“The first messenger that gave notice of Lucullus’ coming was so far from pleasing Tigranes that, he had his head cut off for his pains; and no man dared to bring further information. Without any intelligence at all, Tigranes sat while war was already blazing around him, giving ear only to those who flattered him.”
— from Plutarch’s ‘Lives’, written around 100 AD.
Prior to the hastily organized ‘special meeting’ of the Planning Commission, convened on June 11 with barely 24 hours notice, the meeting organizers — Mayor Don Volger, Town Manager Andrea Phillips, Planning Director James Dickhoff, Planning Commission chair Peter Adams and Planning Commissioner Jeff Posey — contacted the rest of the Planning Commission and requested that they prepare their own personal lists of accusations to level at one of their fellow members, prior to a vote to ‘recommend Bill Hudson’s removal from the Planning Commission.’ At the hearing, local financial advisor Mark Weiler was the only commissioner, other than Mr. Adams and Mr. Posey, to put forth a decent effort at criticizing me. But the Commission did vote, 4-to-1 to recommend my removal.
The Town Council will take up their recommendation tonight at 5pm.
Some Daily Post readers might conclude that Bill Hudson is a messenger who is far from pleasing Tigranes, and will be punished for sharing unwelcome news about an occasionally dysfunctional Planning Commission.
The Town Council, in preparation for tonight’s meeting, has been provided with a long list of alleged crimes, provided by Town Manager Andrea Phillips in a thoroughly biased report. This is unusual. In my experience, Ms. Phillips is normally meticulous about presenting the Council with facts and figures that illustrate both sides of an issue, to prepare them for the best possible decision. Although I have held lengthy conversations with Ms. Phillips about my Planning Commission concerns, she completely neglected to present my side of the story in her written summary, nor did she provide citations of specific laws or rules I may have violated. Some of her accusations are gross exaggerations of the facts.
I have shared my side of the story here in the Daily Post, with dates, emails and quoted conversations, in hopes that at least a couple of Council members are interested in hearing both sides of the issue. (Ms. Phillips did, in fact, include the first three parts of this editorial series in the Council packet, presumably as evidence that my profession conflicts with my volunteer work as a Planning Commissioner.)
I do not expect to be beheaded at the meeting. Shamed, perhaps? Painted as “unethical” and “continuously seeking to sway opinions” and “seeking to undermine decisions made by the Commission as a whole”?
My worst crime — as a mere volunteer appointee — may have been to question the actions of the relatively well-paid Town bureaucracy.
For example:
Earlier this year, shortly after I was appointed, a couple of proposed renovation projects came before the Planning Commission for approval, and the Planning staff included, in the staff report, this qualification for approval:
Financial Capacity:
The applicant shall provide evidence of funding for the project at time of Final Design Review application.
We can understand that the Town Planning staff might like to see some kind of proof that a developer is not going to begin a project and then leave it half-completed, like we saw happen on Apache Street a few years ago — a project that displaced several (affordable) mobile homes and then left a weed-infested foundation with no sign that the project will ever be completed.
But when I researched the Town’s Land Use and Development Code (LUDC) I could find no written requirement that a developer must produce “evidence of funding for the project” nor a description of what kind of “evidence” would meet such a requirement. Apparently, the Planning staff had placed this type of requirement on previous development projects — for who knows how many years? — without any apparent legal authority to do so. None of the Planning staff could point to any legal authority in the LUDC.
I understand why the Planning staff wanted to impose this requirement, but — to my mind — it’s like a police officer stopping me for a broken tail light and then demanding to look in my wallet to see if I could afford to repair it. Might be a reasonable request, but certainly not a legal one.
I saw other questionable actions by staff and the commissioners that seemed to violate the Commission’s authority. I saw a commissioner negotiate a change to a developer’s plan during a public hearing — without any support from the LUDC — to make the development more attractive when viewed from the commissioner’s adjacent property. I watched a commissioner ask to see color samples for a proposed development, even though the LUDC gives the Commission no authority to make purely aesthetic decisions. I watched several commissioners refuse to accept a proposal for a ‘gated’ street, without presenting any evidence from the LUDC that such a gate was prohibited.
Most disturbingly for me personally, I watched two commissioners and the Planning Director verbally abuse one of their fellow commissioners, without warning, in a public meeting — with the backing of Town Manager Andrea Phillips and Mayor Don Volger.
And then the icing on the cake: recommending developer Jack Searle’s River Rock Estates subdivision without any attempt to meet LUDC sections 7.2.1, 7.3.3, 7.3.4, 7.3.5 and 7.4.1.
Important, valid regulations, treated as if they didn’t exist.
All of these events happened in open public meetings, and could have been reported in the local media. Perhaps some of them were indeed reported. Perhaps the local media is making an effort to keep the Planning staff and Planning Commission from exceeding their legal authority by reporting apparent missteps and questionable behaviors?
Tonight’s special June 25 meeting, at which the Town Council will consider my continued presence on the Planning Commission, will take place at 5pm at the following online ZOOM location; you must install ZOOM before joining the meeting.
REMOTE PARTICIPATION
Join Zoom Meeting By Computer – https://zoom.us/j/98297338599
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.