It was a busy weekend for many of the citizens reviewing the 2030 Draft Comprehensive Plan. We were all rushing to enter out comments into the Limehouse Portal before the January 31, 2009 deadline. Even though the comment period will remain open on the portal through the end of February 2009 (see below), District D Neighborhood Alliance focus group leaders entered a total of 212 comments. Myself, I was able to muster up 66 comments on my personal review of the plan.
I mentioned that the deadline for submitting comments through the portal was extended. Messaging on the Limehouse site stated the following:
Attention: The deadline for submitting comments to the draft Comprehensive Plan has been extended to February 28, 2009. All comments received by January 31, 2009 will be considered as part of the revised draft for the March 2009 Public Hearing. Comments received after January 31, 2009 will be documented and presented at the March 2009 Public Hearing as a special report. The City Council and Planning Commission will consider the revised Comprehensive Plan draft and comments received after January 31, 2009.
As I was entering in comments until around 9:30 PM, I noticed that the comment ID’s had broke 1,000. The last comment I entered was cp_pr1018 around 9:45PM. Checking on Facebook, I noticed a few folks working right up to the midnight deadline (although some weren’t sure which timezone the portal would stop accepting comments for the Jan 31st cutoff).
I spoke with Ken Bowers this week. He told me that the Planning Department received over 1200 comments…more that 700 of which came in between Friday and Saturday before the Jan 31, 2009 deadline.
Great to see folks commenting. Now let’s turn on our calculators: 1200 comments / 380,000 citizens = 0.3157% — That’s not fuzzy math, that’s less than 1% of the City commenting on the plan.
I would also wager, and I don’t bet, that citizens from District D contributing approximately 25% of the comments so far.