I would like to offer a very different view than a recent editorial column from the former head of the Traverse City Planning Commission.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen the planning juggernaut basically indicate, on the record, that those with different views on proposed policies lack the intelligence to comprehend what is before the Planning Commission.
I must have missed it, but I did not know that they now have the authority to approve nuclear test-ban treaties.
I would propose that a more inclusive approach might be to welcome all to have a meaningful role in the development of policies that affect all of our lives. Only involving the public after proposals are already decided in tightly-controlled sessions where the public is supposed to sit quietly like nursery-school children is not inclusive.
If citizens are continually excluded, then their only choices are litigation or charter amendment. Perhaps one of the reasons that the multi-hundred-page documents from developers and staff are presented with what I suspect is little time for review is the hope that the public will give up and just defer to the dogmatic pro-tall-building staff.
Regulated companies have used this tactic to try and overwhelm the ability of the public to digest the amount of information presented. Some states have enacted so-called “anti-pancaking” provisions to prohibit this kind of piling on of so much material that no one can review it in the time allowed.
As an attorney working for the Michigan Legislature, I participated in a matter before the Michigan Supreme Court that dealt with interpreting provisions of the Michigan Constitution of 1963. I do not think, in the brief I submitted on behalf of a legislative leader or during oral arguments on the issue before the court, that I would have gotten far with suggesting that those on the other side of the issue lacked the intelligence to understand the issue. And I am sure that the legislative leader I was representing would never have consented to such a line of argument.
I was twice honored to teach a class at Michigan State University on telecommunications policy as a visiting assistant professor. I doubt the students, or the administration, would have liked my suggesting that students were not intelligent enough to understand the policy issues I was presenting.
Yet in planning policy development here, it seems to be the norm for the planning juggernaut to attack any who do not share their same vision on endless approval of tall buildings. The legislative leader for whom I worked was a master of the time-consuming task of forging true compromise. But that takes time, inclusion is time-consuming – and the opposite of the-ends-justify-the-means approach that is dominant here.
I have long felt that, if a handful of long-time key city bureaucrats would spend half as much time working with the public as they do trying to work around the public, there would be more consensus achieved.