There are several reasons why I love your post.  First of all, you are very wise...this downturns, like every downturn before it, WILL turn around.  We have had Depressions in the past that have made things like this look like a mere speedbump, and the country picked itself up, dusted itself off, took stock of what it had learned, and survived. 

Which brings me to the second reaon I love your post...because you've learned from experience.  All of us are going through this together.  Some of us saw it coming, some didn't.  But we're all here now, and we can all look around us and say "Jeez, I'll know better the next time I see the warning signs."  It's the old adage again, "that which does not destroy you only makes you stronger."  We'll live through this and gain knowledge that will help us out down the road.

Nobody can predict the future, and trying to beat the market with the perfect "buy low-sell high" mentality can almost never be played to perfection.  You may be able to pull it off in the short term, and you may be able to squeeze out some profit, but few people ever get the timing down perfectly.  So it really isn't worth beating yourself up about at all.

Maricopa has a unique set of problems, but it is by no means the worst place to be or an impending ghost town.  As someone else said, anyone who has taken a journey out to Johnson Ranch or the fringes of humanity in Buckeye can attest to that.  Sure, 347 is a parking lot sometimes.  But being 35 freeway miles to downtown Phoenix beats dealing with 60 miles of mostly street driving, which is what our friends in Johnson Ranch bet their livelihoods on. Even when the newspapers infer otherwise, there are far worse places to be than good ol' Maricopa, AZ. 

100k?  Where did this figure come from?  I have seen hundreds of McDonalds in towns that have less than 10,000 people in them.  Many of them are near a major travel route, but I can think of dozens that are not, as well.   In fact, I would venture to say that Maricopa is among the largest towns/cities in the US that doesn't have a McDonalds.

Well, it depends on the sample of bread you take. We're not even in the Top 100 for foreclosures:

http://money.cnn.com/real_estate/zip_code_foreclosures/

Phoenix is, but they went and led in with Maricopa on the article.

More wisdom here.  Anecdotally, it does seem that many of the homes that sit empty were either never occupied to begin with, or were owned by investors who had temporary occupants that never desired to be a long-term part of the community anyway.  Either way, my opinion is that it is not a big loss.  I've said elsewhere that I really don't have much sympathy for those whose greed caused them to snap up six houses more than they needed...thereby pricing out some decent, hard-working families that could have used them.  Either way, things have changed now, so those hard-working families are beginning to be able to buy in at prices comparable to what they could have had four years ago.  Funny how things work out when the market corrects itself.

Gilbertglcn has a good point.  It would be interesting to see what the percentages of foreclosed houses are in the various cities as opposed to the straight number.  Of course the raw number of foreclosures in Phoenix will be greater than here--because there's such a higher population/so many more houses in Phoenix to begin with; but I great the percentage of foreclosures is out of the total number of houses is much, much higher here.

But I tend to agree that this isn't necessarily the sign of a 'dying town' given that a lot of those houses were bought by speculative investors in the first place.  We just need people to fill 'em up once the market starts to switch direction again.  

Our say would be limited to asking our City Council to stop authorizing residential growth until the existing homes have been snapped up...which they are not likely to do.  Why?  Because it is a money grab for them. 

We often hear and read about "projected income" being used to justify expensive purchases or expenditures.  We saw that when the Police Department was created, we saw it when the Fire Department wanted to build four brand-new stations, and we are seeing it now with the annexation debate.  The projections are based on certain amounts of growth, and are based on their being a certain number of new residential developments built in town.  Even though we have more available homes than the market can support right now, the City is disinclined to turn away more residential development because that would result in a decrease in the City's income.

This is why you've seen some fiscal conservatives beg the City to go easy on spending (i.e. quit wasting money by paving temporary parking lots, etc) until this has all settled itself out.  Because being reliant on streams of income that stem from new residential development is extremely counterproductive in a town where the oversupply of residential dwellings is posing such a problem already.

Thank you for your input.  Read closely though, I think you missed my point.  My point was that a lot of building has been going on or has been planned, and this comes at expense.  Bonds are merely tax hikes that are voted on by the people...the money doesn't come out of thin air, it comes from the pockets of those who live here.  And when projections are used (as you mentioned), they are almost universally done through rose-colored glasses that tend not to mention the economic probability of a serious downturn.  Which, of course, is what actual economists were predicting as long ago as 2004.

There are four fire stations, two of which are now brick-and-mortar, and two that will be.  The point of bringing that up, as well as bringing up the issue of there now being a municipal PD as opposed to a contract with the County Sheriffs is that this is another large cost that has been placed upon the taxpayers here.  When growth is going as it was projected when all of this was created (do you remember the "100,000 by 2010" remarks at council meetings?  I do.) it isn't a problem.  When growth hits a negative (which I do not believe it has) or stalls (which it most certainly has), then the burden to taxpayers is far higher than it would have been otherwise.

And that is what I am getting at.  The fiscal conservatives' position is always "take it easy" when it comes to spending.  If you'd like to do a Comparitive Class study on cities with our actual population (not the speculative 37,000, it would have to be an accurate count) and count their fire and police manpower that could probably be done...but that's a bit beyond the point.  The crux of the matter is that basing your spending on projected income is problematic at best, and foolhardy at worst.