Planning Commission still not Open Government By Tom Hollenhorst, DPPA member Editors note: A few months ago Councilor Stover put forward a resolution to require the Planning Commission to meet in the evening, when more people could attend. DPPA supported this resolution. The Planning Commission cried foul, saying that they should have been included in the development of this resolution, it wasn't fair to ask that of their members, and besides, whenever anything was of public interest, they hold meetings in the evening in any case. From the below, it appears the inaccessibility of the Planning Commission to the general public continues. At the time of writing (9-14-03) the most recent Planning commission minutes available on the City website were from 6-25-03, with the minutes from five subsequent meetings prior to 8-28-03 unavailable. Councilors, Last Tuesday (9-9-03) I wasted half of my day at the 9:00am Planning Commission meeting. Based on this experience, I doubt I will bother to do that again. I went there to express some concerns our neighborhood-planning district 7 has had with the proposed Lakewalk Townhomes development. I heard right away that the city council, the night before, had unanimously requested the Planning Commission to table this issue until it could be discussed at an evening meeting. I expect you requested this so that the public could be more involved, and have an opportunity to express their concerns. It would have been nice if they would have followed your wishes and done this right away. Remember the Planning Commission had assured you they would hold evening meetings for more controversial projects, instead they waded through all the other items on their agenda, and then decided to hear from the few remaining citizens who would like to address this development. This was after they learned that many who had signed up to speak had to leave to return to work. This included several members of our district, including the chair of NDP 7. At this point the commissioners seemed to want to reassure themselves that they had heard from everyone. They continued to do this despite comments made by myself and others that several individuals had to leave, couldn't make a 9:00 am meeting, and that this was the first day any of this had been in the paper and many citizens of Duluth simply are not at all aware of this project. I am quite certain the planning commission had heard only a small portion of our concerns regarding this project and would have heard a lot more at an evening meeting. Councilors, I sincerely hope you will soon reconsider requiring the Planning Commission to meet at an hour when more regular citizens can make these meetings. I've been continually frustrated about how hard it is to determine what will occur at these meetings, or what has already occurred. The minutes and agendas available on the city website for the Planning Commission meetings are chronically out of date, with the most recent meeting minutes only from June 25, at least 3 or 4 meetings behind. Imagine if you're a citizen try to determine what occurred at the last meeting, and if that means you need to attend the next, and then you realize it's a 9:00 am meeting. Good luck getting there. This works good for developers but it does not work at all for citizens. When you consider this behavior, especially after your request to hold an evening meeting, and the fact that the minutes and agendas are rarely posted in a timely manner, you could begin to argue they are in violation of open meeting laws. I would like to make the following suggestions to help make the planning commission's work more accessible to the public. 1. Require the PC to Hold an evening meeting at least once a month. 2. Broadcast meetings on Pact TV. a. If this is not possible record the meetings and make audio copies available on the cities website. (It's really not that hard to do this, the technology is there) 3. Require the Planning Commission agendas to be posted at a minimum 3 days before meetings, and require the meeting minutes to be posted within 2-3 days after the next meeting in which they minutes are approved. Having volunteered on other city boards, I appreciate the effort required to serve on such a commission, but couldn't we work to make this important commission just a bit more accessible to the public? Thanks for your consideration. Sincerely, Tom Hollenhorst Counter point The chairman of the Planning Commission responded in an email to the council dismissing these claims. He cited a previous evening meeting earlier in the process, and a belief that people have had adequate notice of this development. In response to Vigen's response, Hollenhorst said simply "The planning commission didn't hear from the chair of Neighborhood Planning District 7 because he had to leave to go to work." These articles are retained on the web for historical interest and do not necessarily reflect the views or goals of DPPA today.

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