"Collins - Oregon House - Dobbins Community Plan" submitted

[ed. - Collins - Oregon House - Dobbins Community Plan PDF. The proposed foothill development outlined in this plan will take center stage in the 2014 Yuba County elections, as the expansions are opposed by incumbent 5th District Supervisor Hal Stocker, but supported by Randy Fletcher (who will go on to defeat Stocker.) Fletcher is a business associate of Fellowship members Charles Sharp and Steven Dambeck.)]

"The COHD Community Plan was prepared on the specific recommendation by the Board of Supervisors to the Yuba County Community Development Department (CDD - the functioning body charged with completion of the GPU on behalf of the Board of Supervisors) that CDD should work with the Collins-Oregon House-Dobbins Planning Committee and with our community as a whole to establish a process of coordinated planning. Two proposals stating our community’s wishes for limited growth and a boundary expansion (see under Section 1.5) were then submitted to CDD, who requested that such proposals should be re-submitted in the form of a Community Plan, adding that they would like to see more such community plans prepared throughout the Yuba County foothills region. Thus, our submission of this Community Plan fulfills the next step requested by the County."

Committee members from the Fellowship of Friends include Greg Holman, President of the Fellowship and of Renaissance Vineyard and Winery (the affiliation is conveniently omitted from his profile), Peter Morrow, Franca Cavallaro, and Katja Kreher. Additionally, Fellowship members Nick Spaulding, Charles Sharp, and Steven Dambeck have been actively involved lobbying county officials on behalf of the project.

The proposed expansion (dark pink area) includes large tracts owned by The Fellowship of Friends and its members

Critics argue that within in this "Trojan horse" are Fellowship-backed plans to expand Oregon House-Dobbins community boundaries (under the guise of fire protection) to promote development, reduce minimum parcel size to 5 acres within these boundaries, implement new road construction, and create high-density subdivisions, all in the interest of major landholders (including the Fellowship and member landholders, Soper-Wheeler, and Tom Richards, owner of the 7,000-acre Richards Ranch adjacent to Fellowship lands.)

Bruce Arvon's story

The following is excerpted from Bruce Arvon's website, 4th Way Path:

Early in my search I joined a group called the Fellowship of Friends in northern California. The leader of this group is a very charismatic man, Robert Burton, who is the most wonderful pied piper. At that time he told us he was a man number 6 , a conscious man! I was really impressed that he was so high and knew so much more than I did and could lead me to a higher plain.

I believed everything he said, he was (according to him) talking directly with the angels! Wow! I was sure lucky to be in his group. He told us that the Fellowship was an arc [sic] that was going to carry civilization through the coming Armageddon! There were 44 angels working directly with the school and he even knew their names and who they were. Past great men of history, such as Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Marcus Aurelius and 41 others who had completed their tasks on the earth and, I guess, became conscious and risen to angel status.

Robert also claimed to be a profit [sic] and made predictions about things that would happen in the future, such as California falling into the sea in 1996 [ed. - actually, 1998], and a great depression worse than the 1930s happening in 1984 and the atomic war, Armageddon in 2006. None of these events took place and I can not tell you how he coped with the misinformation the angels gave him. The Fellowship is still around and prosperous all these years later and so is the pied piper Mr. Burton. Still sending innocent, soul searching people down a path in the opposite direction of where they hope to go!

Don't believe!

The important thing is that I believed him. I believed without doubts everything he said. I believed I was one of the special, chosen ones that was on the way to consciousness. I was one of those destined to survive and help bring civilisation through Armageddon. I believed that I was superior to the rest of humanity which was asleep and not interested in awakening! I was a player who had a part in a great play being orchestrated by higher influences.  

It was many years after I left the Fellowship that I began to know that I had been duped and unfortunately I had a psychology that was easily dupable. I of course only saw myself as strong and not easily swayed by others. 

Rather than being unique and better than others, always thinking I knew the truth and they were mislead and gullible I painfully discovered that I was exactly the same as all those whom I judged.

[ed. - Also published on the blog, The Fourth Way Path.]