More Secret Capstone Meetings Planned
Attorneys representing Capstone Development, the people who want to turn Freetown into a student ghetto, are making calls inviting Planning and Zoning Commissioners to secret meetings. This appears to be in anticipation of the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting scheduled for Monday the 10th of July. At this meeting the Planning and Zoning Commission will consider a request for Capstone II. This is a further development of 70 units that they propose to site in an area now occupied by a trailer park at the corner of Lamar and Stewart Streets. This development is in addition to the 142 unit proposal, that was approved, under suspicious circumstances by Lafayette City Parish Council on the 27th of June.
All the objections that applied to the first Capstone proposal will also apply to this second one. However, it is curious that Capstone should continue this strategy of secret meetings, given that it has got them in hot water in the past.
In a bizarre legal case reported by the 11th circuit Court of Appeals (the .pdf is available here), Capstone and one of their contractors sued each other. The story is quite complicated, but the bottom line of it is that the parties initially had an arbitration which was then confirmed in court. Later this arbitration was challenged. The basis of this challenge was that there had been some meetings that the Court ruled problematic between officials from Capstone and one of the official arbitrators. These meetings were sufficient for the Court of Appeal to order that the arbitration award be vacated and the case be remanded for further proceedings.
Despite the problems that secret meetings have caused in the past, it seems that this is the preferred method of operation by Capstone. What is it that they have to hide?
All the objections that applied to the first Capstone proposal will also apply to this second one. However, it is curious that Capstone should continue this strategy of secret meetings, given that it has got them in hot water in the past.
In a bizarre legal case reported by the 11th circuit Court of Appeals (the .pdf is available here), Capstone and one of their contractors sued each other. The story is quite complicated, but the bottom line of it is that the parties initially had an arbitration which was then confirmed in court. Later this arbitration was challenged. The basis of this challenge was that there had been some meetings that the Court ruled problematic between officials from Capstone and one of the official arbitrators. These meetings were sufficient for the Court of Appeal to order that the arbitration award be vacated and the case be remanded for further proceedings.
Despite the problems that secret meetings have caused in the past, it seems that this is the preferred method of operation by Capstone. What is it that they have to hide?
posted by Save Freetown at 3:23 PM
1 Comments:
I think this is called lobbying--a time-honored American tradition which can have detrimental effects on democratic process.
We do it in a small-time ways all the time: as in, rather than just putting in an equipment request at your workplace with no verbal comment, catch the boss at the water cooler and explain why it is that you are recommending a particular computer, not just any computer. That's not problematic, but cozying up so as to leave a large people out of the loop on decisions that affect them, is.
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