An open letter to officials of Carson City by Maxine Nietz

A Métis activist from Canada said, “Don’t mistake motion for action.”

President Fillmore said, “It is not strange… to mistake change for progress.”

Author Ellen A. G. Glasgow wrote, “All change is not growth; as all movement is not forward.”

Professor John Croft said, “Any culture that destroys its own life support systems and calls that progress is totally insane.”

Singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone. They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.”

Henry Ford said, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.”

Journalist Sydney J. Harris said, “The greatest enemy of progress is not stagnation, but false progress.”

Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.”

Intellect and poet Stanislaw Jerzy Lec wrote, “Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?”

We, the people of the Andersen Ranch neighborhood, request that the City of Carson City not move forward hastily with the plan known as Andersen Ranch Estates.

Right now, the last of the family-owned ranches in our urban core are going from oases to deserts. We were only informed of this project in November after the preliminary map was submitted. The conceptual map was submitted in February but the residents of Carson City were kept in the dark. We have called two meetings and the developer has called one. Many issues were raised but very few were resolved.

We elected you to protect our way of life, our homes, and our children. The Declaration of Independence states. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We believe it even if you do not.

In this new decade, please side with the people of Carson City, residents, taxpayers and voters, NOT with out-of-town developers whose only interest is to collect the money and move on.

Maxine Nietz is chair of SaveOpenSpace-Carson City.