Documenting public input while protecting privacy
From Cyburbian Planderella: For those who include the sign-in sheet from public meetings in the appendix to a comp or master plan or just as part of the meeting minutes, do you normally black out the participants' home address or email address? Are you bound to protect the participants' privacy? I've seen it done either way, so I'm not sure if there's a right or wrong way to go about it.
I could see blanking out an email address, but to me it seems someone's home address is part of what makes their comments appropriate/not appropriate.
If someone has something positive/negative to say about a plan, shouldn't it be known where they live, so that you can better judge their comments?
Personally, I think having your home address known is a small price to pay for voicing your concerns about other people's property.
That being said, most comp plans I've seen don't inlcude the sign-in sheets, just a brief overview of the events, similar to what CPSURaf described.
I have never included sign-in sheets as part of the plan. They may be kept for documentation in the files, but even then, everyone's comments are anonymous.
Under Florida's Government-in-the-Sunshine-Law, anything that gets into our hot little hands is public information.
Sign in sheets to receive additional information for large scale plan amendments is mandated by state statute.
I put a list of people that paticipated (that is, who came to the meeitngs) in the acknowledgement page of the comp plan -
I did not list their addresses as in this age of Google, you can find out where people live pretty easily -
I do put into the record of a site plan application of who comes to the requisite-in-the-process neighborhood meeting
We have done neither due to privacy rights. We simply have included the number of participants, a brief summary of what went on at the public forum/meeting/workshop, and usually photos, or some sort of work product that came about either generated for the workshop, or as a part of a summary.