_"councilors and residents began drawing battle lines over how inclusive a new land use planning effort should be."_

This is a false dichotomy with which the Mayor is trying to frame, and therefore control, the debate. It's unfortunate that this front-page story fell for it.
 
Who can be against "inclusiveness"? 

The Mayor's proposal for "broad inclusiveness" is "good."

Therefore, the proposal of the other side, by residents of the impacted neighborhood area, must be less inclusive, and "bad."

The accurate division is the Mayor pushing a process that enables the "we know best" "true-believers" to interfere with the residents' ability to work together on their own shared vision and produce a _draft_ refinement plan that would then be subject to the full, statutory procedure for "all-comers" public testimony and arm-twisting.

The Mayor hasn't fooled anyone.

What she is proposing is essentially to have an "SW-SAZ v2.0" process, which would be certain to fail.

-- Paul