CRAMA May 2006 update

It's hot! The real summer is quickly approaching and many are quickly departing for cooler, greener and wetter parts! Recognizing that, also CRAMA will curtail our activities until September. But this does not mean we will stop our Petition Drive efforts. As a matter of fact if some of you are willing to get involved in organizing petition drives in Chandler and Ahwatukee Foothills area, please contact us via our email crama2@prodigy.net . We can use some help! And if you have friends living there, share with them the Memorial Airfield story. We will gladly provide you with fliers and petitions to hand out! Please also make sure your spouse has signed one!

Looking back on the last year, we are most grateful for the support the communities have provided. We are satisfied with the accomplishments and we are very hopeful that our opposition to a jet airport will be successful. Over 7000 petitions have been signed. Our drive is now expanding to the surrounding communities and we have received support from several HOA associations as well as the City of Chandler. Two US Senators suddenly showed great interest in visiting Sun Lakes. CRAMA does not claim credit for these visits, but there is no doubt, that our many contacts with their local offices made these senators aware that we are, in fact, an "ACTIVE" community! While Senator McCain confined his support to a letter on our behalf to FAA, Senator Kyl met with our representatives and after the meeting his staff was given a full CRAMA presentation. Kyl also said, that he will try to meet with GRIC leadership and bring up the Memorial Airfield issue. In addition we are also in touch with Representative Flake, whose office has already given us some assistance.

So it has been a very productive year. The Gila River Indian Community (GRIC) Council has still not announced their decision. In the meantime, a group of GRIC landowners and Arizona Building Systems, Inc. (the 6th largest metal construction company in the U.S.) have signed a deal involving commercial development of 11,000 acres around but excluding the Memorial Airfield. Apparently this deal does not directly involve the Tribal Council. The CEO of ABS stated that his company will finance the utilities and about 60 miles of roads. ABS, by the way, was the company that designed and constructed the new Car Rental Center at Sky Harbor. A spokesman for the landowners offered that the project will include residential communities for the GRIC members.

Hopefully, this aspect alone will discourage everyone from considering the establishment of a jet airport!. Now the GRIC governor has announced that he wants to build a hotel on land that he owns at SE corner of Riggs and I-10 ( maybe another potential petition signer?). On the other hand, he has apparently been suspended by the Council for three weeks. So who knows what is really going on the Reservation!

CRAMA is confident that all of us are happy about the economic development of the GRIC and we all wish them continued success. Hopefully, this latest project, as well as the intensified activities at Stellar Airpark, Chandler Municipal Airport and Williams Gateway, not to mention the concerns of homeowners in the surrounding communities, will persuade the GRIC Council that A) there is no need for an additional airport B) that a Jet Airport at the Memorial Airfield may not be an economically viable aspiration and C) that going ahead with it will affect tens of thousands of homeowners, who will not only see their lives disrupted and but will also suffer economically.