Last month, Garry Johnson of Granite Construction Corporation let it slip that to date they had spent nearly $10 million dollars on the Liberty Quarry project.   We now know where at least a portion of this money has been spent.

Mr. Russell Kitahara who manages a 94 acre family farm in Thermal California has disclosed that Mr. Johnson paid $10 for his share of a breakfast meeting.

During this time Mr, Kitahara was chair of the Riverside Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) an extremely powerful regulatory, state-mandated legislative agency.  He was also a member of the  Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD).

Jeff Horseman has written a very interesting article on this and the events as they relate to the Liberty Quarry project.

In June of 2009, LAFCO rejected the City of Temecula’s bid to annex approximately 5,000 contiguous acres adjacent to the Santa Margarita Reserve; which would have included the site of the intended gravel pit.  According to Mr. Horseman’s article, “the Commissioners indicated the quarry was (is) a regional issue, not a matter for the city. “

This would mean that the Commissioners do not believe that the neighboring communities or residents who would be affected by Granite Construction Corporation’s mining, asphalt plants, trucks, etc., should have a voice in the matter.

If you are part of the potentially affected community, you (and your friends) might want to call them and voice your opinion.

The City of Temecula was able to annex a portion of the original acreage; apparently after LAFCO received instructions from Granite on what it should allow the city to annex.

Mr. Horesman’s article reads like a suspense novel.  At the risk of spoiling this chapter you might find the following as interesting as I have:

• Roberts wrote that the sphere stipulation came at the 11th hour and only after Granite raised the issue.

• Kitahara countered that Comerchero offered to have the city remove the quarry site from its sphere to secure the annexation.

• City officials said they felt they had no choice.

• Granite spokeswoman Karie Reuther said in an e-mail Wednesday that company representatives briefed the commission about making Temecula aware they wanted the quarry property out of the city’s sphere.

If I was cynical, I might think that the commission’s actions were a direct response to Granite Construction Corporation getting some of what the remaining $9,999,990.00 might have paid for.

At the very least, the actions revealed in this article are those of a multi-billion dollar corporation ordering an arm of regional government to do its bidding as a means of legally subverting the will of an American community and their city.

This is another reason to support the efforts of both Native and non-Native Americans to protect this particular section of Sacred Land from Granite Construction Corporation:   AB-742.com