Profile of a Candidate: Chairman of the Planning Commission Allen Neel Runs for Town Council

At Melania’s Gourmet on September 1, the Royal Examiner sat down with candidate for Town Council Allen Neel during his meet-and-greet. Neel is currently the chairman of the Town Planning Commission and has several irons in the fire, including the commission’s upcoming discussion of retail cannabis, given the more permissive framework recently established by the state. “I wish this wasn’t coming up now,” Neel said about the appearance of this issue. “But it is.”

Allen Neel, candidate for the Town Council, conducts a meet and greet at Melania’s Gourmet. Royal Examiner Photo Credits: Brenden McHugh

Whether it is fiscal discipline, smart growth, or transparency, Neel converses easily on any topic, bringing to the table a mind trained to think of circles within circles. A background in systems engineering for aerospace has trained him to approach any issue as a set of moving parts that are interrelated. What happens concerning one variable will ricochet to affect others. His notion of being a public servant is someone who comes prepared to engage with those variables and find a solution.

Someone who currently sits on the council remarked to Neel that his role on the commission is valuable insofar as he does “the grinding”. But in Neel’s mind, everyone on the council should be grinding as well. This means arriving not just with an opinion but with research and something to show for it. If he succeeds in becoming a member of the council, Neel has a vision for a council that not only declares what it does not want but actively pursues what it does want.

When the commission was exploring the possibility of regulating data centers, Neel threw himself body and soul into developing robust performance standards. However, when the public expressed overwhelming opposition to data centers and a desire to prohibit them, Neel honored that popular will in his vote. Now, he foresees at least 10 years during which the data center industry would have to undergo a transformation and develop a new model before it could make a proposal here. Maintaining the prohibition will be an ongoing effort.

As that effort is maintained, it is important to Neel that the government be as transparent as possible. What transpires in closed meetings, he thinks, would in many cases, such as data centers, be better suited to an open meeting. That way, the public is not left to draw conclusions from a council member’s elliptical remarks in an open meeting about what transpired previously in closed. He explained that he has always conducted his commission-related communications with the awareness of the Freedom of Information Act.

Whether explaining his rationale on data centers or asserting that one should first acquire an asset before spending money to investigate its possible use, Neel afforded the Royal Examiner a trip through circles within circles. A conversation with this systems engineer is never boring.