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Allen Rosen made the following comments: Quarterly Public Hearing, August 25, 2008 Orange County Board of Commissioners & Planning Board AGENDA ITEM: Comprehensive Plan Update Phase II Public Comment on behalf of the Orange County Comprehensive Plan Coalition Good evening. My name is Allan Rosen and I am speaking on behalf of The Orange County Comprehensive Plan Coalition, which is made up of nine organizations representing diverse interests in Orange County. Just this month we marked our first anniversary. The Coalition formed to pursue two goals. First, we've made every effort to inform the Planning Board of our shared priorities for environmental health, social equity, and economic vitality that we want to see incorporated in the Comprehensive Plan. You will find that the coalition has presented 21 pages of written comment' and coalition members have provided an additional 61 pages2. The Coalition will wait until the Planning Board makes its recommendations available to the public before making further comments on the plan. Since those recommendations are expected to be ready on September 22, I would like to highlight one concern: According to the timetable, the public will only have fifteen days to review the planning board's recommendations and, in turn, prepare any remarks they feel are warranted before the commissioners scheduled vote on October 7. Hence, the Coalition recommends that the commissioner's vote takes place no sooner than 30 days after the Planning Board's recommendations are available for public review. However, it is to our second purpose—educating the public about, and encouraging their participation in, the comprehensive plan update process --that prompts our remarks tonight. In furtherance of this goal we maintain a website, advocated for the January Public Input Session, written op-eds and letters to editors, set up displays at community events, presented at civic meetings, and posted on local blogs. Hopefully, these actions increased the level community participation. Unfortunately we recently learned that the manner in which public comments are being reviewed is exclusionary and therefore contrary to the purpose of community participation. As noted in the coalition's memo found on page 187 of the Agenda Item Abstract, 'See pp.22-23,27-30,and 36-49 of the May 19 Public Hearing Agenda Item Abstract and p. 187 of the August 25 abstract. 2 See pp.32-35 of the May 19 abstract and pp. 89,91-95,119-132. 136, 142-165,and 167-178 of the August 25 abstract.