When I was reading another blog that was discussing the
Comprehensive Plan as a legal toolI was reminded of one I had written several months ago on the topic (April 30 @ 5:37pm).
I am reprinting it here as a reminder of citizen input into the existing Comprehensive Plan for Christiansburg.
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One of my FOIA requests to
the Town of Christiansburg included all Meeting Minutes where the
Comprehensive Plan was discussed and the citizen input data that was
used to determine what the citizens of Christianburg wanted to see in
the future of the Town.
Upon looking through that information, I found a few things that made me want to know more.
1)
Why was I provided draft copies of many of the documents instead of the
official signed copies when I asked for official copies?
2) What
role did Dr. Zahm and her students from Virginia Tech really play in
obtaining citizen input for the Christiansburg Comprehensive Plan?
3)
Why was the number of people who provided citizen input to
Christiansburg EXACTLY the same as those for Montgomery County's
Comprehensive Plan Citizen Input data?
Re: 1) Digging a little
further, I found that many of the minutes remain untyped and unsigned
(although I think that is being worked on). I am concerned that FOIA
was violated when the official documents were not provided.
Re: 2)
Dr. Zahm did not seem to know what I was talking about in reference to
the Town's Comprehensive Plan. There had been some discussion but
nothing was ever formally done by her or her students. They did work
closely with Montgomery County in getting citizen input for their
Comprehensive Plan.
Re: 3) Since I happen to have been the person
noted in the acknowledgements section of the Montgomery County's
Comprehensive Plan as the person who input and analyzed all of their
data, I can state that the data are so similar as to be identical. If
the Town used this data as the basis for their citizen input, they did
not take into account that only 201 of those 1347 responses came from
adult citizens of the Town of Christiansburg. This would mean that 1146
people from outside of the Town of Christiansburg contributed to what
citizens in the town wanted to see and not to see as far as services,
growth, etc. I hope not! Since the town only provided summary data
rather than actual forms used to obtain that data, and I have only
found 2 people in town who remember seeing some kind of citizen survey
form, it is hard to tell where the data really came from. Several
people have reported participating in the County's meetings and
supplying information to the County.
Montgomery County did offer
to make the data they had available to the Town but the Town did not
accept that offer of the raw data which would have allowed someone to
pull out and use only the data provided by Town residents. Again, I
know this because I had to set up the analysis program to allow for
sorting by groups as to whether they lived in County, Radford,
Blacksburg, or Christianburg.
I am sure that, as I continue to
review records, I will find other things to write about here. However,
these few issues have given me more than enough to think about for now.
I still have that data on my computer. Maybe I need to pull out only
the Christiansburg responses and see if those responses match with the
Comprehensive Plan.