Minute by minute...

OK, I hope you'll excuse the cute Doobie Brothers reference to introduce a boring but illustrative topic. Generally, the most perfunctory part of any meeting is the reading of the minutes. This is generally a quick "Has everyone read them... any changes..." and you're done. Signal Mountain Town Council, however has turned the "reading of the minutes" into an intermittent ordeal. I realize this my be very "inside baseball", but I think it is an example of the kinds of behind the scenes manipulation of the issues that concerns me.

The most recent example is from last night. As background, you might know from reading the Signal Mountain Mirror that we have frequently spent a fair amount of time with minutes in the past as former English teacher Susan Robertson made assorted grammatical corrections including misplace commas and misspelling and typos. I have found this generally acceptable and even laudable as our minutes should be accurate. Some time ago, Ms. Robertson became concerned about the time involved and we decided to circulate the minutes in advance so that such trivial changes could be made in advance of the meeting. However, over time it became clear to me that more significant changes were being made, changing the facts of events which have occurred and adding "after the fact" justifications for issues she was involved in. Because of this, I asked the town recorder to circulate any "adjusted" minutes with even the most minor changes identified. This has generally been successful, but has occasionally suffered from technical glitches such as this past month. When I received a copy of "adjusted minutes" I noticed that a question I had asked at the last meeting had been changed! This bothered me since I am usually pretty specific in what I want to know and I knew I had specifically planned that particular question.

Now, to some more background. As you probably know, the owners of Signal Crossing recently requested a zoning change for the property behind Signal Crossing. This has been identified on the Land Use Plan as one of the few areas in Signal Mountain for potential commercial development. The application was accompanied by a preliminary plan for the development of this parcel which would have left approximately half of the area as wooded undeveloped land. The was understandable concern by the surrounding property owners about this, but the current and potential owners had been very active in seeking out input and demonstrating their flexibility in their planning to accommodate these homeowners. I had hoped and expected that, going forward we would be able to work on more changes to accommodate the homeowners and mitigate any impacts. Knowing the interest of the current council in expanding commerical development (eg, the earlier enthusiasm for possibly selling town hall property for commercial development), I had assumed this would be passed. This was the reason I supported the $25,000 (negotiated down from $50,000) we spent for the commercial design study by the KCRW design group (http://signalmountaintn.gov/assets/misc/guidelines2.pdf). I had tried to make it clear that the pending approval of this project was the reason I supported this expenditure. Frankly, I should have waited, but the council was very anxious to move forward with this. The previous DRC under chairman Greg Goodgame had also requested assistance in developing new guidelines which was another reason for this study. I mention this to refute the various statements and implications by Ms. Robertson that Mr. Goodgame and the DRC had been negligent and non-productive. It is very difficult to ask volunteer citizen boards to develop comprehensive and complex community ordinances and they frequently ask for help. The Planning Commission has worked for over 2 1/2 years in reviewing new subdivision guidelines and are still not finished. They also asked for consultants, but the Council has refused various offers of help on this. As you can see, this whole process is convoluted and difficult to follow, so I hope you're keeping up.

Back to the KCRW study and my question which was changed in the minutes. When KCRW held their public hearing, they presented a plan for discussion which was very similar to the plan presented to the Planning Commission as part of the zoning change required to implement the presented plan. I was frankly surprised by this at the public meeting and several others who were familiar with the earlier proposal commented on the similarity. The primary difference was the addition of a "public square" which would require the town purchasing part of this property, an expense I frankly don't think we can afford. When KCRW presented their report, I asked if they had considered the previous rejection of this plan in their presentation. I realize that technical it was a request for a zoning change, but clearly the zoning change was to implement the plan presented. The answer was that they knew of this, but didn't consider this fact, only taking into account the land use plan. Clearly the implication seemed to be that the Planning Commission had not considered the land use plan (which is not a mandatory plan, only advisory). However, when Ms. Robertson changed the minutes, my question had become one about zoning, not about the similarity of the plans. This made my question frankly seem absurd and pointless. Fortunately, I have learned to closely scrutinize the minutes for such changes and objected to the change and the original correct reflection of reality was restored. I will note that, at the meeting Ms. Robertson apologized for changing my comments, stated that she was trying to clarify the situation and indicated that she assumed I had not understood just what was going on. While I accepted her apology, I felt it was rather condescending and told her that minutes should reflect what actually happened and not what she thought should have happened and how she wished things would have happened. I will not go on with further examples, but they do exist.

Finally, what is the practical issue of all this? Well, I think I will leave that for next time... Chapter 2!