Firstly, a warning: this is going to be long.

And a note – one of the nicest things a supervisor ever said to me was noticing that I don’t speak negatively about people. That is broadly true, and especially in a working context. I try to provide praise when relevant, but am used to working with excellent people and keep forgetting to note out loud that it is in fact excellence. I also differentiate between the characteristics of a person and the policies and actions of a corporate or political entity, no matter how closely tied they are. The core of my personal rule, too, is to never say anything about someone that I wouldn’t say directly to their face.

So when I talk about JG here, I am writing of JG Development, the corporate entity making proposals and doing work. I have no idea who is involved in particular actions except for who shows up at meetings, and have no opinions about Jeff Grundahl as a person.

Now to the meat of it: writing about the charm of Mount Horeb, as I started doing from a personal perspective last time. It was suggested that there were really good parameters in the building code, so I’m reviewing the Building Code and the Comprehensive Plan. One upside of currently searching for work: I have bandwidth for close reading of policy documents for fun. The Comprehensive Plan is from 2022, and was amended in 2024, so it’s still pretty current, given that they’re supposed to be good for ten years (though they can be updated or amended as needed).