Northwest Council on Sustainable Development

Recently, the Citizens for Smart Growth, a citizens group in Star, Idaho asked Idaho Eagle Forum for some help researching what could be done to stop Mayor Nathan Mitchell from turning Star and the surrounding area into a California style suburban bedroom community.  Ada County with Mitchell’s support approved a planned community development of over 600 homes near Star with the option to build many more after that.  Star does not have the roads or infrastructure to support the Avimor development and apparently there is no market for the homes anyway because many of the homes they’ve already built are being rented.

Star is a rural community.  The residents like it that way and they want to keep it that way so the objective is to recall Mayor Mitchell and send him packing.

The parent company of the Avimor is SunCor, an Arizona corporation that has thousands of acres under development in Arizona, Utah, Idaho and New Mexico.  They also have developments in California and Mexico.

What started out to be a minor research effort became a "Holy Smokes! What Do We Have Here Project!"  It turns out that the United Nations Agenda 21 program is being implemented in Idaho.  If you don’t know what Agenda 21 is, then you’d better find out in a hurry because it will affect every aspect of your life, your children’s lives and in fact the direction of this country.  Here’s a hint:  Think Al Gore and ‘Earth in the Balance’ and Mikhail Gorbachev, Maurice Strong and the Earth Charter.  Think centrally planned and managed economy hiding behind environmental issues.  

“The real goal of the Earth Charter is that it will in fact become like the Ten Commandments.”
                      Maurice Strong

Agenda 21 is not simply about land use.  The implementation plan calls for a complete societal ‘transformation’ to make preservation of the environment the single most important thing in a person’s life - a religion as both Maurice Strong and Mikhail Gorbachev have said.  

So how did Star get caught up in this nasty business?   To understand the present, one must understand history.   This history begins in 1977 when Ada County surpassed the population density needed to be classified as a ‘transportation management area’.  Once that density is reached, the federal government requires that a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) be established and the area is then eligible for federal grant money for planning and infrastructure.   Ada County formed an MPO that they named the Community Planning Association.  In 2003, Canyon County reached the population needed so they joined the Community Planning Association and it became the Community Planning Association of Southwestern Idaho (COMPASS).   

Jumping ahead to 1983, the United Nations established a commission to produce a report on the environment and anticipated global environmental problems and to formulate strategies to deal with those anticipated problems to the year 2000 and beyond.  In 1987, the commission’s report, the dubbed the Brundtland Report was published.   From the Brundtland Report came Agenda 21:

 "In 1992 leaders at the Earth Summit built upon the framework of Brundtland Report to create agreements and conventions on critical issues such as climate change, desertification and deforestation. They also drafted a broad action strategy—Agenda 21—as the workplan for environment and development issues for the coming decades." http://sdgateway.net/introsd/definitions.htm
Recovered from the Internet Archives: Sustainable Development Definitions

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12852 which called for the establishment of a commission to oversee the implementation of Agenda 21 in the United States.   This was never debated and Congress never voted on it.  They just allowed it to become law by doing nothing. 

The various federal departments of government have their own programs to implement Agenda 21 in their area of responsibility.  Non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) with grant money are being used as the surrogates for federal government implementation.  The NGO’s show up in your community masquerading as public interest organizations when in reality they have a very specific agenda towards ‘transforming’ the community.  Idaho Smart Growth is one such NGO established for the purpose of implementing Agenda 21 in Idaho.

Timeline of regionalization in Boise Idaho

From this point on, the story is best told by following the timeline of the regionalization project of the Community Planning Association of Southwestern Idaho paying close  attention to who did what - when.  Before reading the timeline, it is helpful to know that the Communities In Motion Project is a five county regional plan.  The 'Blueprint for Good Growth' is the Ada County plan of which Boise is the hub.  In reality, it's all one plan with two phases that neuters elected local government and implements unelected regional governance by committee.