Just a few minutes shy of 8 p.m., I'm already home from tonight's Planning and Zoning meeting that started about an hour ago. It was completely lacking in controversy. Before and after the meeting, I noticed Jon Pulino and Bill Wilson milling around, but they were not present in the meager audience during the meeting. After the meeting, I asked Jon what he was doing there and he looked at me puzzled and said, “Working in the studio of course!”.
“Huh?” I said, “What studio?”
“The video studio! Everybody knows about it!”
Well, I am an informed citizen, I write for the Eye, and I did not know about it. I know that municipal meetings are televised but I just never thought about the logistics of it. Maybe it's because I don't have cable television, or never needed to find and watch one of the videos. I asked to see the studio, which is vey small, so this two-minute video of my “tour” by Bill and Jon shows the whole little room. The window is looking into the Common Council chamber.
And in case you were actually wondering what went on at P&Z, approved motions included the scheduling of public hearings for April 25th for several items, a hair salon to move across from one side of Newfield Street to the other, a change from Holly Dodge to Newfield Auto Sales (just a transfer / name change for the leased property), and a cardiology specialty veterinary practice to occupy an abandoned building on East Main street that once was a nail salon. Perhaps the most interesting moment of the evening was when a public hearing was removed from tonight's schedule because signs were not perpendicular to the road as required, they were instead placed parallel to the road. That hearing will be postponed until the next regular meeting of P&Z. On the standard item which sounded like a technical formality regarding certification of proper notice of hearing signs, there might have been a couple of muffled chuckles when Director of Planning Bill Warner stated that hearing signs were not proper.
