Home Page

Opinion

Land-use meteor nearly missed us

To the editor:
Attention landowners in Chisago County. Wednesday night, as you dozed in front of the news, or helped your kids with homework, or came in late from milking, a meteor missed Chisago County landowners by inches. A land-use meteor, in the form of a moratorium on development, proposed by Chisago County Board Chair Ben Montzka and Commissioner Lora Walker. Perhaps you felt the chill as it narrowly missed passage by one vote.
At Wednesdayís late-night meeting, long after any interested members of the public had departed, and with no mention of it on the agenda or other form of public notice, these two commissioners attempted to pass the same moratorium which generated such a public outcry last winter. Apparently they learned a valuable bit of strategy after their call for ìdiscussionî on a moratorium last winter resulted in a mob of hundreds of outraged citizens descending on the courthouse and overflowing their meeting room to protest.
That strategy would be to make wildly controversial political decisions which will have enormous economic impact upon their constituents, in the dead of night with no witnesses and no warning.
Even if such an action was not patently illegal, the contempt displayed by these two elected officials, for the spirit of the open meeting law and for the very people that put them in office is shockingly arrogant.
Hopefully, the citizens of Chisago County have learned their own valuable strategy lesson from Wednesday night: pay attention to what these elected officials are doing at their deserted late-night meetings.
Tom Delaney
Shafer

Top of Page

©ECM Post Review

6448 Main Street
North Branch, MN 55056
Telephone: 651-674-7025
Fax: 651-674-7026
E-mail: editor.postreview@ecm-inc.com