Planning Quote of the Day

want to be home making dinner

"Feeling guilty that there’s a Department of City Planning meeting in my neighborhood about their zoning/re-zoning plans and I’m not going. I should get involved with the world around me ... But I also want to be home making dinner and singing silly songs at Nano, sorry Community."

-- from "Stuff and Things," on le petit hiboux (the little owl) blog of aspiring New York City writer Krissa Corbett Cavouras.

Note: perfectly understandable -- but we do need you 20 and 30 somethings to eat a bit earlier and get to those planning & zoning meetings! We'll have more in the upcoming Spring issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal about how to involve younger generations in local planning. In the meantime, take a look at our blog post, Call the Shots in Your Neighborhood, to find out how you can feel more comfortable attending neighborhood association meetings.

raided a roll of candies

"the Plan Commission’s torturous meeting last night went from 6p.m. until a bit past 10p.m. We only had ONE agenda item—-but a quagmire of mind-crushingly tedious last-minute items made the meeting drag on and on and on and on. Commissioners Enright, Newlin, and I raided a roll of candies for sustenance."

-- from "Civic Theater" on the Pin the Tail blog (covering Monroe County, Indiana).

Note: if you look at the "Civic Theater" posting, be sure you also scroll down to the responses.

way more entertaining

" ...  just attended a real humdinger of a Planning Commission meeting, and, let me tell you, I'm going to start going to these things all the time if they're going to be this interesting. ... The issue at hand was a local restaurant which wanted to expand its hours so that they could close at 11:00 during the week and midnight on the weekends. This ignited a firestorm of controversy over mixed-zoning areas, as the restaurant is in a mixed use district.

... And oh, how the fur flew. People kept leaping up to the podium to make rejoinders while the audience coughed, snickered, and jeered. It was amazing, I tell you! Way more entertaining than anything else in town, for sure."

-- from a post Better Than Television on the "this ain't livin" blog (in Fort Bragg, California)

Editor's Note: Haven't we all been to at least one meeting like this! And for some of us, pretty much every meeting is way more entertaining than anything else in town.

Dante's Inferno after three hours

"The length and pace of our hearings has a direct impact on the quality of public participation and decision-making. ... What affects do long meetings have on one's temperament? Sometimes you can see distinct changes in attitude -- what would have been a difficult meeting in an hour or two becomes Dante's inferno after three hours."

-- Ric Stephens, from Late Nights with the Commission (Planning Comm'rs Journal article)