Instead of chasing dust bunnies and scouring the bathtub I’ve been making a collage of soothing images. I became so absorbed in the pastime that I completely forgot to go to the UTLA potluck, which is a shame, as the people who bring hot dishes know what they are doing in the kitchen. It’s easy to get sidetracked and let good intentions float on down the stream. That is why there are seldom more than two or three people in the audience at Township meetings, and one of those would be me. (I will do almost anything to avoid dust bunnies and scouring.)
At a recent Planning Commission hearing the members groused that they had spent more than a year working on changes to the Zoning Ordinance in long, tedious monthly public meetings but hardly any residents came to watch the process and Give Input. Then—and this is the part that really frosted them—they held the public hearing on the proposed changes and a whole lot of people came and told them they’d gotten it all wrong, which seemed very unfair.
Maybe, maybe not, but they went back to the drawing board and if you have an interest in the controversy over noise from wedding receptions at A-Ga-Ming and its relationship to 50-foot setbacks in a PUD and the heedless creation of Nonconforming Properties you might like to be at the meeting tonight (Tuesday, January 12) to Give Input on the latest version. Or, you could tend to the dust bunnies and scouring at my house and I’ll tell you all about the meeting when I get home. Right now I’m going to meditate on the soothing images.
Torch Lake Views 
Cindy Lou
January 12, 2010
Pretty, pretty pictures today! And I would do just about anything to get out of scouring toilets! Ughh!
Gerry
January 12, 2010
Oh dear, now there’s another thing to add to the list.
Anna Surface
January 12, 2010
Beautiful captures, each one. I really like the snow laden leaves. Funny how soft the snow looks in photos. I love trees outlined in snow. I know about getting absorbed in a project and forgetting everything else while time spins away. 🙂
Gerry
January 12, 2010
Thank you, Anna. This snow is soft right now, and fluffy on top, but I hear it’s going to warm up quite a lot this week. Then we will have blocky snow, good for building forts. Oooh, I’ll bet Daugherty Johnson is thinking about his 2010 Oeuvre right this minute.
Carsten
January 12, 2010
I think I’ll stick to meditating over your fine mosaic of winter expressions.
-While I’m waiting for the coffee…
Maybe I’d prefer the dustbunnies and the bathtub instead of uninterested people.
Gerry
January 12, 2010
Wait, wait – you did not get your coffee? Perhaps it could be a problem with your ISP?
p.j. grath
January 12, 2010
Captions? What captions? The images are certainly soothing and beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
Is there a way the tedious planning and input process could be put online so people could follow it without going to meetings and give their input as comments, right away?
Gerry
January 12, 2010
I’m glad you liked the soothing images. I might have to meditate on them a couple times in the next day or so.
The process is tedious because it is technically complicated and because there are competing interests involved. I think it unlikely that many people would go online to read 30-40 pages of jargon in order to give input about the issues the jargon obscures. Oh yes, and come back a month later and do it all over again. I’m afraid the only way parties at interest can ever really solve disputes is with face-to-face good faith bargaining. But who has time for all that? (And the answer would be, the people who are getting paid to be there have time for all that, which explains why we end up with so many public policy decisions being made by attorneys and lobbyists and consultants.) Oh, dear, Cranky Gerry.
flandrumhill
January 13, 2010
I started off the day scouring the bathtub. Then I cleaned the rest of the washroom… then decided it was time to remove the worn soap dish that had been on the wall for 20+ years… then plastered over the ripped drywall paper (after removing the soap dish)… by the time I was done, way too much time had gone by. Tomorrow there will be sanding and painting to be done. Good grief! No wonder the computer is so beguiling. Those soothing images are… soothing.
Gerry
January 13, 2010
You see, this is why housework is so dangerous. It can lead to . . . more housework. And the next thing you know, you’ve shot a perfectly good day.
giid
January 14, 2010
This is a beautiful collage, Gerry, the snow looks so soft and clean.( I have a lot more to say, but my wordbook is too far away right now…) I´m glad that you have started making these collages, I know how fun it is to make. No cleaning can match that.
Gerry
January 14, 2010
Oh, Birgitte, I’m so glad you like it! I would never have tried them if it hadn’t been for you. I don’t think I will ever achieve the striking effects and creative polish that characterize your collages, but I am having a wonderful time! And it encourages me to look at images in a different way. It’s almost as if the process is teaching me to examine shapes and colors the same way that I examine paragraphs and sentences. And it’s fun! Glorious fun!
Susan Och
January 15, 2010
I used to think that public hearings were a place to tell the powers-that-be what they should be doing. Or not doing.
Since I was elected to town board (and immediately had to listen to lots of complaints about our new harbor building from people who were too busy to attend those public hearings) I’ve come to realize that a good public hearing gives people with disparate interests the chance to listen to each other, and to consider each other’s interest and views of the future.
If you raised kids by ignoring them most of the time and then screaming at them when you noticed something you didn’t like, you would not like the results. Our planning commission meetings are long, boring, and often empty, but I go anyway in case something happens. And I bring my knitting.
Gerry
January 17, 2010
I take your point, Susan, but sometimes the problem is that the Planning Commission or the Sewage Treatment Plant Committee or the Recreation Plan Committee does not manage to dig around and find out what a range of people in the community think, need, or want.
I disagree that a citizen’s responsibility is to attend every local government meeting. If that were the case, we would not need elected representatives at all. We would simply attend to everything by a Committee of the Whole.
In the instant case, the Planning Commission had spent a great deal of time trying to work out an arrangement that would lead to a specific outcome, but even the members of the Planning Commission had not considered all the implications of what they had decided to do. When it was time for the public hearing on the matter, and it was necessary to send letters to the property owners on and within 300 feet of the affected parcels, they got an earful, and in my judgment the earful was deserved. In my further judgment, at its January meeting the Planning Commission did the right thing by revising its approach.
I think that sometimes the way your analogy plays out is that the Planning Commissioners or other officials are dismissive of members of the public throughout an entire process, and then scold them when those members of the public have the temerity to say that they are displeased with the resulting plans.
Perhaps meetings that are “long, boring and empty” should not be held at all.