A word of warning about the open house to which state officials are inviting the public to 'learn about' a proposal to redo the master plan for Kohler Andrae State Park and enable the construction of a privately-owned high-end golf course partially inside the park and on 247 adjoining, privately-owned acres.
I have been to many such open house presentations, and often they put the state in command of the room by spreading out poster boards and maps and staff members to answer the public's questions - - but open houses do not provide an opportunity for people to address questions to the entire room so that everyone can hear the same answers and to spark follow-up inquiries.
I have actually posted about a couple of such events, and I'll add the links below, but unless the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board are going to allow amplified questions and answers, this is going to be a dog-and-pony show designed to let the state say they were transparent when the exact opposite is the intention.
* In 2004, an every-four-years public hearing into federal reauthorization of the regional planning commission's highway planning and financing approval powers turned into a long and very uncomfortable night for both the local planners and their visiting federal reviewers.
Long-time highway expansion foe Jeff Gonyo ran into several obstacles, including debate-stifling procedures in an open house format at which he tried to make his organization's objections know.
He wrote a long account of it at the time, which I posted, and in documenting all the various methods used by the state to control discussion and information dissemination from the opponents' perspectives, Gonyo wrote:
I have been to many such open house presentations, and often they put the state in command of the room by spreading out poster boards and maps and staff members to answer the public's questions - - but open houses do not provide an opportunity for people to address questions to the entire room so that everyone can hear the same answers and to spark follow-up inquiries.
I have actually posted about a couple of such events, and I'll add the links below, but unless the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board are going to allow amplified questions and answers, this is going to be a dog-and-pony show designed to let the state say they were transparent when the exact opposite is the intention.
* In 2004, an every-four-years public hearing into federal reauthorization of the regional planning commission's highway planning and financing approval powers turned into a long and very uncomfortable night for both the local planners and their visiting federal reviewers.
Four years ago, many groups and individuals streamed into the Downtown Transit Center to blast SEWRPC for ineffective outreach and a host of other shortcomings.
The hearing in 2000 was sparsely attended; the 2004 outpouring, triggered by SEWRPC's no-transit/highway-only expansion plan was the catalyst, but also tapped into a deepening reservoir of resentment over the agency's suburban biases and its then-recent move to the relatively less accessible Pewaukee industrial park where it had purchased a headquarters building from one of its frequent contractors, Ruekert-Mielke.
History here.So when the 2008 reauthorization rolled around, the authorities switched to the quieter, fragmented open house format:
The desired effect: diffuse public sentiment, sap the room of its energy, and make it easier for the reviewers to reauthorize SEWRPC.
The format will help enable and accelerate SEWRPC's focus on exurban and suburban planning at the expense of dismissed urban issues and populations.In 2009, WisDOT was moving forward with its now-uncompleted, under-funded and over-engineered Zoo Interchange plan.
Long-time highway expansion foe Jeff Gonyo ran into several obstacles, including debate-stifling procedures in an open house format at which he tried to make his organization's objections know.
He wrote a long account of it at the time, which I posted, and in documenting all the various methods used by the state to control discussion and information dissemination from the opponents' perspectives, Gonyo wrote:
In my 10 years of fighting the WisDOT to stop unnecessary, fiscally-irresponsible and environmentally-damaging road expansion projects in our state, I have never seen such a public display of undemocratic, oppressive, anti-citizen behavior on the part of a government agency using people's tax dollars to deter citizen participation from the very same people paying those taxes.
One of the sign boards, we wanted to display yesterday contained the following heading, "Federal Highway Administration Admits "Open House" Public Hearing Format Precludes Debate on a Project's Merits!"
On that sign board was a copy of a document which I found on the Federal Highway Administration's website entitled, "Public Involvement Techniques for Transportation Decision-Making: Open Forum Hearings/Open Houses" which listed one of "drawbacks" of these types of public hearings as EXACTLY THAT (see pages 6 thru 7 of this attached FHWA document which I printed off their website just a few hours before yesterday's WisDOT public hearing).So let's understand that unless the Wisconsin DNR and Natural Resources Board conduct open houses differently than WisDOT, or SEWRPC or the Federal Highway Administration, do not expect anything resembling a public hearing, or the opportunity to make comments that can be heard by all attendees at the same time as they wander around a room, their attention fragmented, their focus dissolved.
