Thursday, May 3, 2007

A11: "Council tables vote on Monogram’s plans for Young’s Farm"

Doug Cook pulls together the relevant facts, but someone buried the lead.* The D-H Council tabled the decision, true enough: to the next council, essentially passing the hot potato. Maybe that's the smart thing to do, but I think it's an important angle, perhaps indicating just how controversial this development is. Since the Courier has taken an editorial position on this decision, it should be more circumspect in its news coverage of the topic.

* Yes, I know that journos love to spell this as 'lede.' All editors make style decisions, and this is mine, for me: 'lede' is elitist insider jargon, as yet unaccepted in standard dictionaries.

3 comments:

leftturnclyde said...

“We don’t know what the majority of residents really want.”
so it goes

Anonymous said...

Well, I guess you had to be there. I was. Cook reveals cautious details but the real story is in what has not been reported.

For example, the Courier has talked about the strong support voiced at meetings for Monogram. Yes, it was there but I saw who they were: Realtors, builders and business people who would directly benefit from a load of houses.

Where is the report of how Monogram met in private with 4 of the councilpersons? Can you say, "open meeting law?"

The town received enough letters of protest from adjacent property owners/residents to force a supermajority vote on the residential plan. But somebody in the town staff or government decided that all these letters had to be dated within the last 5 days to be valid (since P&Z recommended the plan 5 days prior). Since there is no such provision in the ARS or town codes, one wonders what this ploy is all about, except to try to invalidate those letters. Fishy.

Final thought: Some have noted a great rush to bring a vote on the Young's Farm project. Word on the street is that it had its best chance for success with this council but not the next. Champions of the project were furious on May 1st that the council tabled this decision but who in their right mind would think that the council should vote at the FIRST opportunity that they've had to discuss such a big proposal? Don't these go to multiple work sessions first?

Steven Ayres said...

Thanks for that perspective, A. Violating Open Meetings law is a pretty serious deal -- and of course something you probably wouldn't want to discuss with a reporter -- and not one you want to let go by. Are we talking about rumors here, or actionable facts? If the latter, a lot can be done about it, and I know that the AG takes this law seriously.