Intellgent growth not cancer

Intelligent growth isn't the same as no growth nor is it the cancerous expansion that can too often happen in the southwest. There will be growth whether we want it or not. If our plan is to stamp our feet, support no growth candidates or take out petitions, we will be outflanked by the growth that will occur outside of Bisbee. External growth will feed the county coffers but not ours. In 20 years we will be saddled with the burden of providing public resources for an expansion we neither approved nor planned for. We need an urban designer to draw up a new map of Bisbee, one that assigns areas for limited growth. We should also annex land into the city as a buffer to prevent growth abutting our city limits. Most of all we need to stop acting like saying NO will stop it from happening. If we don't want to be an extention of the 405 we better get realistic fast.

Correct, but if anything, understated. The problems must be acknowledged and addressed before they can be solved.

I'm sure you are aware of many small towns and cities across the country, subsumed by their larger and more aggressive metropolitan neighbours, because the city governments chose to ignore the issue of controlled growth, and development, with concommitant inattention to annexation, to avoid being 'bottle-necked, or even completely surrounded.