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by Robert Kimball
Bulletin Staff
from the Weekly Bulletin, 3/3/99
More than 100 area residents attended the Sonoita Crossroads Forum last Saturday at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds. The open house format provided opportunities to obtain information and to supply input for future land use planning decisions.
Visitors had the opportunity to sit down with individual Forum representatives and express their views and ideas. All ideas and suggestions were written down and will be considered in the planning process.
According to Shel Clark, Forum president, the Sonoita Community Crossroads Forum is committed to developing a plan of action for Santa Cruz County and all the agencies and organizations that serve the area. The Forum has held a number of meetings with area residents to get input for developing a land use plan for the Sonoita area.
"The county is in the process of developing a comprehensive plan for the year 2000, but the county probably doesn't have enough money to include the Sonoita area. If the Forum can supply a Sonoita area plan that the county can accept, then Sonoita would be included in the county plan," said Clark.
The Forum exhibit had two aerial photographs of the Crossroads, one taken in the sixties, the other just recently.
At the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) interactive exhibit, visitors identified the values most important to them for the proposed Cienega Creek Watershed National Conservation Area (NCA), which includes the Empire Ranch. Each visitor was given four red dots and one green dot. The four red dots were used to identify the four most important values out of nine possibilitiesÑvegetation, wildlife, recreation, ranching, history-archeology, water resources, caves-geology, views and conservation-based business opportunities. All one had to do was place the dots on the charts of choice.
The green dot was used to select the management option most preferred Ñ traditional public lands management, cooperative management or collaborative management.
The final results will be published in a newsletter put out by the Forum.
The event's speaker was Jesse Juen, BLM field manager. He explained how National Conservation Areas are set up. He said that Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and Congressmen Jim Kolbe are considering setting up a NCA for the Cienega Creek Watershed Area and that the input from the Forum meeting would be used to decide whether an NCA was desirable.
The open house was sponsored by the Sonoita Community Crossroads, the BLM and the Sonoran Institute.
Other exhibitors included the U. S. Forest Service, the Friends of Highway 82, Sulphur Springs Valley Electric
Coop., Sonoita Elgin Emergency Services Inc., the U.S. Border Patrol, the Santa Cruz
County Sheriff's Department, the Cowbelles and more. The public is invited to the next Forum planning meeting.
It will be Saturday, March 13 at 9 a.m. in Pioneer Hall at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds.
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