Letter to Cave Creek Town Manager: 4/17/2012

From: mike chutz
To: Abujbarah Usama
Cc: Ford, John; Omundson, Peter; Baxley, Dan; Bryda, Ted; Fontaine, Ray ; Monachino, Reggie ; Iverson, Rae;
Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 8:28 AM
Subject: CC Investors 220, LLC

Dear Usama

The purpose of this e-mail is not to urge you to do any one particular thing - unless it is the right thing.  

The purpose of this message instead goes to the very core of your role, the role of the various appointed and elected officials and the way that Cave Creek is run. It goes to the very core of the vision for Cave Creek and whether one man determines that vision or whether that vision is determined by the will of the people through their elected representatives by means of the democratic process.

The action taken by you yesterday was wrong.  Lawyers will spend today researching whether a city employee - an employee of the people - has the legal right to unilaterally cancel an important hearing regarding a controversial development proposal.  However, the question is not whether it is legal.  The question is whether it is right.  The hearing was ordered by the Planning Commission as a part of a process that started with an informational meeting two months ago, continued with a workshop one month ago and was to culminate in a final hearing and recommendation this month.  The land investment company was woefully unprepared (insultingly so) at the last meeting.  The Chairman instructed them to get prepared and attend a hearing on April 19 to make a final legal presentation in support of their application.  

Their application was breath-taking in its disregard for the General Plan.  It was poorly presented because it was rushed through in order to be filed just under the wire before the PAD regulation expired. It was crafted in order to barely arguably pass muster as a "minor" amendment.  It was presented by a sophisticated public relations firm. The town staff should have been in tune with the will of the people of Cave Creek  and stood their ground at the time of the initial filing by the real estate company. They should have been told that although they were welcome to file the application it  was probably legally defective and totally against the General Plan, and that it would not receive any support by any appointed or elected official of Cave Creek or any resident of Cave Creek.  You should have told the real estate company that they are welcome to develop their property but that they are not welcome to force the neighbors surrounding that area to bear the burden of their over-paying for property zoned desert rural. You and your staff have both a fiduciary and a moral duty to protect the interests of the citizens of Cave Creek as expressed in the General Plan.  

Most importantly, you must realize that your duty is not to impose YOUR IDEA of what is good for the citizens of the town of Cave Creek.  Your job is to execute the will of the people of the town.  You have a professional, an ethical and a moral duty to do so.  In my opinion, as a resident and taxpayer of Cave Creek, you have failed on all accounts.  

People have spent thousands of man hours in good faith preparing for this hearing.  Petitions were circulated.  Meetings were held.  Neighbors were visited.  Technical research was done.  Legal research was done.  Money was invested.  Political representatives were lobbied. All of this was done so that the issues that were raised at the last planning meeting could be countered in a reasoned manner.  Signs were placed all over town (you must have seen them). We planned on having up-wards of 300 people attend that meeting.  The city staff knew that because we asked them for special accommodations. This meeting was extremely important to the citizens of Cave Creek.

Then representatives of the real estate investor called you on the phone and asked you for an indefinite continuance and you unilaterally granted it.  They did not drop the core of their application.  As you well know, it can be resurrected at any time with only seven days notice.  I wonder, before you granted that continuance did you once think of the citizens of the town that you serve.  Did you once think of their rights?

From our meeting yesterday I believe I realize your motivations.  You saw that this was against the will of the people.  But rather than let that will be expressed in a public forum you decided to personally massage the situation.  You thought that you could convince every one - perhaps even the real estate investor - that the issue was dead. You tried to convince me (and almost did until my wife challenged me).  I spoke with members of the Planning Commission and they believe it is dead. Friends spoke with Council members and they think it is dead.  But you know that the issue is far from legally resolved.  

You may not have even intellectually gone through a check list to determine this course of action.  Perhaps your actions are instinctual. Perhaps you are instinctively capable of pleasing multiple constituencies while getting your own way.  It worked in this instance.

This is symptomatic of a much larger problem that I have witnessed in the six months that I have lived here.  There are wildly divergent visions of Cave Creek.  One vision is a Cave Creek that offers all of the services that a modern city would offer.  The other is of a unique rural western town.  It is my belief that you strongly believe in the former.  In fact, during our first meeting you told me as much (you said that people move here for the western charm and end up wanting the same services that they had in their previous towns.  I do not.)  It is also my belief that the vast majority of the people of Cave Creek, as expressed in the General Plan, strongly desire the latter.

The problem is that you are not an elected official.  You are an employee.  You have a view of your job that is, in my opinion, inaccurate.  You view yourself, as Town Manager, in control of the Town.  You are not.  You do not have the right to make policy.  You have the responsibility to execute policy.  In order for that system to work there must be a very clear understanding of the role of town manager by all town employees and appointed and elected officials.  Based on my observations of your repeated contraventions of the General Plan that understanding does not exist.

From my understanding we had a surplus of $5M in 2005.  We now have a debt load approaching $60M plus.  We own a water company that we paid four times of the original offering price.  We have a sewage system that is over built relative to its customer base and reach.  You have tried to centralize trash collection.  I am told that you have suggested that property taxes specifically designated for Spur Cross be extended and used for the general fund.  

You are now actively working have the town buy a fire department.  There is a campaign going on about that but to read the information one would think it is about property tax.  The town fathers should decide the policy of whether or not the people of the city want to have a public fire department.  You, as the chief administrative officer of the city, should develop the economic model and lay out the pros and cons.  Elected officials should talk with their constituents regarding the issue.  Debate should occur.  Then a decision should be made.  Instead there is no economic model.  The issue of whether or not a small western community should replace its current fire/ems management system is not directly made.  Instead it is masked as a property tax issue and debated on road side signs.  Worse yet, the real debate is about the size of the signs.  

I feel as if I have been dropped into an alternative world that is not a part of the United States.

There have been mutterings of corruption on your part.  I have seen zero evidence and doubt that that is the case because my sense is that money does not motivate you. There have been allegations that you intimidate staff.  I doubt that.  I simply think you are a strong manager.  I have seen a million business executives like you.  They are driven, smart and have a very clear vision of their mission. I do believe that you have a vision for Cave Creek that is inconsistent with the General Plan. (It is certainly inconsistent with why my family and I moved here.)  I further believe that you have an inappropriate vision of the scope of your authority in exercising that vision.  You have recommended that the water board be disbanded.  You have tried to limit the time in which the Planning Commission has to review a development.  You have personally recommended - engineered I am told - the extension of basic services throughout this quiet western town.  

But in unilaterally canceling this hearing you have over stepped your bounds.  My hope is that this is the tipping point.  I hope that all of the officials - elected and appointed - will reevaluate the scope of your authority.  I hope that a clearer job description will be written and a tighter employment contract be developed for you and for the succeeding town manager.  I hope that a tighter General Plan is developed before it is too late.  I hope that these issues are debated openly in the next election. I hope that our elected officials prepare for each meeting and are totally in tune with the will of their constituents.  

The issues in Cave Creek are going to explode in the next five years.  The issue is development.  There is a huge over hang of raw land that investors are going to want to monitize.  They are extremely sophisticated and financially capable of hiring the best legal, engineering, planning and public relations talent.  No matter what our little town does we will always be over matched.  The odds of our preserving our vision as expressed in the General Plan are extremely low.  Development is like the ocean - moving from Phoenix to Scottsdale to Sedona and Prescott.  Cave Creek is an island.  It is a gem.  We have a very small window to protect it.  Our current system of government is broken, greatly reducing those odds.  We may already have lost.  Due to our current debt taken on in order to provide water, sewer and other basic services we may need as much development as we can get.  Those facts should be developed and debated.

My view as a new resident has provided me with an unusual perspective.  It is my hope that the issues set forth in the message regarding your vision of your job will ignite a firestorm of debate.  It is further my hope that my observations about our short, mid and long term challenges will incite my fellow citizens and our elected officials to examine with urgency where we are and where we are going.  It is my hope that our news paper will take up this cause in a fair manner and that our citizens will support that paper through subscriptions and advertising. There is a tremendous amount of information that must be disseminated, analyzed and debated if we are to rationally address the issues that confront us.

I intend to pursue the matter of CC Investors 220, LLC. Those investors are extremely sophisticated.  They bought real estate at the top of the market and are now exercising the sound business strategy of trying to minimize their losses by changing the use of the land. They have no right to do so and I intend to see closure of the legal matters surrounding their current application.

More broadly, the so called "Enchanted Canyon Resort - Uniquely Cave Creek" is the perfect lense through which to see all that challenges our town.  We face substantive issues of development, resources - both economic and natural - and basic services.  We also face issues of governance and the roles and responsibilities of the various branches of our administration - especially the role of the Town Manager in a town manager form of government.  We face basic issues of representing the will of the people. We can either put these issues on the table and debate them or sweep them under the rug and let you make the decisions.  I am going to do every thing in my power to put the issues on the table. I invite you to join me.  

But first I ask you - I urge you - to do the right thing and bring legal closure to the issues surrounding Enchanted Canyon.  They have no right to have an unlimited time to keep open the potential use of a PAD regulation that has since been rescinded.  Send them a letter to that effect and tell them that by their actions they have waived the use of that PAD and that should they seek to change the use of their property they will have to start the entire process again.  That is the legal  fact. 


Yours,

Mike Chutz

PS  I am copying the Town Council, the Planning Commission, the Editor of the  Sonoran News and all of the members of our advocacy group on this e-mail.  My hope is that it is eventually read by every member of the community.