Content of Public Hearing - Assignment Example

It was proposed that by improving the infrastructure, the economic growth of the city will increase because of reduced traffic delays, and improvement of safety in the city and it shall facilitate evacuations during an emergency. Due to the expansion project, an additional 11-acre stretch of land was required to complete the project successfully. It meant that several businesses shall be displaced by the improvement; however, the personnel manager present provided procedures, programs, benefits, and other information on land acquisition. The environmental document and another drawing showing the proposed project were displayed to the public hearing as well as other tentative schedules of how the program shall be executed.

At 1400HRS, the expected speakers and the public arrived and took various seats and positions. A short prayer was offered and was started by the city clerk who took us through the norms of the meeting.  The first part of the discussion involved free intermingle between the public and the project developers, this was very interesting since it gave the public close interaction with the project managers. It further enhanced rapport and close understanding of the project since several people were able to ask questions, which they may not have had a chance to ask during the actual presentation.  After one hour of interactive mingling and discussion, everybody took back their seats for the full technical presentation of the project. The personnel project manager was given a chance to take us through the whole project, stating its merits and it is going to affect the citizen. Other information materials were available to the public, which include newsletters and brochures. The newsletter covered an overview of the project as well as a systematic layout showing the design, project location, and environmental assessments. A powerpoint presentation was employed during the presentation that enhanced more of understanding of the whole project.

There were laid down procedures on how the public was to participate in the discussion. There were different methods of commenting in the discussion that included verbal comments or written comments. There were public speaker cards that were to be filled out and submitted to the clerk to allow an individual to have a verbal comment. Verbal comments were timed whereby each commentator was given a maximum of three minutes, when the time was up the speaker's microphone was to be switched off. However, there was only one case of an overtime comment, which warranted the switching off of the microphone. The written comments were collected when the meeting was over and was to be reviewed by the project managers. Among the 86 individuals who attended the public hearing, four public officials and six citizens provided verbal comments, and forty-five people handed in their written comments.

Generally, the majority of those who commented were in favor of the project; however, they gave suggestions for some changes to be made to the design. Most of the suggestions were about entrance ramps, intersections, main lanes, and sidewalks. Other concerns were difficulty in accessing their business during the project, concerns with noise levels, flooding, and air pollution, concerns with the cost of construction, and the potential of high “bottleneck” congestion (Lackey et al.).

I was surprised to see the city mayor in the meeting and surprisingly enough he was mingling well with the public without observing the bureaucratic channels of communication. This further enhanced public participation since it brings a sense of togetherness and concern of the leaders on projects that are in the interest of the public domain. The Mayor provided vital information regarding how the government shall act to speed up the process so that things get back to normalcy and ultimately increase economic growth. The project presentation and the discussion ended on a high note with the majority of the attendees being optimistic about the project.

The public hearing was held at the city of Lawrence, Kansas on 23rd Monday 1300HRS, town hall, First floor located at 6 East 6th Street. The main agenda of the meeting was; a presentation of the proposed project construction and a presentation of the environmental studies result, as well as allowing the citizens and public officials to give their opinions regarding the project. The meeting began with an open house session that lasted for one hour, which allowed the project managers to interact with the public freely and answer their questions. After the open house session, a technical presentation was done and the meeting ended with a public ca comment session. The presentations by the project managers and public involvement were recorded and transcribed for future reference. The comments received were in favor of the project, even though, some concerns were raised about the implementation of the design.  All the agendas that were planned for the day were covered as per the plan. A total of 86 participants attended the discussion, this was as per the sign-in sheet.