Anaheim Councilwoman Kris Murray, left, and Anaheim mayor Tom Tait, right, listen to Bellflower resident Wes Parker during an April 2016 meeting. | MediaNews Group via Getty Images

Neighborhood planning is governed by a biased, unrepresentative system. If you think you have meeting fatigue at the office, trying attending a public meeting. Last September in a Brooklyn church basement, a meeting over new bike lanes spiraled out of control when cycling advocate Doug Gordon was shoved by a guest speaker and filmmaker. In October, during a hearing over a proposed homeless shelter in Queens, one frustrated resident said of the shelter, ?I hope someone is going to burn the place down.? At a Seattle hearing on affordable housing development last February, one resident, priced out by rising rents, attacked the ?tech trash? who have been ?strip-mining Seattle.? The public meeting has become enshrined in this nation?s local politics as the conduit for the opinions of the common citizen and an essential part of grassroots democracy. Roughly 97 percent of local governments utilize some form of local meetings, according to a 2004 article by Harvard professors Abby Williamson and Archon Fung. They trace the origins of these gatherings back to the town meetings held in colonial New England as early as the 1630s, when informal assemblies of adult males used such meetings to govern themselves.
In many ways, the public meetings we hold today to discuss local zoning policy, ap...