Hat tip to City Watch and kudos to the 17 who turned out and all those who wrote or called to oppose further stacking the Commission with special interests.
"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."
Subject: Planning Commission votes down the proposed amendment
After some discussion the Planning Commission voted down the proposed amendment adding another real estate industry rep to the Planning Commission. Two Commissioners were unable to attend. The five who attended voted 3-2.
The consensus is to allow another look and deeper consideration of the matter.The Commission received testimony from 18 citizens and 17 of those were against the proposed amendment. Three CityWatch members attended and offered verbal testimony (Dave Engen, Evan White and myself).The discussion coalesced around
1) is it right and appropriate to have Planning Commissioners who are "principally engaged in buying, selling, or developing real estate"?;
2) what does "principally engaged" mean?;
3) how does the selection process work?;
4) what are the selection criteria used to screen applications to the commission?
Additional discussion was around the meaning of, "No more than two members shall be engaged in the same kind of occupation, business, trade or profession."Obviously there was more to the discussion and the minutes will reflect that. (I haven't been able to get PC minutes to load on my computer.)The important result is that the Commission seemed to accept the idea that the ordinance is significantly flawed and that the selection process used to screen potential Commissioners may be failing.It is very unlikely that these results would have occurred without thoughtful persistent citizen involvement.THANK YOU to all who testified. We expect the matter to return to the Planning Commission in the near future.
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2 comments:
I am pleased with the outcome. With a close vote and two members missing however, it is a shallow victory.
I suspect it will be back.
What we need to lobby for is geographical representation as well as gender equity.
I think geographical diversity is only a superficial thing -- it's easy for the sprawl lobby to produce geographically diverse candidates for commission seats. Wards are a terrible way to get real diversity of thought on a board such as this. What we need is a way to break up the groupthink that dominates as a result of the rigorous ideological screening that commission candidates must undergo, where the Chamber of the 1% gets to vet all the candidates and tell the Council which may be appointed.
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