Government employees spend a lot of time in training to be facilitators, and they get in a lot of trouble if their plan gets thwarted, or if attendees come up with their own plan. The government works using long-range plans, and they use the Delphi Technique to these plans "approved" by the sheeple, thus it is vitally important to attend any public meeting where a long-range plan is being discussed and throw in a monkey wrench at every opportunity.
The facilitators will do virtually anything to turn the discussion back to their predetermined outcomes. Be polite and upbeat to sway the attendees over to your "side". However also count on the fact that the audience will be packed with government employees (in civilian clothes), so much so, that the public will frequently be outnumbered. Liberals fight dirty in order to win!
I went to a couple meetings where long-term policy decisions regarding our local National Park were being discussed, and nearly every single park employee was there... in casual clothes, not in uniform. During the meeting it was obvious they had orders to force the government plan through at any cost.
Your experience matches mine pretty close.
I agree completely:
Often a prominent flip-chart is used, with huge markers. The objective is to give the illusion of receptivity by the authorities to the real feelings of the public.
Audience members voice some objection, then it is compressed into five or six words on the stupid sheet —the voicer then gains some immediate but illusory sense of sublimation, i.e., that they have, “gotten it out of their system”.
And that’s the whole idea —to ritualize public objections to the plan, so that they can then be implemented.
In completely unchanged form.
BUMP!