Public sounds off at Bradley County Comprehensive Plan Charette: Strongly disagree!

A strong and loud message was sent to hired consultants McBride Dale and Clarion, and that message was “We do not want this Comprehensive Plan and we strongly disagree with your goals!”

Many that attended the Charette on April 17, 18 and 19th, 2012, in the Conference room at the Bradley Square Mall saw a charade of plans that encompassed the Northern, Central and Southern portions of Bradley County!

These meetings were to inform the public, receive public input and then compile that information from the public and present it on the 19th and display the results for all to see!

Well, the public came, the feedback received, but no compilation of that input was done!

When asked why there was no data being displayed on the 19th as promised and as part of the contract, Greg Dale on the 18th said we really dont have time to compile it! Then turned to those listening, “I was only joking!”

When pressed for a more definitive answer the reply was that the data was overwhelmingly negative! He led us to believe his thoughts, which led to these opinions, was that the data may have been skewed by a few in the room with a different agenda than his!

Mr Dale went on to say that he believes this is the strongest negative response he has ever seen and that he doesn’t ever remember a community coming together and flat out saying no to a plan!

On the 19th as concerned citizens gathered to see the compiled results! None! Nothing! Not a single item of compiled data, just a bunch of hired consultants standing in a mostly empty room with other bureaucrats boasting on how good their maps were!

The community has spoken and the community of Bradley County does not want this terribly expensive and heavy tax burden well into our future and our childrens future!

This meeting carried a sense of impending doom and a certain feeling that this was a done deal with or without public input! After all, paying 525,000 dollars of taxpayers hard earned money for a plan, it had better go forward!

It was no secret that I was there to object to this large overreaching plan but what surprised me was the fact that many from different socio economic back grounds came out in droves to “strongly disagree” also with this plan! I saw county commissioners, Lawyers, Doctors, farmers, and little ole people with a 1 bedroom shack on a few acres that just wanted to keep their property taxes intact with no government plan to intrude in their lives!

Many of those people attending were professionally and warmly greeted into the room but once the majority of them were voicing discontent they would soon be seen as the “enemy” or villified for daring to speak out against this plan! By the end of the Charette, I felt deeply divided in the room! The few yes men and women to one side and the NOs to the other.

As the Charade ended and the small crowd dispersed, we left the room unsatisfied that our voice was not heard nor were our ballots accumulated!

If the reason for not doing them was “too negative” then I suggest that this plan not go forward! At the very least return my taxpayer money because you have contractually failed to meet your end of the deal! You have not provided public input or feedback as promised on this Charrette!

Concerned citizens and the public need to know that this plan is not being well received in this community! So pack you bags and let the people of Bradley County choose their own future, not let the government choose our path for us!

This obvious avoidance of the citizens of Bradley County cannot be ignored!

The people have a right to speak up and file grievance with their government! I am doubting our government leaders know that or are pretending that right doesn’t exist!

Whatever the conclusion, regardless of how frustrated you become with those annoying citizens, we have every constitutional, American right to be there! To become vilified by our government and it’s hired consultants is a shame!

To ask the citizens of this County to essentially “sit down and shut up” by members of our own elected body, this is the real tragedy!

Let the Charettes begin! Of soccer moms and sinister U.N. plots! A planners charade!

Charettes! The mere sound of it sounds like something from the United Nations and linked to Agenda 21! Well, surprise it is commonly used by the UN to describe the visioning sessions being held by our devoted Bradley County Planners at the Bradley Square Mall from 10 am to 7 pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday!

Just google United Nations, Agenda 21 and Charrettes and see how often planners and minions of the UN use the word! Just look it up!

There is not even enough “shock value” to draw attention to this dastardly word and it’s close relationship to the UN! The mention of the UN has become common place in our community to our planners. It is up to us to continue to expose this diabolical encroachment on our property rights and freedoms!

Just listen to this soccer mom and her adventure through another “Charrette” in yet another County getting inundated by Agenda 21 for federal dollars!

The blindness is almost comical if it weren’t so tragic!

Of soccer moms and sinister U.N. plots
By Katharine Wroth

It all started innocently enough. I saw a notice in my local paper that my small town would be holding a strategic planning meeting, part of an effort to resuscitate it from the post-industrial malaise that has left so many New England towns in the economic dumps. I’ve never been particularly active in town, but curiosity got the best of me, so I ventured to the local high school on a Saturday morning, parked my car, and crunched across the gravel-strewn lot.

“Are you here for the charrette?” asked a friendly, dark-haired woman in a black coat, who was standing by the path to the door. I said I was, and she handed me a piece of paper. “This is just a guide to some of the language they’ll be using inside,” she explained with a pleasant smile. I took it, thanked her, and continued walking, reading as I went.

The first item on the list said, “You are about to be manipulated.” Hm, I thought. That’s sort of an odd approach, but probably intended to get us thinking creatively. I skipped past the definition of charrette to item No. 3, which told me the plan was to “steer an unsuspecting group into ‘reaching consensus’” — hang on. Unsuspecting? And what was with the air quotes? I scanned the rest of the flyer, and there it was in bold type: Agenda 21.

Suddenly this local planning session had taken on sinister undertones. Now we were enveloped in an international conspiracy, one that would impinge on our liberties and rob us of our rights! And all before most people had even had their coffee.

Grist has written before about the hackle-raising ability of Agenda 21, a United Nations sustainable development plan adopted in 1992. Here are the dastardly goals laid out in that document: “fulfillment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems, and a safer, more prosperous future.”

Basic needs met? Living standards improved? Shud-der.

Do I wish Agenda 21 didn’t have a name that sounded like a two-bit spy movie? Of course. I have a feeling if it were called “Hey World, Let’s All Be Safer and More Prosperous,” it wouldn’t be half so alluring a target. But even then it would no doubt have its detractors, those who fear being told what to do by anyone outside the four walls they call home.

So I want that woman from my town, and others who share her views, to know what happened inside that school gym, at that fancily named charrette. For three hours, we talked in groups large and small about our hopes for the future. Young, old, parents, business owners, people who have lived all over the country and people who have never lived anywhere else. Here are a few of the scary things that were said:

A father of three said he wished there were more to do with his family downtown so he could spend his money to support local businesses.
A mother of two who coaches soccer advocated for improvements to the athletic facilities so people from other towns would see us more positively.
An elderly woman hoped for a new senior center because her quilting group had grown so dramatically that some of them now had to quilt in the hallway.
A woman suggested relocating the downtown train station so people could have better access to it, and so businesses could flourish around it.
Several people said they’d like to see an old-fashioned movie theater in town, one that was affordable and family-friendly.
A school principal said it would be great to find ways to build stronger connections between schoolchildren and senior citizens, the two largest groups in our population.
Weirdly, the U.N. operatives in sunglasses and trenchcoats — the ones who had come to force their horrific vision of safety and prosperity on us — didn’t talk much, just lurked in the corners and whispered to each other occasionally.

As the meeting progressed, I kept an ear out for the bolded terms the flyer had warned me to watch out for: sustainable development, smart growth, sustainable communities, green jobs, visioning, and land-use study, all of which were erroneously described as “common euphemisms for Agenda 21.” I heard exactly one of those terms used at my table, as our small group was making a list of our top goals for the town. “We should probably mention smart growth,” said a local realtor. “Though I think that’s an oxymoron.”

Turns out people don’t tend to talk a whole lot about sustainable development and visioning, sneaky U.N. plots notwithstanding. We talk instead about kids, and money, and jobs held or lost, and how we get around, and where our food comes from, and where our taxes go. We want good schools and strong health and money to spare. These conversations are happening in communities all over the country, as people work to make better places for themselves and their families. And that’s what sustainability is all about. No one used the term that day, but it was there in every breath. By definition, sustainability is life, and how we choose to live it. It’s not a dirty word.

Speaking of dirty words, that propaganda in my pocket defined charrette as a “final, intensive effort to finish a project before a deadline.” That’s partly true. But so is this: “A charrette is a meeting to resolve a problem or an issue … [incorporating] useful ideas and perspectives from concerned interest groups.” Of all the concerned interest groups, that woman in the black coat was the concerned-iest. I wish she had come inside with her fellow townspeople to find out what was really happening in there, and to put forth her own hopes for the place we all call home.

Source of info!
http://grist.org/cities/of-soccer-moms-and-sinister-u-n-plots/