutions.
We all saw RAID support a major amendment to the general plan on resolution 4423 at a P&Z and City Council meeting, only to come right back up and deny a different major amendment (resolution 4425) and even use the reason that the general plan was voted on by Kingman voters and the general plan shouldn't be changed without another vote. Hardly a model of consistency there.
And not to forget how RAID used reasoning to defeat the bonds such as protecting those folks on fixed incomes by not adding to the cost of property taxes, but only a day or two after the election we see that RAID offered up a plan to have the public vote on a bond to improve the lands of their main political ally.
So it shouldn't surprise the fine folks of RAID that they have created their own critics through their own words and actions. I suspect that we will see more critical comments as we move along.
No comments:
Post a Comment