City doesn't need to grow

Dear editor,

Every few years we hear rumblings about how Mountain Home needs to "grow, industrialize, build more homes, entice more people to move in here" etc. Be careful what you wish for.

When I first came here in 1972, a sign in Railroad Park read "population 3410" You could take a 3 week vacation, leave the house unlocked, keys to the pickup in the ignition, and everything would still be there when you got home. Only a fool would do that today, even HERE.

Back in 1972, Meridian wasn't much bigger than our town is right now. Today they hover near the 100,000 mark, living practically wall-to-wall. Think we're being taxed and levied too much now? Expand some more and see what happens.

With more people come more crime. Simple matter of mathematics. There is a need for small communities, just as there are needs for full sized cities.

If there's "nothing to do here", Boise's only a 35-minute drive. As you crest that last hill with the rest areas, see the ever-changing hue of smog haze, which comes from more pollution of cities that "needed to create more jobs and entice more out-of-towners to settle." You "global-warmists" out there OK with that?

Most people tend to retire in towns the size of ours so they don't HAVE to exist in cramped, congested cities where murder, rape and drive-bys are a way of life. Water is only replenishable by nature. There's only so much to go around, especially under drought conditions, and I have yet to see a water tanker following a U-Haul van into a new neighborhood.

The interstate migrants aren't bringing their own water in WITH them. Think your water bills are high now? Suppose it became a precious commodity. What then?

Land developers don't care, as long as they can keep selling properties, whether they're occupied or not. More money for the county and state too, when we get so overloaded with traffic, we start doing EMISSIONS CONTROL for everything on 4 wheels, as local citizens' privacy and freedoms become further encroached upon. Just as it is now in ADA.

The airbase shouldn't come into play here either, and should not be depended upon as a resource. In my 22 years of active duty, I've seen a good many of them close, especially when Democrats control the government, whereby military is always slashed in favor of wasteful and fraudulent social programs.

Mountain Home has been lucky so far, but these are not normal times. NOTHING is neither safe nor sacred today.

This is 2015, in a country being steadily given away by the powers that be, likely not very far from martial law. Larger areas are slowly becoming "sanctuary cities," and even Boise & Twin Falls are being looked at.

As we currently have a military base here, we don't need to be rolling out a "red carpet" for the wrong dogs to come home. We see it all the time in the nightly news and think it could never be US. How about if we made SURE of that.

If Mountain Home isn't "urban" enough for some of you, then MOVE some place where it IS. It's bad enough our country is being sold out, without the once-peaceful little towns in America being sacrificed as well.

-- Mike Bradbury, Mountain Home