Anyone who's ever gone to an Oro Valley Town Council meeting has seen — and probably heard — Bill Adler.
Adler, 73, isn't afraid to stand up for what he believes in, even when he's going against the tide.
"No matter whether I agree with him or not on some things — and sometimes I agree and sometimes I don't — he always raises the level of discussion," said Sarah More, Oro Valley's planning and zoning director.
Adler made his living designing and selling indoor and outdoor signs in Chicago before switching to broadcasting and moving his family to the Bay Area. While there, he participated in rewriting the sign code for some Bay Area municipalities.
Since moving to Oro Valley from San Francisco in 1991, he's been a concerned citizen, an activist, and a member of many of the town's volunteer citizens' commissions and boards as well as ad hoc committees.
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"I observed very quickly that the town seemed to have as its intent to grow quickly, and so I took an interest in that because I came from a city, San Francisco, that had the reverse inclination — to grow very cautiously and carefully and responsibly to the environmental areas of concern," he said.
That observation is what made him pick up a copy of Oro Valley's 1990 General Plan and begin attending public meetings, he said.
In 2003, he fought to defeat the town's proposed General Plan update. "I felt it was aligned toward revenue generation and didn't make a sufficient attempt to balance that with environmental preservation."
The update didn't comply with what the residents who had attended open houses and focus groups said they wanted — "slower growth rather than faster growth, smaller growth rather than larger growth (and) protection of views, slopes, ridge lines," he said.
Oro Valley voters defeated the update, and Adler later sat on the committee to reshape the General Plan for resubmittal. When it went before voters again — this time in 2005 — they approved it.
Today Adler is on the town's Planning and Zoning Commission, where he strictly enforces zoning code, he said.
"He is an extremely intelligent, well-read, knowledgeable and dedicated citizen," said planning and zoning director More. "He really kind of puts his whole life into caring about the community and working on planning and zoning issues."
Oro Valley resident Art Segal said he's thought highly of Adler since they met about seven years ago at a Board of Adjustment hearing. At that time, Adler was on the board.
"I vividly recall Bill Adler was so analytical prior to making his determination," Segal said. "From that first encounter with Bill, I have learned to value his opinion on anything pertaining to Oro Valley issues."
Segal writes about Oro Valley on the Web site www.letorovalleyexcel.com.
