Today is the last day to vote for Lora or Steve Blair. To vote, just be a resident of Prescott and get ye on down to the Yavapai County Recorder during business hours today. It's on Fair Street just a little west of Fry's.
“Lora Lopas must get on City Council,” local restaurateur Ty Fitzmorris told me some weeks back. His last big battle was to save the Dalke property and his favorite color is green, as in his Honda Civic Hybrid.
Like Ty, Lora Lopas has been dwelling on green a lot lately. She’d like to see water catchment on industrial buildings, not to mention on all new construction. She’d like that new construction to be green and she wants to see open space preserved. These aren't fantasies; Lora is a Realtor and she knows these are attainable goals – you just have to want them. Lora is smart, well-educated on the challenges of securing open space and passionate enough to do something with that knowledge.
Compare that to Steve Blair and Jim Lamerson, two of her incumbent rivals. They aren’t so much on board with open space. In fact, last year when the Parks and Recreation Department was kicking off its master plan development process, both councilmen were dubious about how to pay for maintenance of any open space the city might buy. But we’re not talking soccer fields here, just the same natural boulders and grama grass that have been around for millennia without “maintenance.”
The sitting Prescott City Council has done one thing right, the sandstone-colored parking garage with the cool bicycle sculptures that double as racks. Who’d be fool enough to complain about that? But there’s also the hillside scarring behind the Lowe’s store, that bald monument to economic- development-at-all-costs without all the facts. The city council claimed ignorance, the worst of political sins. “We didn’t know they’d bought that State Trust land behind the site for fill dirt,” they said. A perfect example of political failure, and an avoidable no-brainer at that. Lora, a veteran Realtor, says she never makes a land deal without finding out what’s going on with the surrounding parcels. But she’s like that. She does her homework, asks the important questions and finds a way to do what’s right.
Lora is a visionary, and she looks to other communities for guidance on making that vision a reality. She references economic development models in Ireland, water management models in Australia, and the Open Space plan in Durango. So she's also a pragmatist: have a dream and then find a way to make it work in the real world. As the Chair of the Mayor’s Open Space Acquisition Committee, Lora has been at the forefront of the city finally purchasing some open space.
Many intelligent people are pinning their hopes for a better Prescott on Lora, including local author Georgene Lockwood. Georgene lives in Williamson Valley and is spearheading an effort to maintain the Valley’s quality of life. Lockwood says that among her cohorts who live in the city there’s a strong interest in what Lora can do for Prescott.
“Those citizens in particular do have a vote and are looking for a change,” she told me. “They’re very concerned about water and transportation issues. And many of them are Republican. So they’re looking for Republican candidates and people who have the same fundamental principles but who will look at stewardship of the land and their interests in preserving the quality of life. And I think Lora will do that.”
If it’s change you seek in the upcoming election, you’re not going to go wrong with any of the challengers. Each has his or her own brand of civic involvement. I personally favor Lora Lopas because she’s been here since the 1970s, she works well within and outside the establishment and, far from being the lesser of the available evils, I’m convinced she’s the greatest of the available good this go around. She’s just seriously high-quality human biomass.
Go to her web site, http://www.votelora.com/ or just give her a call at 710-9505. Ask her anything. Just be prepared for some pretty snappy answers.
This version differs from the print version in that Lora Lopas name is spelled correctly in the title. Earlier, it had been "Laura Lopas".
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