Master plan questionnaire ill timed
Daily Press Editorial
February 11, 2007
Bill Patterson, Western Colorado Congress
The fact that the Montrose County Planning Commission is developing a questionnaire after months of public meetings seems ill timed at best.
It’s not that a supplementary questionnaire is a bad idea, but it should have been developed and implemented months ago. At this stage, it can easily slow the process to aid a long overdue master plan update.
Questionnaires take time and resources. The questionnaire would go out to roughly 11,400 county residents, but why not make it available to everyone? Planning Commission member Bill Fritz has also said that if 2,500 people returned questionnaires (22 percent return), he’d consider it a good turnout. Generally, a 7 percent return can be expected for any survey � and that’s considered a good response.
A complaint was made by The Rural Alliance for Private Property Rights, LLC, basically alleging conspiracy, that the meetings were purposefully scheduled around holidays to preclude people, that the notification was minimal and many people didn’t hear about the meetings until it was too late and couldn’t pry themselves away from their busy lives.
We don’t agree. The scheduling dates for the planning meetings were well publicized. And, to put it simply, there is no magic date that will work well for everyone because we’re all busy with jobs, family and other responsibilities.
It’s like saying, “I didn’t get a chance to vote; let’s hold another election.” It just can’t happen.
There were seven meetings held across the county in key locations. There were plenty of opportunities to be heard. It’s worth repeating: seven meetings.
At some point, we as citizens have to decide to get involved in the process. It’s not the county’s job to spoon-feed the information to every citizen. Staff simply doesn’t have the time nor resources to do so. It’s their job to make sure the information is available and that the process is open and fair.
For any concerned citizen willing to make an effort, there was plenty of information available. Not only did the county post the dates, times and locations for all of the meetings on their Web site, the Montrose Daily Press also posted the schedules on our Web site as well as in our Around the Valley section in the print edition.
In addition to posting the dates, the Daily Press covered the process with various news and feature stories:
- Nov. 6: County begins master plan process
- Nov. 26: Sunday Feature, Master plan a complex, community-oriented process
- Dec. 6: Community participates in master plan process (concerns raised over farmland, open space)
- Dec. 15: County master plan makes stop at city’s front door
And more recently, when the process came under question, we wrote another Sunday feature, Jan. 28 (Master Plan: A process in question).
“Special interests” has been another term thrown out by none other than planning members themselves. The term “special interests” has negative connotations and further casts doubt on a process we believe is working. How can we blame other citizens and other groups for having a vested interest in the process?
The thing is, we should all have a “special interest” in the future of Montrose County. After all, this is where we live.
Bill Patterson
Western Colorado Congress
P.O. Box 472
Montrose,CO 81402
(970) 249-1978
patterson1 AT wccongress.org