Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Not Very Substantively Entailing

This makes it sound like a handful of firefighters and a couple of bus drivers were the only opponents of the Mayor's budget last night. There was a long line of opponents who spoke for a long time. There was even a fair amount of anger and tears that the press usually pounces and preys upon. Most of the opponents were of the unwashed masses, so I can see how the City Paper would render them invisible especially when the journalists want to be able to maintain openings to the administration for news and when the Mayor desires a free ride on his first budget. I guess they understand on which side their bread is buttered.

1 comment:

  1. Mike, this is off topic, but I thought you might be interested ... it's posted in the comments at Pith:

    "This January the council passed an ordinance that transfers from zoning to the historical commission new control in historic districts over matters including maximum building size, buildable area, height, and setbacks. Ordinance 2007-45. Zoning and the BZA are now out of the loop on these matters in historic districts. The historic commission and staff have approval, with no hard and fast codes they must follow. Apparently, people were tired of having to go to the BZA to get reduced setbacks and the like. Good if you want to convince the commission to let you build bigger in a historic district. Not so good if you have an objection. The appeals process is gone."

    One would think this means more careful scrutiny, but in operation it allows the historic commission to waive the applicable zoning codes without any appeals process or public notification requirement.

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