THE GOOD NEWS: Yesterday, at 4:15 P.M.,received some good news. We just now received the City Planning & Zoning Department’s Staff report wherein staff recommends denial of both the Land Use Plan Amendment request and the conditional zoning change application. Staff cited as one component, the opposition Petition each of you signed as a factor supporting the project denial. We take this opportunity to thank the hard working and diligent professionals at the City of Plantation Planning & Zoning Department lead by Dan Holmes for adopting the right response for an otherwise politically pressure-filled situation. Thank you to everyone who legitimately signed the off-line and online petition (here at www.change.org Make no mistake, this is just the first step in a hard fought battle ahead.
THE TROUBLING NEWS: Since the good news broke, we have documented (with change.org) troubling "bot" activity on the petition page. Over the last six months we have taken pains to verify each name submitted both on and off-line and the lists provided to you and the City were properly verifiable subject to commonly acceptable methods of statistical analysis. This same analysis raised concerns when approximately 20 new pages of signatures suddenly appeared over the last 48 hours at a rate of growth beyond that exponentially predicted under any favorable analysis. We have shared this information with the team at www.change.org and we have asked that they conduct an immediate investigation utilizing IP addresses obtained (whether on commonly used web browsers or hidden browsers such as "TOR"). We intend to encourage and cooperate with both federal and state authorities to prosecute those responsible for these actions. Clearly, someone (or some group) is/are challenged and upset by the work you all have done. Rest assured, the interference will not corrupt the data already preserved and provided to the City and it cannot act, in any way, to detract from the extremely professional reports received from City P&Z staff as the corruption occurred AFTER the data had already been provided to City staff. It was not part of the material or names provided to the City. It is disturbing that in this modern era that there are those who would attempt subterfuge and dirty tricks as means to silence the unanimous voice of the Citizenry. These actions only encourage us to continue this fight and others in the future.
The Zoom address for the Planning & Zoning Board Meeting is zoom.us and the meeting ID is 835-1838-6873.
The meeting will begin at 5:00 pm on September 1, 2020.
Please make plans to attend. We will be sending more updates this weekend along with other breaking news and ways that you can make your voices heard, despite the COVID restrains on public meetings such as these.
David Weiss
CITIZENS PROMOTING SMART DEVELOPMENT IN PLANTATION