Correspondence relating to the April 25, 2007 Land-Use Bylaw Meeting

It appears that the County plans to re-zone approximately 38,000 acres just west and northwest from the Town of Lamont to Heavy Industrial Land (enlarging the Heartland).

Very Large Plants could locate in this area.  This would have an enormous impact on the area and may affect you.

— Allan Antoniuk
(in a flyer he had produced and distributed to County Residents at his own expense)

1. E-mail message 2007 04 30 to Debbie Hamilton, requesting a full transcript of the evening's proceedings and providing suggestions on how the problems that plagued the meeting can be overcome and prevented.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Re: Land-Use Bylaw Meeting April 25, 2007
Date:	Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:51:07 -0600
From:	Walter H. Schneider
To:	Debbie Hamilton

Dear Debbie Hamilton,

Please be so good and let me know how a full transcript of the April 25, 2007 Land-Use Bylaw Meeting can be obtained or accessed.

Specifically, I would like to be able to read transcripts or files of the following portions of the evening's meeting:

1. Allan Harvey' opening presentation, including the PowerPoint presentation on rural and urban growth trends - produced by the Alberta Government - that Allan had used;
2. Your presentation;
3. The two presentations made by Bill Dolman;
4. Allan Harvey's concluding presentation, and
5. The questions asked and answers provided during the question-and-answer period at the end of the meeting.

It would be much appreciated if that information could be provided in digital form.  

The following outlines a few concerns and suggestions that you may wish to consider when you stage public follow-up meetings relating to the Land-Use Bylaw revisions or other similar meetings.

• Sound Quality
  
  The sound quality of the PA system was very poor.  Some experimentation may be needed to tune up the PA system prior to any further meetings, to ensure that the best possible quality of the sound reproduction can be provided at the actual meeting. 
     It is advisable to explore and address the causes of the excessively sub-standard performance of the PA system that night.  Perhaps one or the other or both are required: a) a better microphone or b) a better amplifier.  Either or both could provide better audio-fidelity.
     In addition, acoustic feedback was a problem.  That was addressed only by reducing the volume of the sound provided by the PA system that night.  Reducing the sound volume resulted in a partial improvement.  Some experimentation prior to the meeting should have included the option of relocating the microphone on the podium until a spot was found that prevented acoustic feedback from occurring or at least minimizing it.  Doing that often provides a better solution to an objectionable condition of acoustic feedback from loudspeakers to microphone than a reduction of the sound volume does.
  
   
• Microphones for the Audience
  
  Most of the questions asked could neither be heard nor understood by the vast majority of the audience.  A microphone should be provided in each aisle of the seating provided for audiences even smaller than that present at the April 25 meeting. 
  
   
• Legibility of Viewgraphs
  
  You should have used a much larger screen for displaying the viewgraphs.  It is unfortunate that the ceiling height in the Recreation Centre sets a limit to what can be done in that respect, but the fact is that the height of your screen fell short by a few feet from coming close to reaching the ceiling.
     The contents of all viewgraphs presented should be clearly visible and legible for all members of the audience, not just for a relatively small portion of the audience sitting in the centre of a few front rows.  A combination of a larger screen and of the use of fonts no smaller than size 14 will achieve that objective.  That would also enable the presenters to accurately read to the audience what is on the viewgraphs they present.  It appeared that the microphone was not located close enough to the screen to permit even the presenters to read accurately what they showed on the screen.  Especially Bill Dolman's presentation was affected by that shortcoming, although his problems may have been caused by nothing more than an overdue eye examination, as you and Allan Harvey were to a much lesser extent affected by the large distance between the microphone and the screen.
     The information presented on a viewgraph should be limited by the volume of text that can be displayed in font-size 14, not by how much the presenter wishes to cram with much smaller font sizes into a viewgraph.
  
   
• Presenters Having Private Discussions during Their Presentations
  
  Do not permit your presenters to become involved in the middle of their presentations in private discussions and exchanges of which the audience can hear only one side, that is, the response by the presenter.  When there is a question from the audience as to what the concern was that a presenter responds to, it does not create a good impression when the presenter then states: "I did not respond to a question, I responded to a statement," provides no summary of what the concern he responded to was and then simply carries on with his presentation.  Of course, problems of that nature could easily be avoided if the individuals addressing the presenter would be provided with access to a microphone.
  
   
• Keeping the Audience Interested
  
  It was quite obvious that many members of the audience became restless and even left during Bill Dolman's presentations.  You must consider that any presentation containing more than 30 viewgraphs is quite simply too long.  It does not help to intensify the poor impressions created through an overly-long presentation by berating the audience for becoming restless.  The fault for restlessness of the audience rests with the presenter, not with the audience.
     It was not a good idea to present so many of the details of the draft version of the Land-Use Bylaw.  It would have been far better to have focused on the problems faced by the county (in objective, tangible, absolute and relative terms) and on the major objectives that you wish to accomplish in addressing those problems through the proposed by-law changes, to summarize each, to present a list of the alternatives that were considered in each case in coming up with a solution to a given problem, to explain why given alternatives were rejected and why a particular solution was chosen. 
     The presentation of the draft of the changed Land-Use Bylaw swamped the members of the audience with an excessive amount of information that left them largely unable to differentiate between very important and relatively less important issues.  Furthermore, the audience was left with the impression that the Lamont County Office staff are unable to see the forest for the large number of trees they obsess over.  Last, but not least, a large volume of of detailed information like that your office presented leaves the audience with the (not unreasonable) impression that important issues are deliberately being hidden.
  
   
• Details that Should be Included in a Notice of Public Meeting
  
  When you announce another public meeting such as that for the draft of the changed Land-Use Bylaw, you will create more goodwill and save county residents effort and money if you were to to include a statement of at least one or perhaps three or more of the major items of public concern that the proposed bylaw change is supposed to address.  It is not sufficient to state that the Land-Use Bylaw meeting will identify the changes to be made to the bylaw. 
     If you had stated in the notice of public meeting that one of the major changes was to expand the Lamont County's portion of the Industrial Heartland (by a factor of ten) to 41.5 sections of land at the western edge of our county (preferably, and as customary in other jurisdictions, with a map showing the zoning change), you would have motivated as many people to come to that meeting as did the flyer published and distributed by a resident of the County at his own expense.  His effort and expense would then not have been necessary, and the County Office would not have come across as wanting to hide something or wanting to create a handicap for the public (in whose interests you ostensibly work) by unnecessarily and grossly shortening the interval available to the public in which to react to such a proposal.
     Of course, you and I know that, given that the County Office pursues an agenda that differs substantially from the wishes of the majority of the county residents, that to have included a map of the zoning change in your notice of public meeting would have harmed your aims.  After all, the map that you would have been able to include with the notice of public meeting would have shown a substantially larger area of land zoned "heavy industrial".  The version of the Proposed Land Use Map that you presented at the Land-Use Bylaw Meeting and show at your website was issued April 24, 2007, one day prior to the meeting and a full seven days after your notice of public meeting got published April 17, 2007 in the Lamont Leader.
   

Anticipating your response,

Walter Schneider

Cc: Various county rate payers, residents of Bruderheim and Lamont, Lamont Leader
 

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Debbie Hamilton's response (2007 05 02):

Mr. Schneider,

In response to your comments and requests below, I provide the following:

1. Al Harvey’s opening presentation.  His speaking notes are attached for your reference. [The notes were not attached]  His power point presentations are available at the County Office for pick up should you wish copies. [It appears that the county office feels that it is less trouble and cheaper to drive to the County Office to pick up hard copies than it is to attach the digital files to e-mail responses. — WHS]
2. My presentation:  A copy of the power point presentations is available at the County Office for pick up should you wish a copy.  It is also currently on our website but there are issues relative to opening it.  We will be meeting with our tech support tomorrow to try and mitigate the problem.  [It it seems that is deemed to be easier to search the County Office's website for where the files may be than to either attach a copy to an e-mail response or to quote a web page address. — WHS]
3. The two presentations made by Bill Dolman :  Copies of the power point presentations are available at the County Office for pick up.  [Again, it is of little service to have to drive to Lamont to pick up those copies.  It would have been far easier and much cheaper to attach them to the e-mail response. — WHS]
4. Al Harvey’s concluding presentation:  as indicated in 1. above. [Sorry, but the file was not attached to the e-mail response. — WHS]
5. The questions asked and answers…..:  A detail of this is not available.  At the meeting that evening, Mr. Harvey asked if anyone had questions on the process or required further clarity on the proposed changes.   He also requested and encouraged written comments to the County relative to what was presented.  This is also specifically indicated in his speaking notes. [Of course not.  It would perhaps not do to have a record of the exchanges that took place during the question-and-answer period. — WHS]

Numerous individuals have requested copies of all the power point presentations.  We have made copies readily available at the office to anyone wishing them.  We are now endeavoring to place all of them on our website. 

Thank you for your questions and your comments relative to the process and deliverance of the information at the meeting on April 25^th, 2007.

Deb Hamilton

Director of Planning & Community Services
 

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Debbie Hamilton's follow-up (2007 05 03):

 Mr. Schneider,

I realized after sending off my email that I inadvertently missed sending the attachment. It is now attached for your information.

Sorry about that.

Debbie Hamilton, Director of Planning and Community Services
debbie.h@tclamont.ca


[There was an attachment: Speaking notes for Allan Harvey's presentations; PDF file, 59.6 kB)

Maybe I have the wrong impression, but either the County Office staff is completely inept or they think that they can pull the wool over or eyes and get away with that.

Back to Industrial-Heartland Expansion Main Page

________________

A democracy can only be made to work if its people stay alert and make sure that their representatives in governments at all levels do what the voters who voted them into office elected them to do.  That applies to all three levels of government: municipal, provincial and federal.

Who falls asleep in a democracy will wake up in a dictatorship.

— Otto Gritschneder,
(when asked why he wants to publicize the system of terror in German military justice under the Nazis — an estimated 50,000 death sentences had been pronounced by German military tribunals, and of those 20,000 had been executed during and right after the second world war)

The members of the Friends of Lamont County urge you to become involved in opposing the County Office's proposal for the expansion of the heavy-industrial zone.  If you have any suggestions for possible strategies or if you wish to actively participate in any way at all in forming an effective opposition, please .
   Just in case that no transcript of the meeting will be made available to the public (obviously, there will be none of that with respect to the question-and-answer period), could those people who asked questions and received answers provide summaries of the questions they asked and of the answers they received?

_______________
Posted 2007 05 01
Updates:
2007 05 03 (posted Debbie Hamilton's response 2007 05 02)