The Role of a Planning Commissioner as Defined….

At its regular meetings, the Planning Commission makes final decisions on requests for special permits. Other issues such as rezonings, abandonments, and annexations will receive a favorable or unfavorable recommendation, which will then be taken to City Council for a final hearing.

So, as the newspaper says, I DO know my place and feel fairly certain the rest of the commission does as well.  Here again, this time with an editorial, they buried the lead.  The story isn’t the Commissioners should know their place…the story is, WHY did this matter (AIC of course) come to us for our “recommendation”? If this was in fact a matter for administration or the Council, then why did we spend a majority of one meeting hearing from residents involved and from the business? In other words…WHY DID YOU WASTE OUR TIME? That my friends is the story. So the newspaper feels it is wrong for us to be upset after we made our “recommendation”? Well I would hope anyone that voted to not give AIC their six month extension would be upset. Especially after we did our due diligence in regard to this. But that too, totally misses the mark.

I can’t speak for anyone but myself in this regard. But for me…it was about perceptions. As much as I hate the term, perception is, in most cases, reality. We have a bad rap for backroom deals. Now a lot of normal city business, even that including developers does get done within the cozy confines of city hall. But in this case, there was evidently a mistake at the beginning (with the Commission taking this matter up), a mistake in allowing AIC to appeal (and in their defense, I’m sure spending valuable time gathering info), a mistake in leading the public again that they would have a say in the appeal…and at the 11th hour pull it from the agenda and make no reference to it in the meeting, even though the matter was solved. Pardon my French…but it is pure D chicken shit.

It led people to believe that first, the Planning Commission has been marginalized, the staff worked behind the scenes and made a “deal” and that the Council, through their silence, must have been covering something up. Strike three.

The biggest thing a candidate calls for, when rallying his support is the famous “transparency in government”. This is exactly what they speak of. The problem with that of course, once most of them get in office, they don’t want us to know the whole story about what is truly going on. I consider myself friends with a few of our Council members (well until this anyway-we’ll see) and same for staff. But we have developed a culture of working as a family, or as a team and supporting each other always. I’m sorry but when it comes to government…that is exactly what the problem is. If staff screwed up by not knowing the Commission should have had this..it should have been disclosed. And screw ups by the staff have happened a lot in the last two years. Now with repeat offenders, I know this has to be an H.R. issue probably not for the rest of us to know. I respect that. But when it puts a huge hole in our PROCESS, then sorry, we need to know who and why.

In case the bosses down at City Hall didn’t know. There is a huge unemployment problem right now, so I imagine filling a job vacancy shouldn’t be a problem. Council members also won’t always speak up when they don’t agree with another. They still like 5-0 votes…showing unity in our government. I didn’t vote for you to sing Kumbaya. I voted for you to support the mission of running a successful government that serves the people.

I hate that song anyway.