Last night was the Vision Workshop for the Culver Comprehensive Plan. I’ve been calling this effort 20/20 vision for Culver for a while now. Unfortunately with the poor turn out last night, our vision may require a stronger prescription! Less than 30 people turned out for last night’s meeting. That’s pretty dismal. There were three Plan Commission members there, but only one Redevelopment Commission member and no Town Council members. The overall poor attendance is probably due to poor advertising, but it’s unfortunate that our community leaders aren’t getting involved. I’m not in tune with all of the local groups, but I was disappointed that only one Chamber board member was there who was also the only Second Century Committee board member. That was particularly disappointing considering the leadership role SCC took in the previous Comprehensive Plan. I couldn’t identify any of the Lions Club Board, Kiwanis Board, Boys & Girls Club Board, etc. Maybe that apathy in and of itself says a lot about Culver’s future…
Join us at the Community Vision Workshop where residents, business owners, elected and appointed officials, members of the consultant team and other stakeholders will work together to create a vision for the Town of Culver. Attendees will participate in an interactive workshop format to map out their concerns, the things they like best about the community, and the changes they would like to see made in both the near and long-term. The vision workshop will be a fun and engaging way to provide your thoughts about the future of Culver.
Why is the Vision Workshop important?
The purpose of the workshop will be to establish an overall “vision” for the future of the Town of Culver that can provide focus and direction for subsequent planning activities, serve as the “cornerstone” of the consensus building process, and identify a path for growth. Based on the Vision Workshop and previous steps in the planning process, preliminary planning goals and objectives will be prepared.
SAVE THE DATE:
June 24th, 2013
6:30 pm
Culver Community High School Cafeteria
701 School St.
All community members are encouraged to attend.
For any questions or comments related to the Town of Culver Comprehensive Plan, please contact David Schoeff, Town Manager at (574)842-3140 or townmanager@townofculver.org.
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.)
I shared some of my rants regarding the changes to the zoning boundary with Jeff Kenney of the Culver Citizen and he suggested that I send him a letter to the editor on the subject. I am a little freer with my writing here in the blog since I know my audience is different, so I wrote a separate Letter to the Editor and cleaned up my prose a bit. Hopefully it will encourage people to get involved and do some of the research themselves. My earlier piece included all of the links and drawings, so I’ve made it easy for anyone to follow my research. What do you think?
PS – If anyone can tell me why I lose my paragraph breaks on text I cut & paste into a post, let me know! Drives me nuts! It looks right in the editor and then loses the spaces between paragraphs when it posts… I guess I’ll go old-school and add indents…
I went home pretty frustrated last night. I had shared my previous post on the Two Mile Zoning Boundary with the Town Council and Plan Commission last week. I am also on the Steering Committee for the Plymouth Comprehensive Plan review and attended that meeting Monday evening. (6:00 until 9:45! Sheesh!) The topic of the Two Mile Zoning Boundary came up and there was a lively discussion. Yesterday I sent the following email to the Town Council and Plan Commission ahead of the Plan Commission meeting last night:
All,
I attended last night’s Plymouth Comprehensive Plan review on behalf of MCEDC. One of the items that Jackie Turner with Ratio Architects had in the draft plan was ceding some extra territorial control back to the County. I questioned why this would ever be considered as the extended territorial control was there to allow the municipality to control its destiny. She replied that if Plymouth was looking at the plan as a 10 year document, then they might want to divest themselves of the burden of supervising areas that weren’t planned for annexation in the next 10 years. I asked why a municipality would EVER want to cede control to the county and shouldn’t our vision be for 50 years, not just 10? I then asked about problems with residential development surrounding industrial areas making expansion difficult, the problem with subdivisions just outside the territorial boundary which used services, but did not pay for them (fire, police, parks, etc.) and and the difficulties of leapfrogging areas that had been developed that resisted annexation to serve new development or other older developments that needed services. This started a rather spirited response from Plymouth departmental staff naming specific instances where this is already a problem.
Ms. Turner agreed with my points for the most part, saying she was just giving that as an option to be considered as part of the comprehensive planning process. She said there still may be areas of no growth where Plymouth might want to consider this, but all the points I made need to be considered before making that decision.
I’m paraphrasing the discussion above, but I double checked it with Brent Martin who was also in attendance. Ralph Booker was there also. One of the big points I think Culver should take from this is that determining the extended territorial boundary is a discussion that should be had as part of the Comprehensive Planning process. There is no reason that we can’t put this off until our planning process is complete.
Kevin
After sending that out yesterday, I had a meeting with the representatives from Houseal Lavigne Associates who were here doing interviews to start our Comprehensive Plan project. I was there representing MCEDC. As part of our discussion, I laid out the scenario of the property swaps to Devin Lavigne and he agreed with me that it probably was not appropriate to give up any control since it was so hard fought to obtain. He also agreed that this should be part of the comprehensive planning process we were just beginning.
At the Plan Commission last night Ralph Booker, Marshall County Plan Director, presented the maps including a calculation of the acreage of the land that was swapped. Ralph Winters, Plan Commission Chairman, called for a vote without audience input and it was passed without discussion. My arguments were not mentioned. Our new planners, sitting in the audience, were not consulted. Opportunity missed. Do you like the Face Palm GIF? That was me last night!
Passing this last night puts it in front of the Town Council for approval. I’m not sure when that will happen or whether the Town Council will buck the Plan Commission on this again.
Vision Workshop
