Now I want to start this week by saying I have nothing against the planning commission as a body of people who show up and sit in chairs — I truly do not — but when you cancel a public hearing for a conditional use permit and you do not write down a single word about why, what you are telling the people who actually live here is that the reason is none of our business, and I have to tell you, I have lived in this county my entire life and I remember when that kind of thing would have been unthinkable — you held your meeting, you said your piece, you let Dorothy Hanscom from out on the highway road ask her seventeen questions even though most of them were the same question, and that was how it was done, and it worked fine.
CUP-2025-001 is just a number on a piece of paper to some people, and I understand that, but a conditional use permit means somebody wants to use a piece of land in a way it is not currently zoned for, and when the hearing to discuss that gets cancelled with no explanation posted in the public record, as of April 1st no less — and yes I noticed the date, believe me I noticed the date — what are the people who actually live here supposed to think? We are supposed to just wait for the April 13th meeting and hope somebody says something? I will be there. I will bring my notepad. And another thing — I do not know why they moved these meetings to Mondays because they were always on Tuesdays for as long as I can remember and I specifically remember because my mother had her card group on Tuesdays and she would always say she could not go to the planning meeting because of cards, and the point is Tuesdays made sense for a reason and nobody asked us.
While I am at it, and I know this is slightly separate but it is not entirely separate if you think about it, which I have — the parking situation outside the building where these meetings are held has gotten genuinely difficult and I said this in March and I am saying it again now, there used to be a whole additional row of spaces on the far side that I think got absorbed into something, some kind of loading zone situation, and I am not saying who made that decision but they know, and the people who actually live here and try to attend a public meeting at six in the evening know too.
The April 13th meeting is on the calendar and I will be watching what gets addressed and what gets quietly set aside, which is a thing that happens more than people want to admit — you just circle back to it later, they say, and sometimes later never comes. I am not accusing anyone of anything. I am just someone who has been here long enough to know how these things tend to go, and I am keeping my notepad sharp.
That's all for this week. You know where to find me.