Mark Apel and his Pod People

A study with a preset agenda stops short of analyzing the data,
and the guy who set the agenda misrepresents criticism of his work.

From the Board Of Supervisors minutes of February 5, 2008: "Mr. Jim Vlahovich, Deputy County Administrator, ... reported that ... Mr. Mark Apel, Extension Officer with the U of A approached him and Mr. Ortega with the idea of conducting an intern project ....  Mr. Apel said he chose to compare ... how revenues differ between lot splits vs. subdivisions.... [H]e hopes to infer what the advantages are to the county by using the subdivision process. Mr. Apel stated that their hypothesis will be that higher tax valuations result within a subdivision vs. assessed valuations in a lot split situation."

That language seems to promise actual research, but that promise wasn't carried out in the report delivered on May 6, 2008.

The report did not analyze data, but merely collected bits of it and drew a map of the bits, with lines drawn around some of them. The map gave the impression that more expensive homes tend to be found in housing tracts built by professional developers, and less expensive homes tend to be built by individuals. But no numbers were provided, and there was no mathematical analysis of the data to see how strong or weak the relationship is between property value, and who built a home on the property.

Nor did the report look for relationships between other factors which might affect the assessed value of properties. County Assessor Leiendecker noted at the meeting that one such factor is the slope of the land. It is obvious that the report overlooked many factors affecting the value of property. A standard and basic method, regression analysis, should have been used to determine the relative importance of such factors.

Nor did the report consider that some of the same items that increase assessed value -- like paved roads -- also require county maintenance, therefore run up county costs, so that increased property assessments may well correlate with a net drain on county finances, not a benefit to them.

The above comments are not intended as a criticism of the graduate student who did the work. Graduate students generally carry out the wishes of their teachers and advisors.

These comments are, however, intended to prevent any use, by the county supervisors or the Planning Department, of the May 6 report. The report is worthless scientifically, so should be worthless for political purposes too.

Most of the May 6 meeting was spent on another item.  More graduate students, told to prepare plans for clustered "green" housing, came up with "pods" of about ten houses, with shared walls, and front doors facing each other across central courts no more than 100' wide, and often much closer. Such improvements over college dorms might appeal to college students, but most residents of Cochise County may have different ideas, involving NOT having to listen to your neighbors' television sets, and NOT having your neighbors' children play near your front door.

Apel, in talking about "green" features of the pods, emphasized the importance of minimizing paved areas.  Oddly, he also liked a "service" road along the rear of the pods, with several access roads connecting it to the main road in front, even though this about doubled the area of pavement, with little improvement in property access. Apel did not address this conflict between "green" development and pavement overkill.

Supervisor Patrick Call was very receptive to clustering, and hoped that the county would give incentives for such developments. His ideas would appeal to big real estate developers, but to few others.

One citizen responded "We've confronted master-planned communities and resoundingly rejected them, and ... Envisioning 2020 had the same effect! Why do they have to keep revisiting this issue, forgodsake!" Another citizen wrote "Our county seems to ignore the obvious, the Smith Ranch initiative, the Envision 2020 work shops and all the hoopla when a more intense rezoning appears before them, that the residents like to live in a 'Wildcat subdivision' and they do not necessarily care to live in pod housing."

Such comments show Call and his allies still refusing to hear the public. If they really wanted to conserve water and preserve the Cochise County way of life, they'd limit all rural development to 4 acres or more. They'd require private wells (which, national data show, lead to about 1/3 less water usage per person than water companies). And they'd allow development only if the same amount of land was taken out of farmland actually being irrigated. But the political games go on, at least until the 2008 election shows that Call and his allies aren't fooling anybody anymore.

Probably the best thing to come out of the May 6 meeting was the graduate students' use of the word "pods" for housing. Call and his allies like to talk about big-business housing developments versus "wildcatting," i.e. housing that free people buy willingly. Now, thanks to the grad students, when Call and his allies talk about "wildcatters," the rest of us can talk about "pod people."