Negative comments on data centers, or power plants, or day care, or apartment buildings, or coffee shops, or new fire hydrants are exactly what you'd expect from the (demented, sometimes literally) municipal public comment process, which sharply biased towards negative comments structurally --- people turn out because they're risk-averse and don't want to see change that could impact their own homes, and virtually nobody turns out for the abstract upside of new development --- and also demographically: public comment skews sharply older, wealthier, and towards homeowners.
The public comment process is an anti-democratic pox on our system (all the political systems that support it) and we should all be shifting to a mode where we more openly impeach it. Public comment is one of the first principal components of the American housing shortage.
The public comment process is an anti-democratic pox on our system (all the political systems that support it) and we should all be shifting to a mode where we more openly impeach it. Public comment is one of the first principal components of the American housing shortage.