In an apparent attempt to disparage the concerns of hundreds in the Valley community and the groups representing their interests, the Chumash tribal chairman described a recent meeting attended by hundreds of these folks as "Halloween coming early."

In that commentary, he made reference to the fable of the "Boy Who Cried Wolf." Either he did not understand the underlying message and meaning of that fable, or he never read it.

The point made in that fable is that if you cry wolf too often or too early, help won't come when the wolf is really there. I guess he was trying to say community concerns being expressed were premature concerning fears about what the tribal government intends to do in developing the Camp 4 property.

His attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of Valley residents failed badly.

When it comes to the issue of tribes taking fee lands into federal trust status, it's never too early to express concerns because, once the land is in trust, the tribe can do whatever it wants and evade the laws and regulations enacted by state and local governments, laws intended to protect the health, safety and welfare of the whole community, and preserve the character and quality of life for all the citizens who live here - because all those laws will no longer apply.

To relate to Chairman Armenta's misguided use of that classic fable, once tribal fee land is in trust, the wolf has already arrived, the sheep are gone and it is already too late.

Anyone who tries to tell you differently knows nothing about Indian law and the federal policies involved in fee-to-trust transfers. The recent commentaries by tribal spokespersons would be funny if this were not such a serious threat. That is, that a tribal government such as the Chumash can do whatever it likes with a large tract of land in the middle of a bucolic area of the Valley with no policing and effectively no mandatory mitigations or local controls, and can continue to use all the public services and infrastructure provided by the rest of the non-tribal taxpayers without paying the taxes needed to fund them.

This is more than frightening. After reading these commentaries in your paper by both the chairman and vice-chairman, and attending the public meeting at the casino - which was described as one to replace fiction with truth - it was apparent that meeting did neither.

The tribe has not only demonstrated it cannot be trusted, but has made it clear it has one motive, and that is to make money in any way possible through gambling losses, refusal to pay needed taxes, engaging in unregulated development if it can do so, and has treated the community and our local government with disdain.

Given that fact, it is never too early to begin to cry wolf about any proposal to allow this group the right to do whatever it likes on a large parcel of land and evade numerous public protections imposed on all developers and land owners.

Mr. Armenta's explanation at the tribal meeting was that a fee-to-trust transfer does not remove the Camp 4 property - or any other tribal property - from local controls, when and if it is brought into federal Indian trust. This statement was, at best, disingenuous.

What he meant by that comment is the "local control" that remains after a transfer of the property to trust is the "controls" of his own tribal government. That is, the Chumash tribe is the "local government" that would police and regulate its own development, and would do so ostensibly with the non-tribe public's good in mind.

That self-serving statement brings to mind yet another classic adage, one that warns us what is likely to happen if we were to allow the fox to guard the chicken coop.