A reporter asked me what happened to the link for the Chester County Planning Commission’s survey in advance of the soon to be new and glorious Landscapes3, an Exercise in Resident Futility.

Why?

Because the original link does NOT work anymore.  Great planning: they send out a link ask all their contacts to distribute within their communities and then they change it. Or make it go away. Of course I have no answer what happened to all of the answers of people who already completed the survey, do you?

So now go to this page Public Participation Opportunities , go partway down the page and see:

Topical Surveys

Developed to gather stakeholder opinions on specific topical areas, these surveys are also being made available to the public. Targeted to representatives of organizations active in the topical areas, interested individuals are welcome to complete these surveys as they become available.

• Preservation

• Agriculture

• Housing

• Utilities and Infrastructure (available October 26)

• Transportation (available November 2)

• Economic Development (available November 16)

• Community Health (available December 6)

Also of note, the top part of the page:

The development of Landscapes3 will be an open and collaborative experience. The public is invited to participate throughout. The process includes:

Photo Contest

Participants can submit their favorite Chester County place in this photo contest, which is aimed at taking a different approach to identifying what is valued by residents. Prizes will be available. (coming soon)

Stakeholder Meetings

A series of stakeholder meetings will be held to identify issues and challenges facing Chester County over the next ten years. Experts will meet under the following topics: preservation, agriculture, housing, utilities and infrastructure, transportation, economic development, and community health. The public is invited to attend and observe these meetings. Click here to view meeting schedule.

How many of my photos of farms and historic houses would they like to see?

But then we come to the stakeholder meetings. Here is a screen shot of the schedule:

In the middle of the afternoon, in Coatesville? Seriously? Hello people work, pick kids up from school/sports, have farms and businesses to tend, and so on.

But no, Chester County’s idea of most opportune time to schedule these meetings is in a place not quite ideally located and at times inconvenient for the majority of people living int the real world.  Common sense would dictate if they were REALLY interested in what people who live here and pay taxes (as opposed to the carpetbagger Executive Director of Chester County Planning Department Brian O’Leary), they would have chosen a location like West Chester, or done a series of traveling meetings and maybe holding them in school auditoriums or something.

But Brian O’Leary and the Chester County Planning must not really be terribly interested in citizen participation if they choose times that are NOT convenient for average folk, even farm folk and choose a location like this one in Coatesville, that is not really even convenient to anyone.  (Which is why I think they should have had travelling meetings to capture different quadrants of the county more effectively.)

This is not an auspicious beginning to a long process that is supposed to matter, Chester County.

And no, Brian O’Leary I am not going to stop mentioning you are not a Chester County resident and come from a uniquely pro-development township (Lower Merion Township) where I don’t think you listened much at all to residents while on the Planning Commission there, arranged for political pasty “planning” awards be given to politicians who weren’t planners except in the landscape sense of the word, and were employed by Montgomery County which as a whole has been decimated by development in part.

Our chief planner should be one of us.  I find it hard to believe that no such qualified planners exist in Chester County.

Carpe Diem, Chester County Residents.  I know many of you care. Speak up. Please…before all the open space, farmland, and history is gone. This county has a unique history, and it is very much at risk.