What is the 315 W. Ponce Focus Group?  What does it do?
(From Jeff Davis, Ponce Place)

I have just read Lyn Menne’s “315 W. Ponce de Leon Development Update,” which is available elsewhere on this website and which concerns the meetings of some neighborhood residents with Lyn and the developer of the Decatur Court property. I am not a member of the focus group, but I am a 27-year resident of Ponce de Leon Place and also a lawyer (retired now). With this comment, I’m not trying to give legal advice or to speak for anybody but myself – I’m just trying to give my own view of some background information for discussion of the issues.

Lyn’s “Update” contains considerable information, but it seems to raise implicitly two basic questions that it does not answer: what is the real function and role of these meetings in the development and zoning process, and more specifically, should these meetings and their records be open to the public.  I want to propose for neighbors’ consideration some tentative answers, based on my individual perspective as a concerned neighborhood resident trying to keep abreast of these issues.

Function and role.  These meetings have apparently been arranged by Lyn (who is of course the Community & Economic Development Director of the City of Decatur) as an instance of the fact that, as Decatur’s Downtown Development Authority website notes, “the DDA works with its partners at Decatur City Hall and in the Decatur Business Association to provide a bridge between the business and residential communities and city government for the benefit of the entire City of Decatur.”  The website makes it clear, however, what side of the bridge DDA stands on: DDA “exist[s] to provide assistance to prospective business owners and developers interested in investing in Decatur's economic development plans.”  At the threshold, we should recognize and appreciate that DDA has been very successful in redeveloping the downtown area, and that Lyn, in promoting development, is doing the job that DDA and the City want her to do.

Lyn’s “Update” seems to envision the central function of the meetings of this group (which she calls at various points in the “Update” the “working committee,” the “stakeholder group,” and the “steering committee”) in two entirely different ways.  Lyn first defines that function as being “to see if we could find a project that residents could support,” “to help refine design options,” “to find a suitable development option for the property,” or to provide “feedback.”  This is the function that Lyn and neighbors mean when they colloquially refer to the neighbors on the committee as a focus group, which Merriam-Webster defines as “a small group of people whose response to something (as a new product or a politician's image) is studied to determine the response that can be expected from a larger population.”

It seems to me that our neighbors who have shown the interest and taken the time to attend these meetings and act as this focus group ought to be commended.  They have made a real effort to make the developer aware of their concerns.

Lyn’s “Update,” however, also implies a second view of the function of these meetings.   Although it tries to emphasize that “this Stakeholder Group is not empowered to make decisions,” the “Update” turns the neighborhood “steering committee” members into “representatives” who are “to work through issues before a project gets to the planning commission” and “to create useful dialog between the neighborhood and the developer.”   Attendees at the last meeting also report that Lyn has raised the possibility of setting up mediation between the committee members and the developer’s team to “work through issues.”

This job of representing the entire neighborhood or even a subgroup of it is too much of a burden to place on the neighbors who are on the committee, especially since it only “is made up of property owners most directly impacted by this proposed development.”  Even this small group may be made up of property owners with divergent interests – those residents who want to place reasonable limits on the development and continue living next to it, those residents who want to sell out to the developer or others, and those owners whose property there is rental property.  And neighbors who live nearby but not adjacent to the property have these interests and others, too – they are also stakeholders.

Considering the committee members as representatives of the entire neighborhood is also unfair to the other neighbors, who had no voice in choosing these members as their representatives.  The only representatives that neighbors have actually chosen are their district and at-large City Commissioners, who after all have the responsibility of making development and zoning decisions in the best interest of all citizens.

In short, my two cents’ worth is that the focus group meetings can be helpful for the neighborhood as well as the developer whom they were designed to benefit, and thus they are generally a valid part of the full approval/rejection process for this development – but only so long as the meetings are not used to try to bind the neighborhood to the opinions expressed by the neighbors who are on the committee or to try to shorten any subsequent phases of the process.  If the “consensus” reached or the “findings” made by the committee are presented to the Planning Commission and City Commission at all, they should be labeled as what they are: the result of meetings conducted under the oversight and guidance of Lyn and the developer for the purpose of giving very limited feedback to the developer, and not as any kind of representative view of the neighborhood.

Open meetings and records.  Georgia’s open and public meetings act seems to apply to DDA, since the statute by its own terms applies to any “agency,” which expressly includes an authority of a municipal corporation.  The act requires that all meetings of any agency or its committees be open to the public, but it defines “meeting” to mean “the gathering of a quorum of the members of the governing body of an agency or of any committee of its members created by such governing body ... at which any public matter, official business, or policy of the agency is to be discussed or presented or at which official action is to be taken or, in the case of a committee, recommendations on any public matter, official business, or policy to the governing body are to be formulated, presented, or discussed.”

It appears to me that although the participants at the committee meetings discuss or present a public matter, and that Lyn arranges, attends, and participates in them, these meetings are not public meetings as defined by the act.  Lyn is the staff of DDA (not a member of it), no quorum of DDA is present, no official action is to be taken, and the steering committee is not a committee of DDA.  (I understand, however, that each member of the focus group is asked to be sure that they have signed in at each meeting.)

This view of the open meetings statute is consistent with the principle that these meetings are in not the acts of a representative body. Lyn’s position of limiting the committee members to adjoining property owners – i.e., “to be successful, we need to keep the working committee small enough to allow for productive discussions” – just emphasizes that the committee is simply a focus group.  On the other hand, it seems that it would be perfectly proper as a matter of sound public policy, even though not required legally, to open the meetings to whoever wants to participate.  If the developer wants neighborhood reaction to those options that he discloses, why not let the neighborhood speak directly?

The Georgia public records statute seems broader than the open meetings act.  It provides that all public records of an agency, with certain exceptions apparently not applicable here, “shall be open for a personal inspection by any citizen of this state at a reasonable time and place.”  It then defines "public record" as “all documents, papers, letters, maps, books, tapes, photographs, computer based or generated information, or similar material prepared and maintained or received in the course of the operation of a public office or agency.”  On the other hand, the statute provides that “no public officer or agency shall be required to prepare reports, summaries, or compilations not in existence at the time of the request.”

This language appears to mean here that minutes, plans, charts, or photographs that are prepared for or used in conducting the meetings would be subject to disclosure and copying upon request and payment of a reasonable fee.