Letter by Concerned Citizen

One of the slickest examples of creative deception just arrived in my mailbox. A glossy, high quality color card invites me to a “Neighborhood Open House for the Gypsum Reclamation Study.” I kid you not. “Project team members will be available to answer any questions and provide insight about the history of the mine, the status of the planning process and future project milestones.” We are told that this is an initiative “designed to analyze, understand, reclaim and restore more than 2400 acres of land that includes the former gypsum mine at Blue Diamond Hill.” Why, if I didn’t know better, I would be thinking that they are focused on doing something good.

This thinly veiled plot to promote Rhodes’ housing development on the hill and forever alter the nature of the Red Rock Conservation area is one of the most insulting distortions that I have seen in a long time. The only meaningful reclamation of the area would be to protect its unique history by preserving it, not destroying it with a community of homes, stores, schools, traffic and light pollution, to just name a few undesirables.

I wonder what “insights” about the history of the mine are waiting to be revealed. For starters, will they tell us why this mine was so historically significant? Will they tell us what they know about the unique plant life on Blue Diamond Hill?

Strategic Solutions, the group throwing the “neighborhood open house,” doesn’t list Rhodes as a client on its website. Hmmm. That’s a bit odd. It seems that maybe Jim Rhodes and his public relations firm may have forgotten that you can try to make a silk purse from a pig’s ear, but its still a pig’s ear.

Patricia van Betten