I will share my thoughts when not mobile but thought this was worthy of pushing out immediately. I will clean up the post here as well with formatting and such.
** Update – see the update at the bottom of the post from Albemarle County’s Lee Catlin **
Just received by email:
“Subject: [CCA] URGENT: Supervisor meeting tonight threatens CCAC purpose and autonomy
Tonight at 6:00 PM the Board of Supervisors may completely undermine the effectiveness of Crozet Community Advisory Council. Your immediate input is important.
Crozet and Western Albemarle citizens should be seriously alarmed by a proposal before the Albemarle Board of Supervisors tonight that says that the community representatives who volunteer to serve on the Crozet Community Advisory Council should not be allowed to hold votes or to express their views on development matters that are brought to them for evaluation and reaction.
The purpose of the advisory councils is to spare the Planning Commission and Supervisors from making decisions that defy the public’s understanding of what a master plan actually says. This new rule would nullify the reason for advisory councils and one must expect that the CCAC members would simply quit if it were enacted. Votes are necessary to forge consensus and a consensus community view is a valuable contribution to an official action by supervisors. The CCAC has shown that is willing to work developers on critical properties such as the Barnes lumberyard, where the CCAC has provided the developer with a description of positive attributes for the property.
County officials say this rule was not meant to be included in final language for the Supervisors’ consideration.
But the public should be forewarned. The matter comes before the board at 6 p.m. tonight in Lane Auditorium in the County office building. We urge you to attend and support your CCAC’s autonomy.
IF you can’t make tonight’s meeting – you can email the Board of Supervisors at [email protected]. Be sure to copy our supervisor, Ann Mallek on any email sent: [email protected]
The proposal is available here.
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Update: from Lee Catlin with Albemarle County: (thank you for the quick response, Lee!)
“We have valued and continue to value the input of Advisory Councils and there is no intention on the part of the Board or staff to inhibit or stifle the important discussion and feedback received from these groups, including communicating their preferences on issues related to the Master Plan including land use and development topics.
Here is the cut and paste of the language that is before the Board for approval this evening, as you can see by the redline, the language about voting has been deleted.
The other reference to voting is here – again, absolutely no prohibition on voting, just an indication that it is not required or expected.
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Update 12 March from Ann Mallek:
All,
Just to put everyone’s mind at ease, below is the note I sent yesterday morning to the board members, advising them of the changes I planned to propose to correct the errors in the documents.
There were several current and former members of the CCAC who spoke, and the many emails were important to inform the board of the issue and concerns.
After a discussion, the corrections were adopted by the board.
Thanks to everyone for weighing in to preserve the good of the process. See you soon.
Ann
Board members,
I plan to pull the cac papers from the consent agenda today to get corrections made, which were discussed last meeting.
I think some of the concern is that these documents do not stand alone but are being sent out to the cac members alone. Thus the CCAC does not have all the elements.
To make the rules sheet, attachment B very clear, two suggestions are made.
Into Attachment B
We should add wording which is now only in the attachment A about places 29 .
Repeat the first sentence of the charge… This rules out any concern about voting on non charge related issues.
In second paragraph of the charge, attachment A, copy this sentence into the att. B
Although councils/committees do not have a legislative role in the development process, Citizen advisory councils are an important venue for discussion and the council can provide feedback and indicate preferences related to development proposals.
The voting section needs this change.
5a. While the advisory committees are not REQUIRED to take votes…
Voting is a tool the committee may use to share their collective thoughts about an application or policy question under consideration…
(To expect unanimity is unreasonable, and to expect obeisance to the will of the current board when the view may be in opposition to their master plan is unreasonable.)
Just my view.
Ann
Ann Huckle Mallek
White Hall district supervisor
With reference to Lee Catlin’s response above: the “cut and paste of the language” does not present on my PC browser, nor is it showing up on my iPhone. Was this overlooked? I would certainly like to read the draft copy of the proposal.
Fixed. They didn’t translate from my iPhone.
Thank you for bringing this to the public’s attention. What IS scary is that SOMEONE included that language in the first place.
It is important to point out that county staff have worked hard to correct this language, but Kim’s point is very important! Why was it there to begin with? Another consideration is how we prevent it from being put in the next time changes are made to rules and procedures?
Again, please look at 5. A. ” voting is a tool that a committee can use to express support…”. I was under the impression this statement had been changed, because it basically reads.. The county only wants to hear from you if you like what they are doing. This language should not be in this document and I hope that it has been removed.
There is nothing wrong with groups of people expressing their opinions. But, the final vote belongs to the taxpayers of the area. CCAC has added very little besides their own bureaucracy, claiming to represent people with no way for these people to get
rid of them. Unelected school boards used to exist this way and are no longer tolerated.
We have an elected official for the area. If they no longer want to represent the area they
need to move on. If Crozet feels under served by the BOS it needs to incorporate and elect
the people it wants. Funny thing is CCAC would not exist if not for the BOS. Now that the climate is changing they seem to feel that they are above the rules? The Albemarle County
Board of Supervisors is the legal govt. of Albemarle County. If they can not exist in that framework they need to something else to do with there time. This is not an urgent situation
it is something that needed to be taken care of a long time ago…