I've listened carefully to the recording of Fence Workshop Chapter 2A. Chapter 1 occurred in July, 2011. That's the public workshop that was not attended by the three people who suddenly decided we should have a public workshop. Chapter 2A occurred on Saturday, January 21, 2012. It apparently wasn't enough, and Chapter 2B occurred on Monday, January 23, 2012. That one, by the way, was attended by only one of the people who insisted we needed this workshop, now series of workshops. The other two were missing in action, though one said she was busy with her day job. Evidently, they didn't think a workshop was important in July, thought it was critical on 1/21/12, and thought it was unnecessary on 1/23/12. We have no information as to how they make their decisions.
As for the content, it was pretty much all over the place. Some people wanted the big picture, some wanted to pore over spurious hypotheticals and definitions, like of the word "yard," and some just wanted the Ordinance passed. One clear casualty of the workshop enterprise was the remarkable amount of time spent by the Code Review Committee. It was given little or no consideration and respect. The people who wanted these last workshops did not attend the CRC meetings, and they acted not only as if these meetings had not occurred, but as if it was perfectly OK to ignore them, and the time spent by the volunteers who made commitments to them. It's a funny thing that Noah ran on a platform that included his wish for more public involvement in local government, involvement that he has thus far quite consistently ignored. Roxy pointed out that CRC members have even stopped attending CRC meetings, because they grew tired of the pointless labor.
Barbara Watts spoke as if her decision about the Ordinance might rest on her grudging willingness to "compromise" with one resident, or her concern that her next door neighbor might be mad at her. There seemed to be no big picture. The real big picture, of course, was the very many hours of work and devotion of the CRC, whose meetings were open to the public, but this was essentially ignored. Gary Kuhl tried to remind the workshop that this wasn't about a personal opinion, certainly not the personal opinion of one or another Commissioner, but that it was about the work the CRC had done, and their efforts to arrive at consensus and a broad view of the neighborhood. He tried to remind the workshop that those who now suddenly had opinions had not ever attended any of the real working groups and meetings. He seemed to be talking to himself.
Gary had it occasionally within his grasp. He pointed out from time to time that approaching the Ordinance as the workshop attendees were could and would take an unmanageable amount of time, and the enterprise should be suspended. Even Noah Jacobs ethereally had it. He said that perhaps this workshop was not the place for this, and that the Commission had decisions to make, and perhaps it was not necessary (was perhaps disrespectful?) to waste the public's time fleshing this out this way. But his purchase was only ethereal. It quickly evaporated.
The voice of greatest and most salient reason was Barbara Kuhl's. She sensed something. She felt a pulse beneath the skin and the fat. She asked the Commission, by e-mail and at Chapter 2B, to reveal and perhaps elaborate what were their leanings about the Ordinance. Of course, they never did. But hers was the most important point. What were these workshops about? Why the peculiar attendance? What did the questions mean? Was all of this just maneuvering intending to serve some other and underlying goal? For example, during Chapter 2A, Steve Bernard suggested that the new Ordinance would frustrate both people who wanted fences and people who didn't. So what was left was to scrap the whole reconfiguration, and keep the original Ordinance. Was that it? He also said that he "personally" doesn't favor front yard fences. So that could have been it. Barbara asked, in her gentle but direct way, and she did not get an answer.
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