Martin isn’t beholden to the short-term interests of one industry

Editor

I have two future visions of Calaveras’ District 3 from Angels Camp to Dorrington.

The first sees a turnoff every quarter mile leading to cheaply built, ticky-tacky, 1/16th acre lot-sized, cookie-cutter housing developments, constructed by corporate companies like Kaufman and Broad. Construction will be by workers living for five-day stretches in onsite trailers, then going home on weekends to Sacramento or Oakland. Between each—“development” will be strip malls. Each will be a replica of the one before, with a convenience store and gas station. Creeks will be rip-rap’ed and channeled to prevent flooding. Forests will be “thinned” (read: clear-cut) to build houses. I see three or four McDonald’s along that stretch. By my count, there’d be half a dozen traffic lights. When completed, the Kaufman and Broads, along with off-site workers, will disappear. Our economy, our workers, our contractors, will not have benefited one iota.

My second vision would be something looking about the same as now. Forest-lined roads with vistas in upper elevations and rolling hills with vineyards/ranchland at lower elevations. I read with interest Ralph Emerson’s Letter to the Editor (Enterprise, May 5). It’s true. I came to Calaveras to escape what the real estate/development industry had done elsewhere. I struggled to stop the over-development and mauling of the land, but….now, I’ve come to Calaveras and see the same coming here—same arguments, self-interests, and greed—same disregard for the environment and quality of life. You see, Mr. Emerson, some of us with a hard-earned, wider perspective of the world want to stop Calaveras from repeating those mistakes.

For these reasons and others, I’m voting for Martin Huberty for District 3 Supervisor. Martin isn’t beholden to the short-term interests of one industry. Martin has the education and experience (national and international) to understand the issues from a 10,000-foot perspective, embracing and preserving our quality of life—not a perspective that is blinded by the short-term, destructive greed of a single industry.

Martin’s opponent is supported by real estate brokers, the construction industry, and hard-hat unions. I wonder why.

Joseph Mollica

Arnold