"Homework" List: Your 10 Pet Peeves

Hi, Everyone!

Let's see if I can master this new-fangled technology...

At our Jan 24 meeting, we decided to set you all loose on the assignment to compile your personal lists of the "Top Ten Things I Hate" about the current land use processes.

We realize you may have considerably MORE than 10 things you hate and believe need to be changed. But for purposes of shaping our group's direction, and keeping things from getting too unwieldy, please limit your list to what you consider to be your 10 most important (there may be opportunities to bring up other items later).

So what sort of things are we looking for?

Based on the task force's overall assignment to focus on ways to boost public participation in the land use process, your list can include anything you think impedes, limits or discourages public involvement. These can come from anywhere and everywhere in the land use process -- general plan, comprehensive zoning, piecemeal map amendments, text amendments, zoning board, planning board, etc.

You can examine public info and education efforts, the DPZ website, how easy or tough it is to find info at the "front desk" or on the phone. Note any points in or characteristics of the various land use proceedings which make people want to run screaming into the night (I've got a bunch of those :o).

If you think of specific laws and regulations needing to be changed, mention that.

For now, please keep it short! How short? No more than a sentence or two for each of your 10 points. If you can include both what's wrong and how you'd fix it in your 2 sentences, that's great. If not, don't worry about the complexities yet. We'll expand on these things later.

At this point in the process, we're looking for broad strokes which will help us define specific directions for us to explore in the next few months.

Once you have your list, what should you do with it? If you can figure out how to post it to the blog, do that. If you can't, then you can simply e-mail it to everyone on the task force mailing list (which you should have if you saved any of the group e-mails which have gone out already).

Now that we're heading toward things we actually think need to be changed in order to enhance public participation in land use matters, I'm looking forward to seeing what y'all come up with!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me or Bill.

Thanks very much!

Howard W