Ranked by retainability: not how loud a matter is, but whether there's still runway to act and whether anyone's already working it. The best lead is the big one nobody's touched yet — caught at the filing, not the headline.
Cedar Hollow tops the board not because it's the loudest fight — the landfill permit (#4) is hotter right now — but because it's early, still movable, and nobody's been retained on it yet. That's the window where a firm can still get hired. Click it to read what you'd be walking into.
Organized and building, but not yet at a boil. Two neighborhood associations have filed written opposition, and the last two Planning Commission meetings drew heavier public comment than this body normally sees. One continuance already on the record. Not a spectacle yet — which is part of why it's still workable.
Still in staff review — 54 days to the first Planning Commission hearing, and the Board of Commissioners vote is further out still. One continuance already granted, which tends to add time, not remove it. There is room to shape this before the record hardens.
The 7-member Planning Commission has 3 seats that read as genuinely undecided on this. Recent related votes split — three of the last five density rezonings in this county went the applicant's way, two didn't, and the swing members weren't consistent across them. There is no whipped majority in either direction. With runway still open, the outcome is in play for either side.
No registered lobbyist has filed on this matter. The applicant's counsel is a repeat local filer, which signals an existing relationship on their side — but the opposition shows no professional representation engaged yet. This reads as greenfield on the challenger side. Absence of a filing means "no signal yet," not a guarantee no one's working it.
A contested-but-not-yet-loud matter, with wide runway, a genuinely movable outcome, and no one retained on the challenger side. This is the profile of a matter a firm can still get hired on and still affect — the reason it topped the Radar. A high-heat matter with the vote next week and a lobbyist already on file would score the opposite: a public event you can't get paid on.
The neutral read said this is worth pursuing. Now it becomes client-specific: the room mapped, the votes you need, the plays to get there. This is the first screen that knows which side you're on.
Above this point, the Strategic Read was identical for the developer and the opposition — one diagnostic, computed once, sold to whoever asks. Below this point, it's a single client's play. The side you picked never gets written back onto the shared read.
Softening, done clean: to move opposition, the play builds a lookalike audience defined by attributes — Route 9 corridor homeowners, moderate turnout propensity, the concerns the record surfaced — not a target list seeded off Tom Alcott and the 31 named residents. The intelligence tells you what to model; it never becomes who to target. And if any of those people are civic-brand readers, they're reachable only through their own opt-in — never rented in.