The next meeting nearest to Florence will be 6-8 p.m. Sept. 4 at Central Arizona College, Signal Peak Campus, Student Services Building, Room M101.

"The second round will be different from the first round of open houses, which were basically an introduction to the elements, an opportunity for people to become familiar with what a comprehensive plan is all about," Cady said. "This time, however, we'll have a map, as opposed to people just coming in and finding out what some of the issues are. Once they see the map, I'm guessing that we'll get a lot more comments, certainly more specific comments. At least, that's the way it's happened in the past."

The expectation is that with the map and the draft plan on hand, people will have something more tangible to deal with than they did during the first round of meetings and that should prompt more comments directed at specific items in the plan. 

In trying to focus on the issues that seemed to be foremost in people's minds, a citizens advisory group, which conducted the first round of open houses, was able to establish some general trends, which it passed on to Planning and Development.

"Some of the trends that we see coming out of the first round of meetings is that people are questioning whether the water is available for the developments," said Cady. "Specifically, they wanted to know why the state looks after the water issue instead of the county, and that's because the aquifers and surface water goes beyond county lines, beyond jurisdictional lines, and that's why you have the bigger entity in charge of that.

"Another question had to do with the environment: 'Are we being sensitive to the environment?' In the western part of the county, it's more of a question that with so much land under agriculture, do they want to keep farming or do they want to sell out to the developers? And if they do sell, then how is it going to be developed? Will it be rural throughout the entire area, or will you have corridors of higher density spreading out to areas with a more rural lifestyle?"

According to Cady, the comprehensive plan is not a blanket document for the entire county. Each of the six comprehensive plan areas defined on the county map has its own set of conditions, circumstances and special needs that require different approaches to designing guidelines for future development.

Are there any significant changes in the new draft plan over the current plan?

"I'd like to say that we did such a good job several years ago that we're just tweaking the old plan," Cady said. "But I know that's not the case. Things change. I think that one of the major changes is in the area that we call the Hunt Highway-Queen Creek-north Florence area, that whole corridor.

"When we worked on the plan years ago, we didn't anticipate that to be a growth area. We thought that growth would more likely occur around the Apache Junction-Gold Canyon area where the state land would be sold for development. That was identified as the growth area, and we missed it entirely. That's not where we've had the majority of rezonings."

The reason that the Hunt Highway area was overlooked as a development hot spot was that at the time there was no infrastructure.

"One of the things you look at when you're developing a comprehensive plan is whether there's any infrastructure in the area," said Cady. "However, once a developer in the area was willing to provide that, it changed the whole focus, and so our plan has to look at that area and work within it and determine where we want to go. The plan should be guiding the development, but then that's why we have amendments."

What about Casa Grande and the surrounding area?

"There hasn't been much change in the new draft plan," Cady said. "A lot of what we see is that most of the urban uses are going to be surrounding the incorporated areas, especially Casa Grande, Coolidge and Eloy. That's where they'll be focused, probably more in Casa Grande than anywhere else."

Cady made the observation that another area where change could occur rapidly is the Maricopa-Stanfield area.

"Those are the logical areas to have more intense development, but once you have that then you have the conflict that you have people who don't like all the development, that prefer the more rural lifestyle, but the more rural lifestyle has its problems in infrastructure and the cost to the county overall as opposed to higher density suburban or urban areas."

One of the interesting things that Cady observed when he was working in the San Diego area was that those who had lived in the area for five years or less did not want to see any changes.

"Those who lived there for a long time," he said, "accepted change more readily. It's an old story that occurs everywhere, and it's happening in parts of Pinal County."

Cady admits that designing a plan for the Oracle area has been quite a challenge, considering that the groups opposing development down there are active and well-organized. Pinal Citizens for Sustainable Communities (PCSC) has been successful in stalling two major developments by virtue of the petition process.

Is there any way to design the comprehensive plan to keep everyone happy ... to keep conflicts such as this from happening?

"To be honest, I don't think I have an answer for that," said Cady. "We have to look at best planning for the area but with the interests of the people in mind, and if you have a group that thinks that developments are inappropriate, they'll move forward with their petitions.

"We're trying to listen to them and understand their issues, realizing that whatever we do, not everyone is going to be pleased, which is part of the planning process. We try to get as much information as we can, work with various groups and even after the plan is in place, we can still sit down and work through some of the issues that are there. We can still make some amendments to the plan.

"A plan is never static. It is supposed to be looked at and amended, because things do change. Whatever we decide isn't there in perpetuity. In fact, at a minimum, it has to be repeated every 10 years."

The second round of meetings began Monday and continue through Sept. 6. From that point, Cady and his staff will have one more meeting with the supervisory groups to make sure that they have considered everything that was learned and gathered from the meetings. Then they will go into a work session with the Planning and Zoning Commission for further input, and that meeting is scheduled for Sept. 20. 

People will be allowed to attend, but since it is a work session, there will be no comments taken from the public. The public will be allowed to come forward and make their opinions known at the next Planning and Zoning Commission meeting when the issue is presented as a public hearing on Oct. 11.

"One of the things we'll be looking at too is that we know that even as it goes along, before you get to the public hearing at the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, there'll be some issues that come up, and we'll be looking at all that," said Cady. "We will revise the plan according to the recommendations of the Planning and Zoning Commission, and then there's what we call the 60-day review where all the incorporated areas, state, federal, county agencies, adjacent counties and the public has a 60-day time period to review it. And we'll get a lot of input from that too."

Cady now believes that the plan will be ready for a final public hearing before the Board of Supervisors on Dec. 19.