Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

The citizens of Crook County have all had a chance to attend the “meetings” on the proposed zoning of the county. If you are not familiar with the Delphi technique that was used at these meetings, please google and study up on it.

The Delphi technique used to “facilitate” the meetings was developed by RAND Corp for the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1950s for use as a psychological weapon. But it was soon recognized to be very valuable in manipulating any meeting toward a pre-determined conclusion.

The first clue that you are in one of these meeting, is the facilitator who is trained and is likeable. So I went prepared to see how this would go in Moorcroft.

The little chart game with the red, green and blue stickers made it clear. Obviously, we all want clean water, air and lovely open spaces, but those choices led to zoning as if we can’t have those things without zoning.

The fear factor was there. People, we are not all going have a cement plant in our backyard!

Now to the zoning idea, itself, there is more than one type of zoning. The first is no zoning at all, which then leaves all growth decisions up to the county commissioners whom the people have elected and whom ought to use the powers given them to make wise decisions on the behalf of the county citizens.

The second type of zoning called Euclidean-Based Zoning is based on how an area is currently used. It is mostly used by cities to have residential areas, commercial areas and other uses.

The more insidious type of zoning is Form-Based Zoning and decisions are made on how an area should look instead of how it should be used. Visual aesthetics are subject to fads and emotional desires.

It is useful to developers and eliminates the involvement of elected officials. It shifts power from elected commissioners to hired employees trained and answerable to the ideals of the bureaucrats in D.C. and their environmental philosophies. Think 30x30!

I urge everyone to study more deeply how these work, how you were manipulated at the meetings and if you agree that some of this is unconstitutional and would lead to the loss of your freedoms as Americans. Remember the old saying, “No one is safe when freedom fails; the best men rot in filthy jails. And those who cried ‘Appease, Appease’ are hanged by those they tried to please.”

Judy McCullough