- the #1 problem with the whole affair, in my mind, was the lack of time spent explaining the overall process and where this particular meeting fit in. Ostensibly, the sole purpose of this meeting was to prepare for selecting planning assistance but there were A LOT of completely out-of-scope questions and rants that took up A LOT of time and oxygen. More effort must be taken to educate everyone on the overall process as detailed in the Neighborhood Planning Guide. Maybe a big freakin’ chart depicting a progress bar at the next meeting.

- both District #2 (my district, which I am privileged to share with Maitri and many other estimable souls,) District #3 and perhaps others seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time hashing out neighborhood boundaries. In our case, it was triggered by the Garden District claiming borders that crossed St. Charles, which got some pushback from the Central City folks. My opinion: there’s some “transition areas” between neighborhoods – recognize them as such for purposes of the UNOP effort and save the turf battles for Neighborhood Council meetings.

- I’ve seen a few complaints about the facilitators and how they were unprepared and/or condescending. Unfortunately, that’s kind of the way trained facilitators work; they’re not necessarily experts in the problem space but rather they’re there to draw the information out of the participants and to keep the discussion moving along, which our facilitator certainly tried (in the face of an initially hostile crowd.) And the pitch is consistently at the high-school level; I’ve engaged in these types of discussions with some pretty high-powered people that I work with and after about 4 hours of moving big sticky notes around and dividing up into small groups even the most enlightened intelligence just gives up and plays the little facilitation games. Which I guess is the point.

- I agree about the unsuitability of the meeting room but apparently this was the best option available at the time.

- In spite of the crowding, it was a little sad to see how few people showed up for the hard-hit areas to the east – Districts 9-11, I believe. In fact, I felt a little guilty taking one of the many empty chairs from the District 11 folks.

- Finally, was this particular meeting really that big of a deal? I confess to arguing from ignorance but I’m having trouble seeing how selecting one set of planning assistants vs. another is going to make that much of a difference in the long run. I feel the same way about voting for judges – how the hell should I know who’s a qualified candidate? I think, in terms of meeting conflict and confusion, we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!