Self-styled "Planners" Decide Farms are in the Way

As many of you know, the so-called Desert Area Initiative (DIA) was approved by the Borrego Springs Community Sponsor Group (BSCSG) on June 5 and now must be accepted by the County Board of Supervisors to be implemented.

The DIA proposal shows how a few good ideas can be used to disguise a radical agenda. In this case it is a comprehensive no-growth agenda combined oddly with an aggressive, intentional assault on family farming in Borrego. But the DIA contains too much snake oil medicine for the sugar to cover up.

While the DIA proposal talks a lot about “community values,” it forgets that farmers have been a part of the community since Borrego’s founding. Instead, the anti-farming agenda of the DIA is clear throughout and is epitomized by Recommendation 4.1.1.2, which calls for “economic, political, and/or legal means” to be implemented against farming.

I’m afraid the DIA would also be a disaster for the entire community, not just farmers. Its extreme and intrusive level of regulation would impact everyone. Layered among several constructive suggestions and a clever scheme to force out farmers is a morass of new permitting requirements, ordinances, mandates, review processes, bureaucracies, districts, and trusts that would effectively lock down property rights in Borrego.

The DIA proposal claims to include “only those recommendations that are supported by the entire community.” That’s not true. The DIA proposal fosters an illusion of consensus. There can be no true dialogue when a handful of “planners” have already made up their minds what’s good for us.

Please contact County Supervisor Bill Horn and ask him to reject this ill-conceived “Desert Area” idea:

Bill Horn, Supervisor, 5th. District
San Diego County
1600 Pacific Highway, Room 335
San Diego CA 92101