Public Hearing on New Master Plan
August/29/2009 09:41
As you may have seen on the Shores Web Site, the city has scheduled a public meeting for comments on the new master plan for Tuesday morning September 1st, at 8 AM. While our city government professes that they want to be more open and transparent, one has to question why they would schedule an important meeting at a time most working residents of the Shores would have a conflict attending. In addition, the last week before Labor Day is one of the most popular summer vacation weeks, and I suspect many members of our community will be away. The timing of this meeting sends a strong message - that city hall really has no genuine interest in soliciting the opinions of Shores citizens. I call upon Mayor Cooper to reschedule this important meeting at a time and a place more conducive to engaging public input. Failure to do so will provide but another clear indication that the rhetoric about better engaging Shores citizens is just that.
I would encourage all Shores residents to review the Master Plan, which you can download from the Shores web site via this hyperlink. To raise just one issue, you can see by looking at page 82 of the document, the idea of a Shores Community Center is being resurrected. If you look at the results of the city resident survey starting on page 39 of the Master Plan, only about 600 responses were received, and of these only 93(or about 15% of respondents) felt the city should provide a community building.
Don’t our city fathers recall what happened the last time this issue was raised? Nearly 700 Shores voters signed a petition to have the issue of a community building placed on the ballot. 1274 voters turned out for that election, and the building was soundly defeated by a 61% to 39% margin. For those who want to refresh their memory on this matter, I refer you to an old web page that still stands on Shores issues on John Rickel’s web site. I think the fiscal issues raised by Mr. Rickel back then are even more relevant today in this era of declining property values and tax revenues. I thank John for leaving his web page still posted as a memento in cyberspace to power of the Shores residents to engage in the political process, and change the direction of our government.
In view of this past history and the current situation in the Shores with rising taxes, pension fund deficits, and rising bond payments from a renovated harbor that I do not believe is self-supporting from boating revenues, do we really need to revisit the community building issue again? Shouldn’t the council be keeping their focus on more crucial issues?
For another resident’s perspective, copy of a letter that Dr. Janice Pemberton sent in to the planning commission with her comments on the master plan can be reviewed in the most recent Guest Posting. As always Jan’s comments are most incisive, and I appreciate her willingness to share them with the entire community.