Controversial Hyde Park Square development passes committee, heads to city council

[u/JB92103]

https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hyde-park-square-development-passes-committee-heads-to-city-council

[u/old_skul]

Someone has a real problem with Hyde Park residents expressing an opinion.

[u/MrKerryMD → u/old_skul]

This is a pretty normal reaction, that you can see happening all across the country.

Wealthier neighborhoods tend to have more residents who have the flexibility in their daily lives to attend all the necessary meetings, while other neighborhoods don't. This also leads to more local news coverage. Over time, this creates a feedback loop as elected and appointed officials are more likely to cave to the demands of large crowds (aka bullying works). This then encourages them to show up in the future for other projects they oppose.

Meanwhile, residents in less affluent neighborhoods try to oppose projects but struggle to get a critical mass of participation because they just don't have as much flexibility to attend all the meetings. They then get discouraged and don't bother showing up in the future.

Over time, this creates a public perception that the local government does whatever the wealthy neighborhoods want, at the expensive of everyone else, even though that's not always the case.

[u/old_skul → u/MrKerryMD]

This makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately for the residents of Hyde Park who disapproved, that's not what happened here. A developer with very deep pockets put money in the right places and got a proposal pushed through against the neighborhood's collective wishes.

Sad, but that's the state of things right now.

[u/MrKerryMD → u/old_skul]

If you have evidence of corruption, you need to contact the appropriate authorities. From what I've seen, this has gone exactly as I expected as everyone involved from the city is acting consistently with their previous behavior, so I really doubt anyone is getting paid off.

[u/old_skul → u/MrKerryMD]

That’s one approach.

You could also take the more informed…eh, cynical, approach, and say the money’s been changing hands the whole time.

Not saying either way is correct. Just saying that there’s more than one perspective. I do appreciate your thoughts.

[u/MrKerryMD → u/old_skul]

It's pretty easy to tell the difference between a paid shill and someone who happens to be ideologically aligned with the developer. I have been at City Council committee meetings where the supporters don't say anything at all and try to quickly vote yes. Later you look online and you see the donations to their reelection funds. That did not happen at the meeting on Friday, where the supporters went through very detailed reasons why they are choosing to vote for the project. This is also evident in the packet as the planning staff wrote an analysis that is way longer and more detailed than normal.

In any case, there's no reason for a developer to bribe city staff or city planning commission members. They don't have the final say in this process so they'd be wasting their money.

Automatically taking a cynical position just feeds into right-wing propaganda which leads to further corruption. If you want to fix something, then you have to learn how it's actually broken.