Ground Party PULSE - First Sunday of September

In this issue…

_Lifestyle
Arizona’s profound summer drink
_{Water News}
The Mexican water blockades
Sulphur Springs Valley in the news
_{Land News}
Benson’s reopened copper mine
Hedge funds buying farmland
Supervisors approve property tax increase
The new County Comprehensive Plan
_{Arizona Civics}
Props. 134 and 137 — the terrible two
_{Builder Inspo}
Yaodong: China’s sunken courtyards

Arizona’s profound summer drink

I studied the menu hanging precariously next to the cash register — just a handful of choices. I pointed a finger at the menu and turned to the woman next to me, her face haunted by the doldrums of pre-caffeination. “Coffee with lemonade?” I grunted. My tone was more accusation than inquiry, like someone pointing out a leaky faucet in the middle of a desert.

Weeks passed, and I hadn’t thought twice of that unholy concoction. But there it was again, scrawled in chalk on another menu, daring me to question my own sanity. “To hell with it,” I thought, “let’s embrace the void.”

And so, I drank the potion, smugly awaiting confirmation of my suspicions. It would be offensive, another ephemeral trend of midwit urbanites. And then came the epiphany. And I became a convert, an apostle to this mystical brew.

As it turns out, I’m hardly the first. The drink has carried many names:

Mazagran
Caffè Canarino
Espresso Romano
Cafelimo
Laura Palmer
Lemonboy

I should have known better — coffee cherries, bright red, are tart and sweet. And I’ve always enjoyed the “red coffee” from Yemen where they roast the whole cherry, not just the bean. And today the internet explained to me, people have been adding orange and lemon peel to their espresso since the 1800s. Nothing new.

I admit, it’s fun telling people about this drink and watching their faces contort in disbelief — a raised eyebrow, a dubious frown. It’s like I’m offering them a sip from the punch bowl at a cult meeting.

But here’s the rub: Everyone who tries it, digs it. It’s the universe laughing at our expectations. Describing the flavor is a lost cause — I tell people it has a “slippery” flavor, just to crank up the confusion. But once you taste it, you’ll likely join the ranks of the faithful who say “yeah — this is perfect.”

The Mexican water blockades

Sonoran farmers in the town of Bacoachi and in Cananea have formed plantóns frente, or protest blockades, to stop a constant stream of trucks carrying water out of their basins to a nearby copper mine. The mining company, Grupo Mexico, claims that their water extractions are legal and that the reason farmers’ wells are going dry is “mainly due to the lack of rainfall.”

Farmers in Veracruz have blockaded the roads outside of the Carroll Farms feed plant, owned by U.S. company Smithfield Foods, who are putting a huge strain on the aquifer to grow feed for their 1.67 million pigs in the region. And because Mexico doesn’t have the strict regulations for animal waste treatment found in the U.S., run off is polluting the groundwater supplies, and nearby residents are getting sick and having to buy bottled water. They might get that water from Coca-Cola who has a water bottling facility in the same basin. Other heavy water water users in the area include Audi and Mercedes-Benz industrial plants.

Sulphur Springs Valley in the news

Clara Migoya at the Arizona Republic has been covering water and agriculture in Arizona, including a recent profile on farmer of repute Ed Curry, and farmer Aaron Cardona’s new nonprofit group, Farmers Organizing and Creating Opportunities. On Friday she wrote about the Sulphur Springs Water Alliance, and the recent film screening of a documentary about the 2023 workshop that led to its formation.

Benson’s reopened copper mine

Canada’s Excelsior Mining Corp. has announced that they’ll be reopening the historic Johnson Camp Copper Mine which they acquired in 2015. Excelsior currently operates the Gunnison Copper Project, a 9,560-acre mine between Willcox and Benson. 

Hedge funds buying farmland

Residents and officials in La Paz county are unhappy with the sale of 20 square miles of farmland to Water Asset Management LLC, a New York City-based hedge fund, who paid $100 million for the land. La Paz is also where Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been controversially farming alfalfa and shipping it back to their nations for dairy cow feed. The depth to water in the McMullen Valley basin has dropped since the 70s, from 170 feet to 545 feet. Tony Davis tells the story in the Arizona Daily Star.

Supervisors approve property tax increase

Whelp, I wrongly anticipated that the Cochise County supervisors would keep with their pattern of not increasing county taxes in recent years. At the final hearing on August 19th, and at the prior Truth in Taxation hearing in July, none of the supervisors gave substantive comments on why the increase should be adopted. Tom Crosby did make a motion to keep the tax rate at 2024 rates but did not get a second, and then he joined Judd and English in unanimously passing the proposed increase.

So I dug through the county’s proposed 2025 budget to look for clues as to why they broke with their recent precedent – and I think I sussed it out.

That $596,033 in new levies is likely being collected to offset $547,070 in budget demand increases.

But why is there a “mandatory increase” of salaries for elected officials? I did some more digging around and found the cause. In 2021, Arizona passed HB2700 which increases the salaries for county officials starting January 1, 2025. In Cochise County, it mandated the following pay raises:

County attorneys:
from $123,678 to $143,678;

County sheriffs:
from $100,824 to $120,824;

County supervisors, assessors, recorders, superintendents of schools, and treasurers:
from $63,800 to $83,800.

I guess our supervisors didn’t want to say, “yeah, we’ve been given a raise, so we gotta tax you.”

On the whole, Arizona pays its elected officials pretty humble salaries. State elected officials haven’t had a pay raise since the 1990s. Today their salaries are:

Governor: $95,000
Attorney general: $90,000
Secretary of state: $70,000
Treasurer: $70,000
Superintendent of public instruction: $85,000
Senators: $24,000
Representatives: $24,000

Senators and Representatives make closer to $70,000 when you factor in per diems and other benefits. Not exactly a lucrative business. They introduced bills this year which would increase officials’ salaries by 60% to 100%, but none of them passed.

On the one hand we could argue that we should keep government salaries down to prevent people from seeking office for financial reasons. But it could also be argued that low salaries make these jobs less accessible to people who aren’t already wealthy business owners and industry insiders.

In either case, it wasn’t our county supervisors’ decision to get the 2025 pay raise. That’s decided by state law. But hey — maybe we could elect people who are at least willing to be transparent about county finances. That would be something.

The new County Comprehensive Plan

Well, it’s over due by seven years or so, but the county has finally begun the process for introducing a new Comprehensive Plan. The Plan creates an outlook for the next twenty years on all matters of development in unincorporated Cochise County. The plan won't be officially adopted until next year, after two new supervisors get elected. In the meantime, it will be up to us to do what we can to have a say in matters.

The county has created a website to facilitate public input, including surveys on the following topics: General Plans, Land Use, Mobility and Circulation, Water Resources, Energy and Environment, Housing, and Growth Areas.

They also offer the option to schedule a meeting with Christine McLachlan, the Planning Division Manager, and Dan Coxworth, the Development Services Director.

Given that these two have supported getting rid of opt-out permits and increasing inspection fees (—don’t forget that the supervisors will vote on this later this month), maybe it would be a good idea to schedule a chat with them and explain why we should be promoting alternative building in the county, not stamping it out.

What do y’all think?

In the meantime I’ll be going through their surveys, and in a future edition of the Papers, I’ll give some of my ideas and opinions on how we might best lobby them — stay tuned.

Today’s edition of the Pulse is available to all readers courtesy of the Arizona Agenda — kind of.

A few months ago the editors at this Phoenix-based newsletter offered me a job as their copy editor. That means I check for typos and other odds and ends before publication every weekday morning. I’m a fan of their newsletter — they’re two independent journalists who keep a scrutinizing eye on the shenanigans happening at the capitol — so I said Heck yes.

On Friday I wrote an article for their newsletter, looking at the Arizona Corporation Commission, sometimes called Arizona’s fourth branch of government. Click on over to it if you want to learn why Arizona’s founders thought we should have a watchdog agency regulating corporate entities.

Besides the support I get from 30 paid supporters (about $250/month total), this was my first time getting paid for my writing, so I thought I’d celebrate by sharing the Pulse with everyone.

And if you can afford $5 or $10 a month, keep me in business as your local homesteader journalist. I need milk money.

Props. 134 and 137 — the terrible two

Speaking of shenanigans at the capitol, here are two more proposals from our legislators to amend the Arizona Constitution. Prop. 134 makes it harder for citizens to put measures on the ballot, like this year’s Open Primaries measure. Prop. 137 gets rid of term limits for judges and voters’ ability to remove judges from office. You’ll see these measures on your ballot in November. I’ll break ‘em down for you.

Prop 134: This one smarts. Arizona is one of the 15 states that allow citizens to directly create laws and constitutional amendments via citizen initiative. You gotta get 10% of the voting population to sign a petition to get the measure on the ballot, and then everyone votes on it during the next general election. Prop. 134 would require that any petition get signatures from 10% of each county, rather than the state as a whole.

It’s a clever move by legislators. They’re arguing that Hey, we want to make sure all counties have a say before the state votes on something. But in effect, this makes it much easier for special interests to kill petitions. All they have to do is channel all their money into campaigning against a petition in one county. Even if all the other counties say Yes, we’d like to vote on this, one county can say Sorry, we’re not even going to have a vote.

Prop 137: Back when Arizona was trying to become a state, delegates drafted a Constitution that allowed for “judiciary recall,” a process by which citizens could remove judges from certain courts. But President Taft said No way.

Arizona said Fine, okay, and removed the provision from the constitution. But later it was put back in. That was after we adopted a “merit system” for appointing judges to high courts, where a bi-partisan committee reviews candidates and forwards a selection to the Governor who then makes final appointments.

Some argue that judiciary recall is necessary so that partisan governors don’t stack the courts with partisan judges. Others argue that public recall allows the judicial branch to become a partisan battleground where various interests run smear campaigns to get judges thrown out.

Frankly, most people don’t even pay attention to Arizona’s judges, except for the occasional controversies around Supreme Court rulings, and judges are rarely recalled. In my analysis, judiciary recall is worth keeping so long as we stay well-informed about what the heck those judges are doing.

Yaodong: China’s sunken courtyards

If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve got an interest in subterranean and earth-sheltered construction. Today I’m sharing some pictures from the traditional villages of the Loess Plateau in the northern plains of China. Square courtyards are dug out and multiple subterranean rooms extend into the surrounding earth. Those rooms are vaulted for maximum load bearing capacity.

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