Town Hall of the Year
There's something about Cochise County … The Lord leaks chats in mysterious ways ... And F-bomb-laden diatribes should always lead the 6 o'clock news.
There must be something in the (limited and diminishing) groundwater of Cochise County, because when it’s time to take care of business, the unassuming locals know how to show up.
Just a few months ago, the county’s ranching community had a three-hour showdown with local environmentalists over the future of Mexican grey wolves in the area. Now, the two factions are united, along with townies and homesteaders, in their struggle against the City of Benson and Aluminum Dynamics (ADI), which wants to construct a massive aluminum “secondary smelter” in their town.
Last week, after receiving a deluge of emails and phone calls from locals, Attorney General Kris Mayes hosted a town hall in the City of Benson to hear their concerns about the proposed project. The 200+ attendees seemed thrilled when Mayes announced she would be looking into a possible “public nuisance” lawsuit against the plant.
But the real stars of the show were the locals themselves, who took turns giving impressive and spirited comments for nearly two hours.
Rural mic drops
In July, locals had a flash with the city’s Planning and Zoning Commission when it met to approve the November meeting minutes, which included the height variance for the 88-foot-tall aluminum plant. It was a tense meeting, with P&Z Chairman Bill Mehrer interrupting citizen commenters even after the city’s lawyer told him he couldn’t do that.
When an attendee announced she would “check with the attorney general” about whether the Commission was properly following meeting laws, she got a “good luck with that” from the Chairman.
“Good luck with that” has since become a catchphrase among Bensonites on Facebook and has been memorialized with its own TikTok meme video.
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At the town hall, some comments won big laughs and applause while reminding us that we were very much in rural Arizona.
Jane Scholar warmed up the crowd with gems like these:
“Let’s talk about the water real quick. These smelters are thirstier than a cattle drive in July. Up to 2-to-4-million gallons per day. That’s not just numbers on a page — that’s water pumped right out of the aquifer that keeps the San Pedro River alive. And the San Pedro isn’t just some muddy little stream, okay? It’s one of the last free-flowing rivers in the entire Southwest.”
Daniel Davenport and his wife live in the riparian area of the San Pedro River, within a mile from the proposed plant. He commented:
“My wife and I have built our house ourselves, with our own hands, and it’s been my dream to sit on my porch and die watching the sunset. With all that aluminum dust, the only blessing is that when I die, I’ll be such a vegetable from dementia that I’ll mistake the two 100-foot smoke stacks for trees.”
Kenny Jans, a retired veteran, commented on the light pollution that some say is already pouring in through their windows from the plant’s construction site:
“You’re gonna have to wear eclipse glasses to drive around at night. … I don’t know why they ever approved something this close to town.”
But everyone agreed that the comment of the night came from Young Mayberry, a “descendant of the original founders of [neighboring town] Saint David in 1877” who got the whole room clapping every time he repeated his slogan:
“You don’t build your outhouse in the middle of your kitchen.”
Along the same lines, other residents expressed that they’re all for recycling aluminum, just not so nearby that the toxic dust will settle in their backyards.
The feelings, the families
Mayes said that, of the hundreds of town halls she’s attended, Benson’s may have been “the most emotional town hall,” competing only with last year’s Willcox Basin town hall about groundwater declines, where there was “a lot of crying.”
Former Benson City Councilmember Seth Judd got choked up when mentioning the deep generational roots his family has in the area. Despite having been “attacked by several members of the City Council,” he showed up because he is “absolutely, unequivocally” against the aluminum plant. He also revealed that, when he left the City Council in December, he and some councilmembers weren’t aware the height variance had been granted — only a select group of politicians and city officials were kept “in the loop.”
“I have three beautiful daughters who this is going to affect. … It seems like [city officials] wanted this to come in under the radar,” Judd said.
Casey Townsend: “My wife and I moved here five years ago when I retired from the City of Tucson, to pursue my dream of starting an organic farm. … My research indicates that, if this plant were to go in, I may not be able to get my plums organically certified.”
Kimberly Skolkin: “How long will it take before the emissions settle on my ground, sink into the soil, and then my water? What will the neurotoxic and carcinogenic effects be on my children?”
Lowell Howe: “I would love to see [aluminum being recycled]. But not in the middle of my town. Not right across the street from hospice care, where the people deserve to die in dignity.”
Janelle Dobash: “When we send our children off to school, we shouldn’t have to worry about the air they are breathing on a daily basis and how it is affecting their growing lungs.”
Jeff Cook: “My main focus is going to be water. … We used to have artesian wells all over this valley… a huge artesian lake. … All there is now are dead trees there.”
A number of people spoke up about having asthma or surviving cancer, and their anxieties about the health impacts of the proposed plant.
The boosters
When one speaker asked everyone who opposed the plant to stand up, I didn’t see anyone still sitting. But at least two people spoke in favor of the plant.
One of the supporters introduced himself as Mark from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 570.
That’s former Democratic lawmaker Mark Cardenas of Phoenix, who was most recently spotted in Tucson urging the city council to approve the massive data center known as Project Blue. He said local electricians have to work down at the border, up in Tucson, or on the road, away from their families, because there are so few jobs around Benson. He believes the aluminum plant would provide an income for many local families.
The crowd wasn’t gentle with him. Many booed, others started yelling, “Get out of here!”
Hoyt Johnson also backed the plant, despite the “personal and professional risks that come with speaking candidly.” He spoke against what he called “an aggressively misleading narrative” from the protestors.
What Johnson was not candid about was that he was hired as the city’s Community Development Director earlier this year, but recently quit or was fired. When I asked Johnson what evidence he would need to see to be worried about the plant, he said he’d need to have residents sit down with ADI and hear the company’s responses to their concerns — which didn’t really answer the question.
After the meeting ended, I was standing outside near Republican Rep. Lupe Diaz, who represents Benson.
He commented to one of the security officers: “They don’t realize they’re hurting their own growth.”
The Lord works in leaked chats: Luke Mosiman, chair of the Arizona Young Republicans and one of several members whose messages appeared in the super racist Young Republican group chat that was leaked to Politico, was fired Tuesday from his job at the Center for Arizona Policy, an evangelical lobbying group behind many of the anti-gay or anti-trans bills at the state Capitol. Bob Trent, CAP’s Marketing and Communications Vice President, told us that CAP learned about the leaked texts on Tuesday afternoon, and that “(Mosiman’s) participation in conversations … took place months before he joined our organization.” In the leaked group chat, Mosiman called for the rape of Hayden Padgett, the chair of the Young Republican National Federation. He also suggested “releasing Nazi edits” as an attack against a candidate, then quipped: “The only problem is we will lose the Kansas delegation.”
Border wall > feeding babies: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is spending $4.5 billion for hundreds of miles of border wall, and $807 million of that is slated for Arizona’s border with Mexico, the Republic’s David Ulloa Jr reports. The feds are calling it a “smart wall” because it will be equipped with more technology. Meanwhile, we’re in the third week of a federal government shutdown, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, is set to run out of funding next month. More than 150,000 Arizonans depend on the program for things like baby formula and breastfeeding support, KJZZ’s Katherine Davis-Young reports.
Let’s audit the audit: Finance officials held a secret meeting yesterday to discuss an independent audit’s findings that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office improperly billed $163 million as expenses for the Melendres case, KJZZ’s Matthew Casey reports. There’s a community meeting on the racial profiling lawsuit scheduled for 6:30 p.m. next Wednesday at the Sandra Day O’Connor Courthouse. Meanwhile, Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan told “The Mike Broomhead Show” that the auditors didn’t accurately parse the budget numbers, and he plans to ask for an extension to have another expert look at the budget.
Audit your media diet with a paid subscription.
Flagged at 30,000 feet: U.S. Rep. Abe Hamadeh said he was monitored under the Transportation Security Administration’s “Quiet Skies” program that surveilled travelers who could pose a security risk, the Republic’s Laura Gersony reports. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is investigating the program, which ended this summer, and alerted Hamadeh that his name was on the surveillance list.
Butt dials and bigotry: Republican Rep. Joseph Chaplik has joined the wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric on social media, reposting a dozen such messages this month, including a call to “Get foreigners OUT of our government,” the Phoenix New Times’ TJ L’Heureux reports. House Democrats recently filed an ethics complaint against Republican Rep. John Gillette for his Islamophobic posts, which have continued after the complaint was rejected. When L’Heureux called Chaplik for comment, he accidentally called L’Heureux back.
“’Oh shoot, I think I dialed the wrong number. I’m sorry,’ (Chaplik) said, adding that his communications adviser Ross Trumble was ‘supposed to be’ contacting New Times. New Times did not hear from Trumble by publication,” L’Heureux writes
Let us start today’s laugh by saying we here at the Agenda are all for weird journalistic advocacy stunts.
But this is one we’ve never seen before.
AZFamily’s Austin Walker used the “call to the public” portion of this week’s Gilbert Town Council meeting to grill the council about water rates.
He started off by warning the council that his comments may be “a little bit unorthodox,” but Gilbert residents are asking AZFamily for help with jacked-up city water bills and faulty water meters because they’re not getting any answers from the city.
AZFamily also hasn’t gotten answers, so Walker showed up at the meeting to get answers there.
The thing is, per Arizona’s open meeting law, city council members aren’t allowed to discuss or debate issues brought up in the call to the public portion of the meeting (because those topics aren’t on the agenda).
So despite getting some applause from the audience, Walker didn’t get any answers.
But he did get something even more rare: an apology from a politician.
City Councilman Jim Torgeson said he was sorry for lobbing an “F-bomb-laden diatribe” at the reporter recently.
“I feel you still deserved it, but I’m sorry I gave it to you,” Torgeson said before promising to get Walker more information after the meeting.
And while using the call to the public portion of the meeting to grill politicians is definitely outside the norm for reporters, our journalistic sensibilities are actually far more offended by the fact that the “F-bomb-laden diatribe” never made it to air.