HERE’S OUR PLAN
(FROM CASA GOOFY INTERNATIONAL)
With the help of volunteer-master gardeners from WWOOFUSA we
have developed an area plan to preserve wild life corridors and habitat in and
around the El Rio Golf Course. We have maps from Google,the map store, and GIS
which will be combined into an area plan with a house model that will work with
the resulting river walk to promote sustainable development. Part of the plan has already been proven by
the Civilian Conservation Corps under Roosevelt in which swales created with
horse and wagon, (between Saguaro National Park and Kinney Road and Sandario
Road
), to prevent erosion had a serendipitous effect of creating
permaculture basins with lush growth and unusually rich dark soil all
done by natural processes.
http://permaculturenews.org/2014/10/11/discovering-oasis-american-desert/
We seek to honor this local and natural history, by creating
our own swales and resulting permaculture basins. Since, according to Code Enforcement, we are
jointly and severally liable with the Golf Course for the maintenance of the
alleyway between our art & aquaponics center, Casa Goofy International, and
the El Rio Golf Course we have created a similar swale situation there. Around the turn of the century the Army Corps
Of Engineers left a huge berm on the course which damned up a tributary arroyo
of the Santa Cruz which caused the dumping of up to a foot of storm runoff into
our back yards. We created a small opposite berm along our back fence which
created a swale and to repeat the CCC example we’re putting organic compost,
mulch, manure, and seeds into the basin and the bank by the fence. Free range chickens and ducks bred to be good
foragers complete the cycle of life.
Our neighbors are cooperating in this combined maintenance
and permaculture gardening effort so we currently have 200 X 12 feet (2400
square feet and growing) of rich more or less permanently watered soil to work with. This won’t
be a community garden because we can’t handle the traffic, but extra
produce will be offered periodically to the community and the Food Bank.
This is part of a plan to make the course solvent the way 18
other “failing” courses across the country have done by converting to multi use
through scheduling and temporary fences with no loss of golfing area or
times. This will promote use of the
resources in The El Rio Neighborhood Center, and hiking, biking and wildlife
viewing at the sanctuary created by joining the arroyos around the Golf Course
and Joaquin Murietta Park and letting wildlife come in to the park through a
large culvert.
Reclaimed water is already in the Golf Course. Through Xeriscaping some of the (113 acres
of) Bermuda Grass, (like in Fred Enke
Course), we can use the water saved to run a trickle back down the arroyos
(North) into the Santa Cruz to the Roger Road Treatment Plant and the
Sweetwater Reclamation area. One or two pair
of Beavers can multiply fast enough to do the work of creating swales in these arroyos
to support native food forests, and continue that work on into the Santa
Cruz. With the same 18 inch trickle of
water proposed a year ago to the County to make the Santa Cruz flow again, our
plan addresses the expenses of that plan by not having to run a pipeline, by
using solar pumping, by letting nature do the work, and by reducing the scale
so that it can be repeated modularly as money, time and paid and volunteer
labor permit.
We are up against a City Bureaucracy and government which
have been proven time and again to be corrupt and/or incompetent, it doesn’t
much matter which, because they go together. As one Warden explained to his
prisoners, after he went over the time they spent in jail compared to the time
they got to live by stealing,
“You guys really ought to go into some other line of work
because you’re no good at this one.”
But detective work, punishment and reasoning, although
necessary, don’t finish the job. As with
children, we have to SHOW The City what competent government would look
like. The City, with the collusion of
City Manager, TREO, Chris Kaselemis, Ward 1, Don Diamond, Jerry Collangelo, and
others, tried to sell the golf course to Grand Canyon University. The resulting destruction of millions of
dollars worth of wildlife habitat, the creation of dorms, apartments, and
parking lots would have been an economic and ecological disaster had the deal
gone through. The jobs, the students who
would theoretically rent apartments in the City and buy goods there, the
improved property values, were nothing but smoke and mirrors. (Nobody’s property values go up next to a Wal
Mart.) Ward One went back on its promises to the neighborhood which I
personally witnessed in a neighborhood meeting.
Instead of taking down the fences between our neighborhood and the
course, and Joaquin Murietta Park, our
councilperson tried to prove how business friendly the council could be by
throwing city property at Grand Canyon University virtually for free.
In documents recovered during a two year court battle with
the City, El Rio Coalition II has uncovered a systematic and systemic pattern
of corruption and collusion in regard to Grand Canyon University and other
attempts to sell the Course and other City dealings in general. Judge Christopher Staring in his statement
from the bench at the end of the two year suit, said, there was a consistent
pattern of lying and obfuscation, by the City Attorney and other City
Officials. He ordered ALL the documents
be given to Ceci Cruz on behalf of El Rio Coalition II. This was a good result but it should never
have taken two years out of a person’s life just to get at the truth.
Now that the selection process for the new City Manager has
been shown to be corrupt and/or incompetent (again it doesn’t matter which) in
several media outlets, there can be no doubt that we in this community are in
for the struggle, not just of our lives, but our children’s lives. Our City is ranked very low on the scale of
Cities offering open space. Open space
is our children’s natural inheritance.
It has been proven time and again to cut down on crime and vandalism and
to promote mental and physical health, happiness and yes, and of course, along
with that, BUSINESS, which, in our case, would be sustainable development
around a renewed Golf Course and park and a river walk. The new economists call it “intergenerational
well being”. I just call it common
sense, something that singer, songwriter John Prine says isn’t common anymore. I’m asking for your help in reversing that
trend.
So what would it take to SHOW what competent City Management
would look like for El Rio? People
providing food and entertainment and attending meetings to talk about what they
need in order to utilize the course and the El Rio Neighborhood Center, maps
and house models and pictures of volunteers helping with the labor of finishing
out the permaculture basins/gardens in the access alley,. people writing
letters to their council person and to the newspapers, talking on the
radio, but most of all: IMAGES, pictures
speaking louder than words. That’s where
art comes in, community and individual. We need an artist to do a major work of art
featuring permaculture basins. Until
then yours truly will try to erect some minor works of art.
And because Code
Enforcement has been used, with regard to the GCU deal and other deals, as a
tool of individual spite and developmental greed, we need to meet and document
particular individual instances of abuse of authority by City employees. We need to make it impossible for the entire
City government to operate outside of public scrutiny. Attorney General Holder in his statement on
Ferguson, said the whole problem stemmed from an incompetent City Council using
the police as a tool for revenue collection.
Does that ring any bells in Tucson?
If it does, we’ve got a long road to hoe but nothing like what the brave
men and women of the Civilian Conservation Corps had to do.
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