This Blog Thread is for all the people who make phone calls to the Supervisors and Commissioners, etc. Just push the Comments button and document what your conversation was about. Here's the first one. Add yours.
June 6, 2007
At 10:15 a.m., Donna Eames called Supervisor Tommy LaFrance. She quotes him as saying that the Flood Plain Ordinance, with all its restrictions, was never going to pass the Board. He said they would never do something like that. She asked him what this business was of the Planning Commission making motions and going back to take another run at it, in the Zoning Subcommittee again. She brought up the conversations she had with Mr. Eldridge, in which he reiterated his desire to have all the people who live on the flood plain, essentially "turn themselves in" to get new occupancy certificates. Mr. LaFrance said the Board cannot stop the Planning Commission from working on something, but he thinks they should work on something more productive, as restrictions like this are not going to be passed by the Board.
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6 comments:
Yikes. I think I'm getting dizzy. Perhaps Mr. LaFrance will step up to the plate and tell the Planning Commission to stop wasting so much time and energy. Maybe he can give them something to do since they seem to get a bit goofy when they try to be creative on their own.
Essentially, what we're being told is that the Zoning Subcommittee of the Planning Commission, headed by Alan Eldridge, can do whatever it wants to do, with no easily findable public announcement (you can stop by every day and see if there's a meeting scheduled) and no minutes of their meetings. When they're finished, they'll take it to the Planning Commission for approval, where they already have the votes stacked, and then it will show up at the Board, which is exactly what happened in December 2006, and if the public happens to figure out what's been done in time, we can show up at the Board meeting, and here we are six months later, still wondering when this thing is going to be over, while people who have land for sale are having trouble selling because this is pending.
Oh my, I AM at the circus and the clowns keep coming out of the little car. What next, will everyone be required to wear funny hats and makeup if they attend a Zoning Subcommittee meeting or risk be rezoned into oblivion?
Like Kramer on the old Seinfeld Tv show, I am afraid of clowns.
June 6, 2007, I called Mr. Shanks, County Attorney at approximately 10:30 A.M. to simply get the status of the Flood Plain Ordinance especially after the meeting on June 5, the night before. After all, he is the county attorney and this is part of his job. Of course, he did not return my phone call. I made it clear to his assistent that I was not asking for legal advice. I called his office again at approximately 4:00 p.m. His assistant, Vickie, said Mr. Shanks is referring me to Mark Belton.
It is totally amazing the run-around one gets trying to simply get an answer. I think it's pretty ironic that Mr. Shanks, operating on an outrageous budget paid for by the citizens, can't take a minute out of his day to receive a phone call from one of the citizens paying his salary.
Donna Eames
June 7, 2007
Last week I spoke with Mr. Eldridge and he indicated that he was going to start working on a "Brand New Flood Plain Ordinance". I asked him about the previous one that everyone had been fighting for the last six months. He would not comment on the last "Proposed" one.
I mentioned to him that he was on the last subcommittee that wrote the proposed Flood Plain Ordinance which attempted to strip people of their property rights and asked him why we should trust him to do a re-write. He admitted that he had made a mistake on the last one.
Today, at approximately 1:00 p.m. I called Mr. Eldridge to ask him about the status of the Planning Subcommittee meeting last night and to find out if there had been any discussion of the Flood Plain Ordinance. He said "No" that there was no mention of it in the meeting last night and that the meeting last night was strickly about home businesses.
Does this mean he is not working up a "New" Proposed Flood Plain Ordinance? Last week he said he was and this week he says he's not.
Today he said that "the subcommittee is not planning on doing a darn thing more on the Flood Plain Ordinance unless requested to do so by the Board of Supervisors".
He said the Board has the Flood Ordinance and that it is in their hands now.
I also called Mark Belton's office this morning and was told that the only people who attended the subcommittee last night was Alan Eldridge, Dot Donato, Charles Newton, Mr. Otto, Kevin Henry and Natalie Zuckerman.
Donna Eames
The subcommittee agenda said it was only going to talk about home based businesses. Home based businesses should not take long to talk about. The issue is: people who work entirely on the Internet are not being issued business licenses by the county IF they live on a road that is not maintained by the state. If their road is state-maintained, no problem. The purpose of this motion, which was originally brought up by Charlie Campbell, was to change the ordinances so that those people who live on non-state maintained roads, and run an Internet business, will get their licenses and pay county tax. It should be a simple change. However, in front of this Planning Commission, it started getting complicated. What if the person has a sign on their car? What if they get UPS deliveries? These are some what ifs that were brought up in the general session by members of this zoning subcommittee.
There aren't any what ifs for the people who live on state maintained roads. They just follow the normal business licensing rules.
This particular set of people on this zoning subcommittee likes to add every possible restriction they can get.
I'm told they did not finish this topic during this session and have set another session on this topic for next week at the same time.
Regarding no one attending. See "Following Alice" under the labels section.
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