6.01.2006

The Hills Are on Fire

I took notes during last night's community meeting regarding the proposed design code changes for my hillside neighborhood, just in case my friends who are residents but who weren't able to attend wanted to get a sense of how incendiary the proposal has become. If you are interested in community fireworks, then strap yourself in.

The meeting was attended by over 300 people--more than the Dilford School MUB could hold. It seemed to me that many people were lured in and riled up under false pretenses, by accusations that the local Hills Homeowners' Association wanted to take away everyone's rights and turn our neighborhood into a hillside version of Forster City. My impression had always been that the association (EHHA) truly wants to represent the interests of all residents--but that because people hadn't previously taken the proposed code changes seriously, they didn't participate in the meetings or polls that created them.

At the meeting's conclusion, Lisa Gr0te, the director of planning for SM County, said that it may be that the county needs to send out its own poll regarding the proposed code changes. This got a big round of applause from everyone except the EHHA board members who have spent the last 18 months working on the project.

Anyhow. If you are interested, here are the meeting notes. They suck because I have never taken notes at a meeting like this before, but I figured it was time to start wielding the power of the laptop, and to use it for Good.

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