Staff photo by Alan Levine FLORENCE - Anam Inc.'s plans to develop 4,600 acres approximately 12 miles northwest of Oracle Junction may have to be put on hold.

The Canadian-based developer had gained approval for a zone change and a planned area development overlay district during the May 16 meeting of the Pinal County Board of Supervisors, which would allow construction of 8,516 homes. However, on Monday morning, an entourage of folks from the Oracle area arrived at the rear entrance to Administration Building No. 1 and deposited several boxes containing petitions totaling approximately 5,500 signatures, about twice as many as required by state statute to put the development on the November 2002 ballot. 

At that time, the fate of the Willow Springs-South Village development will be in the hands of Pinal County voters.

The Oracle group, known as Pinal Citizens for Sustainable Communities (PCSC), had 30 days in which to gather 3,030 valid signatures from registered voters, a task that is not unfamiliar to them, for back in December of 2000, this same group turned in nearly 5,000 signatures to put a halt to a 6,314-unit addition to the SaddleBrooke master planned community, which had also gained approval for a zone change and PAD from the supervisors.

Back then, PCSC members did not have to contend with triple-digit temperatures and mounting humidity readings due to the onset of the monsoon season.

"Getting petitions signed this time was a difficult task for many of our members," said Frank Pierson, a spokesman for the group. "Many of our signature gatherers are senior citizens, so it was particularly hard on them to stand out there for hours during the height of the heat, talking to people about the issues and convincing them that it was in their best interest to get this on the ballot. It was also difficult on the people who stopped by to sign up, many of whom had just come out of the supermarket and stood there listening to us while their ice cream melted."

Expectations are that PCSC has met the criteria necessary to get the issue on the ballot. The petitions were turned over to the Pinal County Elections Office, where they will be tallied, and a 5 percent sampling will be taken out for verification. And that is done by going through voter registration records to make certain that the signatories are registered voters. Elections Office workers will also compare signatures to verify their authenticity. 

"By law, they have to get back to us in two weeks," Pierson said. "And my expectation is that this issue will go onto the November 2002 ballot along with our previous referendum concerning the SaddleBrooke development. We believe that such huge-scale projects, that would put undue stress on limited resources like water, ought to be voted on by the public on a countywide basis."

Pierson indicated that he and others in the group had been pleasantly surprised at the amount of interest and support that they had received in "all four corners of the county." He said that many of the signatures were garnered in places like Apache Junction, Arizona City, Casa Grande, Superior, Kearny, San Manuel, Gold Canyon and, despite what he claimed were intense personal attacks, they had very broad-based support in Oracle.

"Apparently, we're talking about issues that people care an awful lot about in other parts of the county and not just in the southeastern section," said Pierson. "To an extent, this is a countywide issue, because there have been zonings in other parts of the county that may have also put taxpayers at risk. There have been rezonings where it's not clear who is going to pay for sewers. There are many specific issues that we think have not been adequately dealt with that were raised in our conversations with the public.

"Prime among them is the appropriate level of development fees to protect the county taxpayers. Where you have no infrastructure and you have been granted rezoning, you have actually given away your prime negotiating tool to charge development fees for things like roads, libraries, sheriff's substations and so forth. This issue of who pays for what needs to be clearly delineated, and it's absolutely not clear."

Lionel Ruiz, supervisor for District 1, was out of town and unavailable for comment. Sandie Smith, supervisor in District 2, was willing to address Pierson's statements.

"Since the proposition for Growing Smarter did not pass, we were not exactly sure what rules we would be working under," Smith said, "whether it would be a citizens initiative or under Growing Smarter rules. But the counties could not levy impact fees as such. We were doing them through stipulations and agreements through the zoning process.

"Now, we are giving some leeway on impact fees, and we're looking at which ones can we can charge, because we have to justify impact fees. We have to be able to show that a project is going to have an impact and how much it's going to be impacting, but I know that over in our area, for example, we had a school built by a developer. These are all things that have been agreed to by the board and by the development community."

Smith also pointed to the fact that the board also has some road districts that are voluntary, and that the county is working to make sure that a lot of the impact is taken care of and plans to continue to do that. 

"We also are requiring at the zoning level that the developer work with the school districts," she said. "It's right there in our stipulations. And while we can't charge impact fees, we can get voluntary money, and we've been doing that. We've been working that up as it comes through zoning through our stipulations."

Still, Pierson feels that there is insufficient to no protection for the taxpayers.

"The devil is in the details," he said. "If you look carefully at the Willow Springs plan, the rezoning specifics, you will see a deep vulnerability of Pinal County taxpayers. We want to see it clearly specified at the zoning levels down inside of the tentative platting and platting. That's where it should be handled. That's where you have political control over the process."

Pierson also was concerned that in the event of a developer's bankruptcy that the taxpayers would get stuck with the bills for something that's half built. He contends that the Willow Springs project puts taxpayers at risk and there should be public debate on this issue, which he hopes will come about through the referendum next year.

"The developers put up bonds for the infrastructure," said Smith, "and we keep a certain amount of that until the projects are built out, so that should they gouge the roads in putting in homes and things like that, and they do not come back in and fix that road, we can go ahead and do that ourselves on the bond."