So there was a planning meeting tonight, it was a whole 7 minutes with a 3 minute pre-recorded chew out session about public input. Yup, 4 minute meeting. Why is this? To avoid conflicts of interest with board members they put everything on the consent agenda and pass it with one vote without presentations or discussion. It is the EPITOME of closed government and unethical behavior.
They started this dog and pony show a few years ago, putting most of rezones on the consent agenda so they don’t have to work, but it is totally against open government.
What is a ‘consent agenda’. It basically assumes these are ‘non-controversial’ items so there is NO hearing, presentation or individual discussions on each item just a blanket vote. Yeah, shady. It is also a violation of 1st amendment rights because they say before general public input you can’t talk about agenda items in the previous meeting. Really? Why would they when we have NO IDEA what the agenda items were.
For legal reasons they do ask anyone from the public to ‘PULL’ a consent agenda item and if someone requests it the planning department has to do a presentation of the item and have planning commission discussion, it also allows for public input, and an individual vote on the item.
Like I said, anyone in the audience at the meeting can request an item gets pulled from the consent agenda.
So a former local government official told me this, ‘Maybe get people from the public to come to the planning meeting and ask items to be pulled?’
Brilliant!
The Planning Commission meets ONCE a month on the 1st Wednesday of the month at 6 PM at Carnegie. I encourage folks from the public to start attending these meetings and request ALL consent items be pulled for discussion. And if any member recuses themselves from an item, DEMAND, DON’T ASK, they follow state and city ordinance and explain their conflict in DETAIL! It is the law and they MUST do it! If they don’t they are violating city and state statutes.
I have nicknamed the commission the ‘Conflict of Interest Commission’. Don’t take my sarcasm as fact, just watch the meetings, tons of recusals with NO explanation.
I think the next mayor needs to terminate the ENTIRE board and install new members who have NO conflicts of interest and can have 100% attendance to the meetings. Seems like an easy ask.