Are Your Procedures Fair?
by Greg Dale

  • this article is currently only available by mail as part of our reprint set:
    Greg Dale explores why fairness may require more than the legal minimum.

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    Assume that you are a home owner in the immediate vicinity of the development proposal. You are well informed on local affairs, but don't make it a habit to attend all planning commission meetings or regularly monitor the process. One day you receive a notice of a development proposal in your area, informing you that a public hearing has been scheduled before the planning commission. Assume that you are even more thorough than the average resident and decide to go to City Hall to review the development application. When you speak to staff, however, you learn that the developer is in the process of revising the development plans; in other words, the plan on record is not current or accurate.

    You then attend the planning commission public hearing. As the meeting unfolds, you learn that the developer has not only been meeting with the staff, but has already appeared before the planning commission in an informal meeting where no notice was given to nearby residents. What with the staff and the developer being on a first name basis and the planning commission asking questions based on their previous review, you get the clear impression that you've missed something. On top of that, you've had no chance to review the current plan prior to appearing at the hearing. All you see are drawings pulled out during the hearing.

    From your perspective, the developer has had numerous opportunities to convince staff and planning commission of the merits of its proposal, while you, and your neighbors, have not had a chance to provide any sort of meaningful comment.

    Now let's consider the situation outlined above. It's understandable why a member of the public would be upset. While it may be impossible -- as well as unnecessary -- to involve all potentially affected parties in all meetings along the way, it is critical for a planning commissioner (and planning director) to remember that public participation is more than just something that has to be inserted at a particular place into the process in order to satisfy the letter of the law. ...