That's what Trustee Chick said at the August 5th Planning Commission meeting.  It's perceptive, illuminating, and troubling.  If other board members really see this debate as a choice between growth and no growth, we are looking at a deep and apparently immoveable bias.  These are people of good will and good concience.  Is that all they see after a year of Citizens telling them that development supported by our Master Plan is ok?  Really?  

Framing the debate as growth vs. nogrowth - with no in-between, is a false representation of our choices.  The Master Plan contains a multitude of available and publically agreed upon development options.  This survey looks more and more like a fishing expedition.  The Board is gambling $17,000 on the hope that this survey will give them what two previous surveys have not.

Chick also said that "it's been a discussion in this township for twenty-some years."  Kudos for noticing that this debate over the Master Plan precedes the existence of Northfield Neighbors by a long time.

The story continues beneath the Read-More fold...

Click here to watch Trustee Chick's statement.  That click will land you precisely at the spot in the video clip where she begins speaking. 

By the way, that click is an example use of a new feature we're working on:  Live Meeting Minutes.

At the August 5th meeting, P.C. Secretary Stanalajczo premiered his version of official meeting minutes, a greatly abbreviated version of the Minutes you're used to seeing.  You can see them in his Minutes for the July 15th P.C. meeting, which Stanalajzco composed because P.C. Recording Secretary Lemble could not attend.  The new minutes are little more than the Agenda retyped to include the results of votes on Motions and the Roll Call.  Your Citizen comments at the Call to the Public have been reduced to single number, the number of people commenting.  Discussions between board members go unmentioned.  All context for decisions and decision making is lost. 

This could have been a one time thing.  But Stanalajczo sent Lemble an email demanding that all future meetings be recorded in this way.  The email, by the way, pissed off Commissioner Roman and he said so, (but not so indecorously.)

Watching the P.C. argue about this gave us an idea.  As Commissioner Cousino observed, this is the 21st century. 

Why couldn't we turn Recording Secretary Lemble's elegant minutes into a pdf or web page linking each item or spot in the minutes to its place in the meeting video?  As it turns out, we can and it's easy to do.

Imagine the possibilities...  Do you want to watch your friends speaking up at "First call to the public?"  Click it and there you are.  Click on an agenda item and you'll see that part of the meeting.  Click on New Business.  Click on Old Business.  Click on Second Call to the Public.  Click on Board Member comments.   These meetings can go on for hours and few of us have time to watch every moment.  Even fast forwarding to the parts we want to watch is a hit or miss, time consuming process.

Northfield Township - Welcome to the 21st Century.