Tag:Comprehensive Plan
Who should lead?
I was invited to attend a work session of the Culver Town Council last night. The work session was the result of the efforts of MCEDC to energize Marshall County communities to plan and prepare for growth. Unfortunately last night’s meeting degenerated into random complaints from various attendees about some Culver boards and commissions with very little positive discussion or resolution. I had invited Jay Bahr, MCEDC‘s new Executive Director, to attend this meeting and was somewhat embarrassed. It wasn’t exactly what I would have liked him to see with his first introduction to Culver’s leaders.
In February, MCEDC held our first County-wide economic development summit with attendees representing all of the communities in Marshall County. As a result of that meeting I had met with several Culver Town Council Members to see what action steps could be taken. My thoughts on this involved encouraging the Town Council to be the pointy head of the spear. In other words, set an agenda for growth and improvement and pass that mandate down to the boards and commissions that serve beneath them. Theoretically, the Town Council is the elected body that represents the people and through them the citizen’s will should be enacted by the appointed boards and commissions. Without a cohesive plan of action to implement, the boards and commissions either proceed on their own agendas or in some cases are rudderless and accomplish no agenda.
There has been some progress. Retention meetings have been held with Elkay and discussions have been had regarding how to make Culver more accessible to business. All positive steps, but ones without a cohesive goal.
The Comprehensive Plan will fill part of this need, but it needs the will of the citizens and their elected officials, the Town Council, to be reflected in that. Even though completion of the Comprehensive Plan is as much as a year away, the Town Council needs to be gearing up towards implementation and as I’ve tried to express to them, the Comprehensive Plan process can’t be an excuse for doing nothing now.
Last night’s meeting showed a lack of respect for the Town Council’s position of authority in the Town. It was a good step towards leadership, but it’s clear that they are going to need to TAKE their leadership back. There will be no shortage of complaints, but complaints don’t fill the leadership void. Culver’s unofficial motto has always been “Change is bad even when it’s change for the better”. The Town Council needs to ignore that and be the instigator of change. Change for the better…
A Community of Second Homes
As previously discussed here I attended the Comprehensive Plan Breakout Session for businesses on Tuesday, April 23, 2013. Mr. Ralph Winters was also at that meeting and made a statement I thought was somewhat profound. I jotted it down so that I could get it right. “We are not so much a resort community as a community of second homes.” That idea resonated with me… While we do have lots of “rentals”, we do not have any hotel space to speak of. The Cove has mostly gone private, to the point that I don’t remember the last time I saw a conference there. This suggests a different kind of resort community.
Comprehensive Plan Update
The work on the new comprehensive plan has begun and I attended three meetings in this week. On Monday evening there was a Steering Committee meeting with Houseal Lavigne where we were given information regarding doing small group outreach. This was for the Steering Committee to make presentations to groups that are unable to attend the regular community meetings or groups that have special interest. I honestly do not know how effective this will be since everyone on the Steering Committee is already active in the community as well as their individual businesses but it was an interesting exercise. I told the Town Manager, Dave Schoeff, that I would be willing to help with one of these, if approached, but I do see that I would go out looking for groups to give presentations.
The Dream of “Affordable Housing”
In conjunction with and immediately following that meeting was the first community meeting. While participation was less than stellar (only about 25 people were in attendance) there were some consistent themes that came out of the meeting. It did not take long for affordable housing to bubble to the top. Unfortunately affordable housing is a hard one for people to get their arms around and everyone’s definition seems to be somewhat different. Probably the second most discussed issue which was touched on several times was “identity” of Culver, i.e. are we or do we want to be a resort community. (More on that later.)
Culver’s Community Conversation
Last night the Culver Chamber of Commerce sponsored a Community Conversation bringing together representatives of the Chamber, Second Century Committee, LMEC/F, Town Council, Plan Commission, Redevelopment Commission, the Town Clerk and Town Manager as well as others. Linda Yoder of the Marshall County Community Foundation was also in attendance. Dawn Brockey with the Culver Coffee Company and current Chamber President was kind enough to host the event providing wine and light appetizers for the group.
The goal was to discuss strategies to strengthen the business community in Culver. Ralph Winters brought up the proposed new Comprehensive Plan. I was asked to discuss how it would affect the community (20/20 Vision for Culver!) and there was a spirited dialog. There was discussion as to how the various groups could participate and what funding sources were available. One thing that Ralph emphasized was that everyone needs to read the current plan before we start on the revisions. I thought that was an excellent recommendation.
There was quite a bit of discussion on how to extend the business season beyond the summer. There was discussion of how the Triathlon, Winefest and Ice Fishing Tournament can help the retail merchants. (One sad note was hearing that the L’Max Film Fest will be moved to the Culver Academies and away from the downtown theater.) There was a request for brainstorming for other events like those. I’ve been negative on the Marshall County Tourism in the past, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear how they were helping with many of these events.
There was discussion regarding a need for a community calendar. I found that discussion interesting since there have been many attempts at this which have not gotten support. One of those, IHeartCulver, is still up, but struggling and close to being taken down due to lack of support. It would seem that an existing model such as that could be built on and support a local entrepreneur in lieu of reinventing the wheel.
All in all there was good discussion. It will be interesting to see how the Chamber moves forward with the input they received.
