03-14-2022 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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feedback from Mike and his lack of enthusiasm for such a meeting, the decision was made to postpone until after Planning Commission reviewed the application. Mike had cc’d another resident suggesting I follow up with him because he had a larger community outreach net that would be helpful as we contacted neighbors because Mike wasn’t as involved in the project opposition group now that he is serving as a Long Lake City Council member. He also suggested we just email our entire application packet and let this other resident distribute it. I responded, introduced myself to this person, and respectfully declined to forward all of our plans and information before it was made public by the city. This resident is not an LLRC spokesperson nor is he a representative, so it’s unreasonable to suggest we’d agree to let him represent us in something so important. We have always tried to engage the public in in- person meetings, present any plans or materials, and have a meaningful dialog about it. We did this pre-Covid during 2 meetings for lakeshore residents at the fire station, 2 Park Commission meetings and 1 City Council meeting, and countless individual meetings in person and on the phone. The response I received was an unnecessarily rude, personal rebuke that questioned my integrity, my leadership, and the ethics of LLRC’s leadership and suggested we were taking a back door route around proper legal channels. Despite this, I offered to talk or meet with him, but he has never agreed to a meeting or even a phone call from anyone at LLRC. Then Mike introduced me via email to another resident who was very active on community social media in the run-up to the January 18th Orono Planning Commission Meeting. Our club director Amy Johnson and I set up a Zoom call on Friday, January 14th, we spoke for about 45 minutes, parts of it were productive and we thanked him for his point of view and suggestions. The next day he was back on social media and misrepresented our discussions on a number of topics, including the public’s access to our upstairs training space. Despite indicating that our rowing machine room could be made available, the resident falsely reported that LLRC had no plans to let anyone outside of the team use the space. If he was expecting that we would have left the building unlocked and our fleet unprotected, he hasn’t been listening.