12 Star Ranch LLC" is the moniker chosen by one Francis Williams of Whitehouse, Ohio for an 1175 acre parcel he picked up cheap from the bank, after Buffalo Creek LLC, which had forked over $2.8 million to the Plum Creek Timber Trust people, went belly up.
Computers make it possible for the county to put all the movers' and shakers' dirty linen on line. What they count on is that nobody takes a look see.
Being a newly re-activated snoopy citizen, I not only took a look online, but went to view the site of the proposed slicing and dicing of Mother Nature's domain, up close and personal. The following is a recitation of my adventure on Highway 99 written soon after I got back home.
Yesterday afternoon, I decided to take a spin out to Highway 99. Indeed, I didn't go far enough the other day and today I found both the public hearing signs and a drive with a gate. I left the car, all good and locked up, took my trusty brief case and took a little hike up a hard pan road and a couple of side roads. The area is obviously visited by dog walkers (new foot prints and turds), despite the no trespassing signs on the shiny new chains across some of the side roads.
The woods are dense. It's no longer a pine plantation, but there are some very tall pines that may well be logged out after the right to develop is achieved. After a while I heard some honking over the general din of Highway 99, which is very noisy because of racing trucks. When I got back to the gate, there was a fellow in a big red truck chatting on his phone with a friend and almost blocking the way out as long as his door was open.
I asked if he was going to move. He got confrontational, even though I explained that there was a notice for a public hearing and since I intended to comment, I wanted to be informed. I got in the car to try to turn around and go by him but he got in back of the car, taking pictures with his phone and then he drove his vehicle up to block me.
I had heard some voices in the distance, so I headed for the road and found a house with workmen down a ways, almost to Buffalo Creek Road and persuaded one to call the cops. At first he didn't want to dial 911, but then when I said the fellow wouldn't let me leave, he did call and I talked to the dispatcher and tried to give a description of the location. Someone was promised. So, I walked up to the road and waited.
Meanwhile, another truck arrived at the 12 star ranch gate and there was much confabulation. After another while, I walked back along the road and wrote down the license plates and then went back to waiting by the drive of the house being built. Eventually a tow truck arrived. So, I went over and told the driver that the men weren't letting me go and he should go ahead and hook up the car and I'd ride with him, wherever. He said it would cost me and I said, fine.
The fellows had moved their trucks, so the tow truck driver said he'd move out of the way and I could drive out. I got in the car and maneuvered it in the right direction. By then a police car arrived and I had to get out and explain. The fellows insisted that in addition to trespassing, I had blocked their gate (they took pictures of me turned half way around). I told them that if they wanted to get something from the public, they needed to be more welcoming.
The cop said I shouldn't trespass, but if I was ready to leave, all the vehicles would be cleared. Two more police cars arrived but were waved away. As I started to drive out the second fellow, who claimed to be the owner, wanted to chat through the window. I shook my head and drove away. And that was that. I did give the dispatcher my name, so perhaps they checked to see if I was a wanted felon. No such luck.
The first fellow said they're selling 30 acre lots, not three acre lots. Thirty acres might be nice, if they don't strip all the vegetation.
It was a lovely ride back across the bridge and the marshes of Glynn.
The Glynn County web site for this particular rezoning request, specifying a minimum lot size of three acres and all sorts of restrictions on the eventual buyers/owners, can be found here in a portable document file (pdf) which has to be opened with a special program. Governmental agencies rely on this format to insure that their documents aren't altered and, in some cases, are coded so that they can't be copied for dissemination. Keeping a close hold on information is the key to power. Of course, even their recently most favored term, "transparency," meaning to "look through" rather than "look again" (review) or "look at" is designed to obscure what's really there, behind the darkling glass, so to speak. Corporations (governmental, commercial and eleemosynary), being artificial bodies created by legislation subject to being eliminated on a whim, have a shared interest in keeping the public at arm's length. "In loco parentis" strikes them as a sufficient compromise. Replicating the authority of the parent with an entity whose competence and liability can't be challenged and which, unlike real flesh and blood parents, can survive almost infinitely, seems ideal. Unless, the people with the power take it into their heads to tear up the charters.
The existence of the corporation is tenuous. That's why they must constantly strive to survive, using every trick in the book. Perhaps trickery and deception are universal survival strategies. Very primitive.