Middletown Planning and Zoning Reflections From a Former Child

Having so many children listening in the seats, and peeking in from the halls around the Middletown Planning and Zoning meeting last night provided an interesting context. These are the kids who have the opportunity to become lifelong Middletown residents should it appeal to them to be such, and engaged citizens should they have the heart to follow in their parents footsteps.

They reminded me of my rosy perspective as a youth, being taught of my privilege to live in a country run by its citizens. I was inspired that I could have a voice in the way our world works, regardless of whether I became an official politician. I heard the American tales of how regular people could organize and stand up to even the most powerful interests.

As a child, I would have thought that Centerplan’s zoning change had no chance of passing, after all, the residents didn’t want it, and they made their opposition overwhelmingly clear by exercising all of those empowering rights I had learned about. The commission just had to make the people’s will official.

Contrarily, what I, and the kids saw last night was a political process that blatantly and strategically denied the voice of the people.

Firstly, the Director took it upon himself to “address” the public’s rejection of the zone proposal, not by also rejecting it, but instead by writing slight modifications to it. This served to keep the residents locked in silence without a chance to comment on his supposed fixes. Furthermore, he hid his amendments from the public until mere minutes prior to the meeting, ensuring that those in attendance would have no time to contemplate or understand what he was presenting, let alone discuss it.

One of the amendments turned out to be quite deceiving. He portrayed it as a protection for the historic buildings that the public was concerned about, but after the vote, onlookers discovered that it doesn’t protect even one of the buildings slated for demolition.

Next, when commissioner Emery suggested that citizens should in fact have some input on whether the proposed changes indeed satisfied their complaints, and the audience responded with a short applause, Chairman Pelletier asserted the awkward truth that he didn’t want even an audible cue as to what the public sentiment was.

Pushing further, Ms. Emery articulated an obvious way to allow for more public participation by reintroducing the text change at a subsequent meeting. The remaining commissioners stared blankly, changed the subject, or acted as though they didn’t get her idea.

One left the meeting not with a feeling of engagement, but one of confusion. The kids may have been asking their parents what the point of attending these meetings was if the commission wasn’t going to consider them in their vote, or for that matter, whether the vote even happened during the rushed mumbling before everybody stood up. I hope the parents found a less discouraging explanation for their children, than how the process felt.