Those concerned about the possibility of a Walmart landing in Patterson had their chance to be heard this week, when the city hosted a scoping meeting to help determine what the state-mandated environmental review for the project should focus on.

That’s an important step in the process. Sure, there are always going to be the obvious factors that must be looked at in an environmental review of such a large project — impacts on traffic, air quality, surrounding neighborhoods, and so on.

But, every once in a while, there’s an unexpected issue that must be addressed. West Park saw that when Patricia Snoke wrote a letter to the county about her belief that an unmarked pioneer cemetery exists on the proposed site of the industrial park. Because of her letter, the developer of West Park commissioned a scientific search last week to find that cemetery. Snoke’s letter came at the very point in that environmental review at which Walmart finds itself now.

The cemetery situation is a perfect example of how the environmental review process is supposed to work. Regrettably, the way the city has treated the Walmart process so far leaves us to wonder if it is being handled as effectively as it should.

We are smack in the middle of a month-long period in which members of the public can submit comments on what should be covered in the environmental review for Walmart. A “notice of preparation,” which details this public comment process, was posted publicly and published in our newspaper.

But if you missed the notice tucked away on Page 30 in the Irrigator’s classified section Oct. 1 — in tiny print among nine full pages of legal notices — you’re not alone. So did we.

If you did see it, you might not even have realized it was talking about Walmart, as the notice refers to the so-called “Patterson Plaza Project” and only mentions Walmart once.

Unfortunately, there was no other action taken by the city to notify our news staff that this process had started or that a public scoping meeting — briefly mentioned at the bottom of the Oct. 1 public notice — had been scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 14.

We don’t doubt the city has done everything it is legally required to do thus far. Opening up the scoping meeting to the public was even a step beyond what is required at this stage. It’s the lack of communication that bothers us, especially considering the importance of this topic.

Walmart is as big an issue as there is in this town right now. The public wants and deserves to be made aware when benchmarks in the process are coming, especially when their input is desired — though the 3 p.m. start time wasn’t exactly conducive to generating public input.

We sincerely regret not printing a story on the public comment period until this week and not having anything in last week’s paper about the scoping meeting, which will be covered in next week’s paper. And we strongly encourage anyone who wishes to comment on the upcoming environmental review to write letters outlining their concerns to the city. The deadline for that is Oct. 30.

Furthermore, we hope the city will be more active in getting the word out about important events and the issues its residents care about. It would be beneficial to us all for the entire Walmart process to be as open and transparent as possible.