2025-02-05 Jim McMahon Testimony

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public interest to allow this practice for submittals as each proposed use has different impacts and concerns. Presumably, such complex applications increase the workload for the county staff and the cost to the taxpayer. It is therefore unreasonable, in my opinion, to combine 2 or more unrelated uses in the same application. The remainder of my testimony will be organized according to each use. Use #1 : to host an annual four (4) — day event with overnight camping AKA "Falls on Fire" Firstly, it must be said and it is my opinion that calling a less constrained version of the more famously known annual "Burning Man" event that takes place on Public (BLM) land in a remote corner of a Nevada desert a "camping" event is probably not the most accurate description of the proposed use. This is not a situation where a group of friends set up a traditional campsite, roast marshmallows over a campfire, and sing Kumbaya. There are reasons why the applicants are seeking to host this event in a secluded private location and not in public spaces that are normally considered adequate for other festivals. Mostly these reasons are centered around the need for "radical self-expression". Or in other words, the planned activities for the event would probably be illegal within the public spaces, or at least offend the prevailing social mores. I am not concerned about what takes place between consenting adults on private property. But I do care about the local neighborhood impacts and the spillover impacts to the general public. This includes noise arising from all-day and all-night activities, impaired drivers traveling on our roads both private and public, smoke from numerous campfires, cooking fires, and the burning of effigies, water contamination from runoff into the streams, increased need for law enforcement and EMS intervention, etc. Notes from previous "Falls on Fire" events Living on the access road to this event and within earshot of the site has unwillingly given me a "front row seat" to this event which has been held twice in Nov 2023 and Nov 2024. Here are my notes: • Attendance and traffic - O For the 2023 event, we were told to expect 50 attendees but at least 100 people showed up. In 2024 only 200 tickets were supposed to have been sold. But my estimate of the number of attendees is -400 based on -500 additional vehicle trips on our road (-200 vehicle unique vehicle license plates). In