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Minutes of a Public Hearing October 6, 2010 Page 23 you can't have that even in a relatively-small jurisdiction with any kind of complex issues and especially if that issue has repercussions over the future. I am really concerned about the water system and the sewer system in Lakewood. I don't want to get started on a program of repairing that ov i er two or three decades and have it interrupted halfway ' through becau'e a contractor didn't get a contract so he's going to stop the process and hold the city hostage to get a contract and use referendum to do that. The issue is whether you can inform people. It's not because people aze ignorant. It's because people have limited time, number one. And number two, there's usually not good local media that can do that. My experience when you send very complex documents out, people often don't read them or don't ask questions on them. So, it's very difficult to raise people to the level of deliberation that the Charter Review Commission did. However, they've got to stand before you on the vote. You haven't lost any of your rights. The debate tonight is what you're going to do with that vote. That's the most powerful weapon you have and you are being informed tonight far beyond what could probably be done by trying to disseminate something by mail or something in the community. I'm not speaking just for the Village, I'm really concerned about how we as a society, are having difficulty governing. If people can take an issue and then jump into it and never been part of it before and never a part after, as a society, we are going to have a terrible time dealing with issues, at the local level, the State level and the national level. That's why meetings like tonight are so important to really be a conversation and a dialogue about what we can do. I find people, that they often, two professional families, working two careers. They don't have time to get the lcind of information that they may need to make a major decision for the future. That's why it's very difficult to deal with. Mayor Rinker: If I can, I want to give a little bit of history from my perspective since I've been on Council and as a Mayor. We've actually had two referendum issues, both of which I think we handled quite well as a community. The first one, where D.O. Summers is today, used to be a Marathon station I think was there and it was zoned specifically for a motorist service use and the question was the change into a retail use. That was early on, I think in the early `90's and what we really were able to do was to use the opportunity to work with the property owner who was developing and to work with our community and we had enough time to get the information out and ultimately I thought a referendum worked well there. The second time, more recently was the Parkledge Development which Judge Krenzler, who has since passed away, had owned that property and he wanted to put what was a totally new legislative category for housing a cluster-type of housing and that was really a very lengthy process. I think it took about two and a half years. But he was patient, worked with our Planning and Zoning Commission, came up with legislation which the Council adopted in terms of the classification but to apply to