07/14/2010: "Planner Blasts Public Access Speaker"

Attorney Tim Blanchard is member of the Common Sense Alliance, and is a frequent speaker and commenter before the County Council on land use issues. At the Tuesday Council meeting he presented and read a Letter(.pdf file) that made suggestions, and offered some criticisms, of the Planning Department’s procedures in the CAO public process.

Blanchard is by training and profession an attorney, and as such pays close attention to the definitions of words, and in his letter and comments to the Council he suggested that the use of “developing” was a misleading word in the context of hiring a consultant, pointing out the obvious that “as a matter of law” all a planning consultant can do is “recommend.’

Mrs. Hale took offense, with the tone of the letter, while at the same time agreeing with Blanchard, that the consultant would not make any final approvals, only recommendations, and said that to “infer anything else was preposterous,” but she did not recommend the job description be changed.

At the top of her list of objections to the Blanchard letter was his stated concern that a job description in a request for proposals from consultants to help the planning department draft “policies, regulations and standards” for the CAO, stated the consultant would “be responsible for developing” them.

Hale agreed with Blanchard that the consultant needed to be “objective and impartial,” but for Blanchard the problem was the absence of any language in the solicitation ad that asked “for disclosure of potential conflicts of interest by the applicants;” and Blanchard suggested an “intent to consider objectivity and independence in evaluation responses” from the consultants should “be asked of anyone seeking to have a significant role in such an important policy making process.”

In response, Hale said “that it is a given” that an impartial and objective person will be hired; however she did not agree that it would be a good idea to simply include that language.

Hale concluded her response to Blanchard’s concerns by stating that: “It is becoming apparent to me that as part of this process that perhaps we need to set some ground rules for how we approach discussions and input…to help us disagree without being disagreeable.” And then added “folks like Mr. Blanchard.. his ‘in your face’ approach to things is driving reasonable people away.”

Hale said she had “talked to a number of people who said “I would like to be involved, but I don’t want to deal with the other people there, and I don’t want to be attacked for my views.”

Hale said some way was needed to have constructive dialog without attacking one another, and without being disagreeable.” Hale suggest to the council that perhaps they needed to be like a parent, and “let the kids know what you expect from them as far as behavior.”

Councilmember Howard Rosenfeld said that he "wanted to commend Shireen [Hale] for defending us in our process against these attacks, and we should not get our hope up that these attacks are going to go away.”

Councilmember Rich Peterson said “I don’t see these as ‘attacks,’ these are public comments, and if people take them personally, I think that is unfortunate.” Peterson added “that what we are seeing is comments on the process we are involved in.” Peterson said he has “not seen anything that I believe is a personal attack from Mr. Blanchard,” and that “I don’t want to curtail discussion.”

Councilmember Lovel Pratt took issue with Blanchard’s comment in his letter that the Planning Department was continuing to refer to the Draft CAO as a “completed” draft, and because the full council had voted to not use the draft as a starting point for future CAO review of regulations, the action by the Planning Department “represent not only insubordination but also a continuing waste of taxpayer resources and perpetuation of confusion regarding the CAO update process.” Pratt said “that accusation is an attack; and is inappropriate.”

Pratt said she believed “we have a responsibility for directing some of the ground rules here.. when comments are not appropriate or helpful in the process’” adding she too appreciated Hale’s comments on the matter.

With that, Chairman Richard Fralick directed the council back to the day’s agenda.