Well, that will depend upon what area your interest direct you to
explore. For instance, over a year ago, I did a FOIA request of the
Town of Christiansburg for Minutes of Town Council and planning
Commission Meeting Minutes from 2001 through 2008. I received all of
the Town Council minutes and some of the Planning Commission minutes.
Rather
than have to dig through those documents when I have a question or am
looking for a pattern, I scanned them and set them up as searchable
.pdf documents. This gave me a fairly useful tool for allowing my mind
to wander.
For instance when searches were done on stormwater and flood/flooding:
Did you know that from July through December of 2001, there was no mention of any of those words in the Town Council Minutes.
In the 2002 calendar year, there were 18 instances where stormwater/flood/flooding issues were addressed with the Town Council.
In the 2003 calendar year, there were 12 instances where stormwater/flood/flooding issues were addressed with the Town Council.
In the 2004 calendar year, there were 3 instances where stormwater/flood/flooding issues were addressed with the Town Council.
In the 2005 calendar year, there was 1 instance where stormwater/flood/flooding issues were addressed with the Town Council.
In the 2006 calendar year, there were 3 instances where stormwater/flood/flooding issues were addressed with the Town Council.
In the 2007 calendar year, there were 2 instances where stormwater/flood/flooding issues were addressed with the Town Council.
In the 2008 calendar year, there were 5 instances where stormwater/flood/flooding issues were addressed with the Town Council.
Now,
I will be looking at these much more closely for a future report but
what is abundandently clear is the fact that most of these
‘discussions’ came from citizens who were suffering the negative
effects of stormwater/flood/flooding.
There were a few
occasions, during times when ‘stormwater’ was made a major issue by
citizens, that stormwater was brought up by Council members in relation
to rezoning/development issues.
I will note that during the time
that Mayor Linkous was in office, these issues were brought up more
frequently, and the people bringing them up during those times were:
Mr. Ballengee, Mr. Barber, and Mrs. Carter. Also, it should be noted
that the large ‘growth spurt’ which generated massive amounts of
impervious surfaces began around 2005.
Many of the areas
mentioned in the minutes are still having problems with
stormwater/flood/flooding (as noted in the recent flooding problems
reported in Christiansburg.
So I found some information. What
good is it? Well, by itself, it isn’t much. If you take the time to
make use of some of the other documents open to the public, you can
begin to get a bit of the bigger picture. These other documents are
found on the internet and include things like the latest DCR provided
rules and regulations for stormwater management (comparing that to the
Town of Christiansburg Code has been a real experience!) and the
various State Codes specific to stormwater management and flooding.
What
is troublesome is the number of times that Town Council members heard
about citizen fear of stormwater issues related to new development and
went ahead and approved the development with the understanding that the
Town Manager would make sure that all was done correctly to insure
safety. This is the same Town Manager would couldn’t manage to upgrade
the Town’s Storm Water Ordinance.
At the 3/4/2003 Town Council
meeting then Councilman Ballengee specifically asked about any problems
related to recent heavy rains. The Town Manager noted that there had
been minor flooding and minor road destruction and that all reports
were handled according to Town procedure. There does not appear to be
any further discussion of what this “Town procedure” might have been.
One
quickly gets the same impression from those historic minutes that one
can get from recent Town Council minutes. That impression is that the
Town Council hears about issues, the Mayor trustingly hands the issue
over to the Town Manager, and no further discussion ensues.
At
the most recent Town Council Meeting, I specifically asked Council what
was being done to keep the flooding from reoccurring. The question was
fielded by the Mayor and passed off to the Town Manager who simply
responded that the flooding was being investigated. Nothing was offered
to report that any steps were being taken to deal with the issue and
yet town work crews have been seen in multiple locations trying to pump
out the accumulated silt and debris from storm drains. Routine
inspection and maintenance? If there is such a thing within the Town,
then has that schedule been modified as the amount of silt and debris
from construction sites have multiplied? Are we still doing things the
way we have for the last 30 years? Personally, I’ve never seen this
type of work performed before, but I’ve only been living here for the
last 10 years and I have not been watching every storm drain every
minute of every day:)
One thing I will say is that I have the
utmost respect for those workers who are doing the job. They are not
the ones who created the problems. They were not the “DECIDER”
determining what constituted a problem with runoff from sites or
whether proper measures were taken to curb that runoff before it got
into the system and created problems. They are simply the ones who have
to clean up other people’s messes.
Nope, I haven’t been off
the FOIA topic here. I’ve just given an example of how anybody can use
that information that he/she has the right to obtain. There are a lot
of other examples out there. You can start looking at some of them on
my citizen’s information website MyVAResources.com. Or take a closer look at how the FOIA process has worked in Christiansburg at the Citizen Initiative for Transparency site.
