April 20, 2016 Planning Commission meeting

Commissioners Dignan and Iaquinto were no-shows at tonight's discussion.  What did they miss?  They missed consideration of the process by which was finagled a Zoning change exclusively benefiting the Living Water Church.   Ken and Sam are both Leaders in that Church.   How much of McKenna Associates latest $4991.00 bill to Northfield Township Taxpayers is due to processing this special request?  No one knows; the almost unreadable photocopy of the financial ledger entry documenting that invoice does not specify the allocation.    The financials were included in the April 12 Board packet.

What else happened?  Lake Overlay zoning was discussed. 

Planner Sally Hodges' highly polished professional presentation of the Lake Overlay issue did not appear in this meeting packet.  Instead, the meeting packet contained a scan/photocopy which is as un-indexable and un-searchable as everything else in the packet.  It has that in common with all of the Planning Commission Minutes posted to the Township Website since May 6, 2015.    By a no-doubt absolutely incredibly fantastic co-incidence, that was the PC meeting at which Manager Fink admitted that there had been no competitive bids for the Community Survey.   Cobalt was the sole bidder.

Why does it matter to me that meeting minutes are published as true PDFs?  Because that is the form in which they can be readily read by the vision impaired and the form in which they can be indexed and searched on the web.  It is the difference between "transparency" used as an empty word and transparency with teeth.

 

Documents:

SEMCOG report: Residential Construction in Southeast Michigan in 2015

MLive: Pittsfield Township plans $1.5M expansion of its greenway system, April 15, 2016