The good news – a great gathering of people assembled to talk about the two applications for mines last Thursday. The bad news – one mine was approved and the other was left in the process to be considered next month (8-March).
I’ve updated the Mines page with an audio recording of the 18 minute meeting at the site where the decision was made. I’ll try to get the recording of the 20 minute meeting at the R&J Rolling acres site up soon too, but I’m pretty swamped at the moment. It’s a good thing I’m a retired guy — I don’t see how I could do this if I had to juggle a day job.
One interesting thing to note on these meetings. While the public notice doesn’t mention it, the meetings typically adjourn from the courthouse and go to the site and that was where the decision was made. For those of you who are shade-tree lawyers, I talked to a municipal-official friend who told me this is fine as long as they announced it at the public meeting. Since most people who opposed the application didn’t make the trip out to the site, the tone and sense of the meeting totally changed. There’s a lesson learned. We’ll have to remind ourselves that it ain’t over until it’s decided at the site.