I was recently rummaging through some old files looking for the above cartoon by Richard Guindon. Back in 1990, I had used it as the frontispiece for an essay I wrote about Idaho’s Land Use Planning Act. I was a conservationist on Boise’s first foothills planning committee. The Idaho Conservation League, which in 1977-78 had employed me as its first field organizer, had been instrumental in the enactment of the act in the mid-1970s, the new group’s first legislative victory.

In addition to “Let’s Read the Local Land Use Planning Act,” my rummaging brought up

• “What’s Developing in the Boise Foothills: PacMan Planning on the Boise Front,” Boise Magazine November/December 1989,
• “Boise Foothills Development,” Feb. 7, 1990, testimony to the Boise City Planning and Zoning Commission,
• “Dusting Off a Tool Crafted by ICL’s Founders,” Idaho Conservation League News Sept. 1991, and
• “Science and Land Use on the Boise Front: A Place for Scientific Activism in City Planning?” a paper delivered at the Northwest Scientific Association 1991 Conference in Boise.

From 1979 to 1981, I lived in the foothills about eight miles outside Boise, Idaho, as caretaker of the Hawkins Ranch, which sits out on a ridge a half-mile above the city. In 1981 I moved back into the city on N. 2nd St. less than a mile from the Fort Boise Military Reserve, the city’s first open-space reserve. In 1986 we bought a home adjacent to the reserve in Aldape Heights, one of Boise’s first foothills subdivisions.

There’s more to this story and our efforts to, once again, truly engage citizens in planning Boise’s future. TO BE CONTINUED