Thanks John Ramos. This is consistent with my own experience of dealing with the city's sustainability officer, public information specialist, administrative information specialist and deputy director of planning and development two years ago when I suggested that city planners routinely contravened governing principles 7, 10 and 12 of the 2006 comprehensive plan and subsequent Imagine 2035 plan adopted in 2018 re: adoption of replatted residential subdivisions that deviate from the street grid, the vacation of paper streets, alleys, utilities rights of way and so on. See the PDD post "Save the Street Grid" from 2021.  

I don't know how someone with a utility operations background becomes the director of Duluth city planning nor do I understand how one so inflexible and unimaginative holds the post of deputy director. Yet, Chris Fleege and Adam Fulton are at the helm and it's no wonder a commenter in the Duluth Monitor described it as the "permitting department" which just about says it all.

Planners need to be visionaries of the public realm in as much as pragmatists. The wrong people are running the show.