A response about dep and vgo
I am not involved in this discussion and have no skin in the game, but from an outsider&#x27;s perspective it seems that Russ laid out exactly what his concerns were about showstoppers in the dep implementation and those concerns were effectively ignored by the dep committee. What were they expecting to happen after that? Are there some other non-showstopper classified concerns that Russ should make up on the spot and have the dep committee then concentrate on? Why bother after showstoppers are effectively ignored?<p>It&#x27;s odd to call out Russ as being disingenuous when he says his concerns were ignored when the dep committee did effectively ignore them. Adding &#x27;effectively&#x27; as a qualifier here is somewhat important because it grants that there may have been a deliberation process and that those concerns were not outright dismissed, but the output of a deliberation process must be either in favor or against, and when a concern is deliberated against it is effectively ignored. It has never made sense to me when someone says something along the lines of &quot;we&#x27;ve heard your concerns and have taken them into consideration&quot; and yet did not heed those concerns. Obviously you haven&#x27;t taken them into consideration and therefore they were effectively ignored.<p>In this case it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the dep committee to demonstrate that the alleged showstoppers are in fact not stopping the show. You don&#x27;t get to call a committee meeting, decide to ignore showstoppers by claiming that you don&#x27;t believe them to be so, and then expect nothing but smooth sailing and cooperation from there on. That makes no sense at all. All this rhetoric about community involvement and &quot;working with us&quot; falls on its face when the implicit terms of engagement are not adhered to.