We found our heroes

If you missed the April 23 Planning Commission, you missed a great time! We had some heroes emerge, saw some weird things happen, and got the word "however" taken out of the Comprehensive Plan. The big news is: the Planning Commission, in a narrow and cliff-hanging 4 to 3 vote decided to recommend to the Board of Supervisors that the Draft Flood Plain Management Plan be taken out of consideration, debate ended, and the existing flood plain ordinance be reverted to.

We had a good night.

Now here's the Play by Play.

First, they talked about the Comprehensive Plan. That's the one nobody has copies of yet, but we'll be getting copies of that on the website before it gets considered by the Board of Supervisors. It has some problems, but they are fixable, and we'll be getting to that another day.

The big cool thing about that was Peggy getting up and objecting to the word "however" on page 74. You see, the old plan said blah, blah, blah paraphrasing "Page County's scenic beauty attracts recreational house development." The new one said, "Page County's scenic beauty, however, also attracts recreational house development."

Now is that rude, or is that rude?

So Peggy got them to take the "however" out.

I objected to them adding a GOAL to write an "ordinance to prevent houses and businesses from being in the 100 year flood plain" and I didn't even get a discussion about it. I guess that's okay, because it gives us more reason to object to the Comprehensive Plan when it gets to the Board of Supervisors. If there was no reason to change the ordinance BEFORE, now you can't write that line in the Plan and then say that's the reason you have to do it.

But the real hero of the night, in a night of at least 4 heroes, was Planning Commissioner Darrell Short. Darrell proposed a motion, which he had nicely written out and elegantly presented. His motion said that the commission should recommend to the Board that they stop debate on the draft ordinance, abolish the draft ordinance and revert to the existing ordinance if any further discussion were to come up, and abolish the subcommittee. Okay, I might have that wrong because it was long and I couldn't follow it, but I think that's the basic gist of it.

Hero number 2 came along when Commissioner Sandra Hammel seconded the motion.

Commissioners De Serio, Otto, and Newton voted No on that motion. Their argument (and I do have to paraphrase and trust my memory and understanding when I say this stuff. I don't have a tape recorder or write shorthand on this) . . . anyway, I think their argument was that they've learned a lot from all the citizen input and it would be better to rewrite the ordinance in a subcommittee.

Chairman Woodward voted Yes, becoming Hero number 3 for the night.

And then it was down to Commissioner Dot Donato. Remember, Dot was on the subcommittee who wrote this in the first place, and last week, she was holding up a Flood Insurance program and saying everybody should read this. So at first she abstained. And then she was the deciding vote.

So she voted YES.

It took our audience a while to understand what happened, so we didn't just jump right up and start cheering. In fact, we didn't figure it out until the Chairman moved on to New Business.

So then some people thought we should pull the ad, and it is true that the ad tells people to go to a meeting that is now not going to happen . . . but this isn't done yet. All the commissioners can do is recommend to the Board that this take place. The Board still has to decide, and we don't know when that will occur.

So the ad . . . which says "call your supervisor and tell them to stop the flood plain ordinance" . . . is actually perfectly timed. This action is now before the supervisors, or it will be soon, and it is the perfect action to tell the citizens everywhere what the implications are and ask them to demand that the ordinance be pulled.

We did give our four heroes a heads up on the ad, though. Didn't want them to be blind sided by it after what they did.

So hip, hip, hooray for a rational government.

What does this prove? Citizen input counts. Government works. And an informed citizenry makes a better government. Oh, and there were some funny parts, too. You had to be there.

Stay tuned for the next installment . . .

Coming Monday April 23

This Monday, April 23, the Planning Commission will do two things of interest to Page County Watch.

First, and most importantly, they will vote on whether or not to turn the issue of the Flood Plain Ordinance back to a subcommittee. This is important because currently all the members are learning what the issues are. If it's taken back to subcommittee, only a few members will hear anything about it. Next the issue comes up: who is on the subcommittee? Some say the same people who wrote it expect to be the subcommittee. In fact, some think that's a given.

But Roberts Rules of Order say NO. By Roberts Rules of Order, once the subcommittee turned in its report in the Fall of 2006, it was automatically disbanded as an entity. The Rules say that subcommittee no longer exists, and it can now go to a newly formed subcommittee.

That makes sense to me. The first subcommittee did a shameful job. They let a rabid fanatic do their work for them, and they fell under the spell of thinking they had the right to take people's property rights away in the name of personal power. Surely, it would be common sense to form a NEW subcommittee, and not turn the whole issue back to the people who caused it in the first place.

The second issue coming up Monday night is amendments to the Comprehensive Plan. Guess what? The same individual who made a farce out of the Flood Plain ordinance added some choice and laughable changes to the Comprehensive Plan.

More on that later.

Hope to see you all on Monday night, April 23, at 7 p.m. in the Courthouse for the ongoing saga of . . . the Page County Planning Commission.