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LETTER: Committee needs balance

Posted on October 6, 2011October 6, 2011 by Staff

Picture this. You and your neighbors negotiate in good faith for over a year with a developer. They and the town ignore documented neighbor issues and fail to adopt any suggestion from the neighbors. The developer fails to acknowledge riskier components of the development and mischaracterizes important facets of the project.
Embarrassed, the town mandates a developer-created plan to silence the neighbors. The developer invites 16 people to the first meeting. Only one invitee resides within a half-mile. No invitee (other than you, the 17th invitee) is on record opposing the site selected for this publicly funded development. Thirteen are affiliated with organizations supporting the developer or directly support the project. A stacked deck.
The developer says the first meeting is closed to the public, to neighbors and to your chosen alternate. You ask if state open meeting laws apply to this committee. Their report has been mandated by the town, and they are advising the town. The developer says no open meeting laws and no recordings. The developer withholds information that you requested six times until one business day before the first meeting, but provides it to the handpicked participants days earlier.
Past mediation between neighbors and the developer resulted in developer-supporting participants removing controversial statements from official notes (the only public “record”). You are faced with attending meetings by yourself, without witnesses or recordings. The record will be controlled by the developer supermajority. Future meeting rules will be “open for discussion,” but the developer supermajority will decide.
Would you participate? The stacked committee only wants your presence as a token fig leaf, not your voice and your reason. The record is malleable.
A developer advocate calls you repeatedly asking you to be that fig leaf. Your discussions about transparency and fundamental fairness are ignored and left out of the story. Instead, they write an editorial letter mischaracterizing your position.
Would you participate? Of course not. 
Sadly, the real victims here are not just the IFC shelter neighbors. It’s the reputation of the town, the IFC and its supporters. We don’t need more editorial letters like Mrs. Eleanor Howes attacking Mr. Mark Peters. We need a balanced Good Neighbor Plan committee membership and common sense transparency practices.

Brian D. Voyce
Chapel Hill

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