I resigned from the NH 2020 process in the timber sub-committee because NH 2020 is a flawed, biased process that cannot be fixed or repaired or made fair from the bottom rung, sub-committee level.

The NH 2020 process was completed long before the first public forum. The Board of Four (BooFs) - Conklin, Martin, Van Zant, and Dardick (now Green) - had in place their like-minded partner and much of the funding
from the Packard Foundation through the Sierra Business Council (SBC). They had their like-minded eographic Information System (GIS) employee in place. (Eric Beckwitt, though a nice and likable guy, is an nvironmentalist who, like his father, represents the most extremist views from the environmental left. How would the environmental community like Frank Amaral's or some other large land developer's handpicked GIS specialist? See my point? I don't want either.)

The BooFs used an ad hoc committee of four like-minded minions to appoint the original Community Advisory Committee (CAC). They chose mostly like-minded environmentalists and individuals like active or retired government workers who do not work their land for a living or work in the private sector. Not one voting member in the CAC came from the farming, ranching, forestry, or mining communities. NH 2020 will regulate the private open space lands these people own and work. They are the ones who have chosen not to develop and maintain the private property open space left in Nevada County that we all enjoy. (The fact that in the application form for potential CAC membership, the BooFs required applicants to sign a statement saying they agreed with the NH 2020 process and its goals and objectives forced many farmers, ranchers, forest ndowners, miners, and other open space landowners not to apply.) How can you agree to an end product with the potential to dramatically increase the rules, regulations, ordinances, permits, fees, and other restrictions on private property and private property land uses at the start of the process?

However, of the individuals that did apply, not one large open space landowner was chosen. Three Register Professional Foresters applied and all were denied. I was one of them. As a fifth-generation Nevada County
resident with a family history of community service, I thought I could represent my profession and be a voice for the ranching, farming, and mining families I grew up with. It became very apparent that the county residents I wanted to represent were not to be given voting status in the NH 2020 process. Much has changed in the CAC through relentless pressure and publicity from groups and individuals the BooFs tried to ignore. Regardless of the additions to the CAC, the rules keep changing to allow the voting block, dominated by the BooFs' like-minded members, to maintain control.

The same can be said for the Science Advisory Committee (SAC). The BooFs handpicked their pane, loading it with like-minded researchers. Not one member's primary background is in range management, farming, ranching or forestry research, or mining and geology. They are all wildlife habitat researchers - which is fine, except when you consider not one SAC member represents the private open space landowners or land-users whose land
will be negatively affected by whatever the SAC decides. Shouldn't their concerns, contradictory research, conflicting needs, and constructive advice be included so as to provide some level of compromise between habitat protection and survival of the very land uses that provide and maintain the open space we all enjoy?

In the timber sub-committee, the BooFs stacked as many environmental extremists and pro-government control over private property advocates on the panel as people from the public in general and individuals who actually work in forestry or mining. If consensus cannot be reached, a minority report can be sent to the CAC and the BooFs for recommendation and approval. So the BooFs get their like-minded recommendations regardless of consensus. Over the top of all sub-committees the stacked CAC and SAC will conduct a habitat sub-committee to overlay all other sub-committees This habitat sub-committee will have no public members at all.

Add to this:
1. The BooFs have hired many like-minded activists in the planning department. They are blocking or being very slow in providing the public or the news media information on funding, expenditures, memos, GIS information, and other correspondence.

2. The SAC member who is checking all GIS information happens to be a member of the SBC. (Seems like a fox watching a fox in the hen house.) In the GIS information I have seen, I have noticed typographical errors
regarding ownership of thousands of acres - errors I pointed out to the planning department over a year ago, but which have still not been corrected.

3. The SBC is conducting the public's business without disclosing how they do it. Whether they like it or not, whether they can skirt the law or not, the public has a right to know. 4. All that so-called public comment from the public forums was never used in the timber sub-committee. (In reality at the forums the public was only allowed to respond to four canned questions provided by county staff; no free exchange of ideas or public questions were
permitted.)

5. The BooFs have spent $15,000 of the public's money on a brochure promoting their NH 2020 agenda; but the brochure does not address the concerns of many of their constituents; for example:

a. What about a vote on the expensive, controversial NH 2020, so the will of county residents can be heard?

b. What compensation will the county provide to private landowners who fall prey to a regulatory taking by the county? What percent of land value or land use loss constitutes a taking? Where will the money for compensation come from?

c. What does the county plan to do to private property they determine contains "conservation areas" (i.e., valuable county resources, developed from their very subjective and biased habitat classifications)?

d. What type of county permits trigger NH 2020 review (grading, spray applications, re-roofing, add-on, granny houses, lot line adjustments, etc.)? Do all permits trigger NH 2020? If not, which ones do not, and for how long?

e. Explain why most open space owners - ranchers, farmers, timberland owners, and mining outfits - oppose NH 2020. If these new restrictions and additional layers of government control (or as they say, "management
tools") were really going to help landowners, wouldn't they support it?

Finally, I hate the endless growth in all directions going on in Nevada County. I want smart growth and I want controlled growth. What I cannot accept or allow to develop is a system so restrictive and so controlling
that the people who wish to continue to work their land (and as a by-product provide the open space we all enjoy) are destroyed in the process. If the BooFs really cared about these families, they would have
included them at the beginning and heard their concerns and needs for survival instead of trying to stuff their government overlording, intrusive controls, and "management tools" down their throats. Most of the BooFs and their carpetbagging collaborators have only been here 20 years or so and somehow exclude themselves from being part of the problem. Who bought that diced-up property? Who contributed to the traffic problems? Yet somehow the people who chose not to develop their land are not worthy of any input into the future of their land. B.S.

I hope to defeat NH 2020 and immediately try to introduce and promote a new process that will include all affected residents and landowners in a fair, honest, and honorable process. Open space maintains itself at no
cost to the county or the residents when open space land users like ranchers, farmers, timberland owners, and mining (and gravel) companies are allowed to make a decent, law-abiding living. Force them out of their livelihoods and other land uses, like development, are their only option.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

As for my comments about the destruction of our freedoms, I will end
this with the last reason I addressed in my resignation from the NH
2020 timber sub-committee:

"At this juncture in American history, with outside forces trying to
destroy America's freedoms and way of life, I cannot be involved in a
process which is trying to erode our private property rights and
individual freedoms from the inside. I choose to fight for our
Constitutional rights."