October 15 Meetings: 1 Win, 1 Loss

The Talavera Community Association had mixed results on the October 15 meetings. At the 9 AM County Commission Meeting, the County Commission voted 4-1 to approve our petition to request that FEMA withdraw the Fillmore/Tellbrook Arroyo flood plain study, and have it redone. In general the commissioners were impressed with the work done by the Noahs Ark Group Study(NAGS), led by Mike Park and John Smith. They commended the community activism and the community’s willingness to donate our own money for this study. The lone dissenting vote was cast by commissioner Oscar Vasquez Butler. Mr Butler’s reason for dissenting is that he thought it was unfair to support one area of the county because we had the money and drive to pay for our own engineering analysis. He felt that all of the flood studies may be flawed and this was unfair to the poorer areas of the county.

While we acheived our objective with this vote by the County Commission, this was only a step on the path to our overall goal. Having the County agree with us, lends a lot of credibility to our arguments. However, the final decision will still be up to FEMA and is yet to be made.

At the late afternoon ETA meeting, the ETA voted 3-2 to grant the Shittal LLC appeal of the ETZ’s earlier decision to deny their rezoning request. That means that the request to rezone 36.5 acres at the corner of Achenbach Canyon Road and Chippewa Trail from ER2 (2 acre minimum) to ER3 (1 acre minimum) was granted. There were conditions attached to the rezoning approval, so the parcel is officially zoned ER3C. The two conditions attached to the zoning change are 1- Maximum of 18 lots total, and 2- Minimum lot size of 1.5 acres. County commissioners Oscar Vasquez Butler and Kent Evans supported the change along with 1 city counselor. County Commissioner Karen Perez voted against the change.

Sadly, the ETA has once again shown that hey consider maximizing developer profits is a higher priority than maintaining neighborhood integrity.