Reprinted from Crescent Woods Neighborhood Forum No. 229
By Michael Crane, NPA Steering Committee Member - Ward 4, Ivy Ln, mcpaddles@gmail.com
Tue, 14 October 2008
This is to answer Carolyn Swiatek’s questions about the disk golf status: The P&R Commission voted on September 23rd to (according to their web site) establish a “Disk Golf Working group to study the various issues that have been raised by the public and to make a recommendation to the Commission as to whether or not the project should continue as planned, be modified in some way or be canceled. The Commission decided that the composition of the group would be two representatives of the BTown Disc Golf Club, two residents of Ward 4, two residents of Ward 7, and two other residents from other parts of Burlington”
The Commission and the Director asked the Ward 4 and 7 Neighborhood Planning Assembly (NPA) to submit “up to 5 names” for them to consider to represent this neighborhood. The NPA Steering Committee met on October 2nd to select names from those who answered our invitations posted in this FPF . The Steering Committee asked each person to submit a brief description of themselves and what they have to offer. They then selected names based on the persons ability to offer expertise on the topic.
The Commission met on October 9th and completely ignored the NPA’s recommendations. In addition, they changed their process mid-stream without telling anyone ahead of time. They said that everyone whose property abuts the park was anti-disk golf so they shouldn’t be considered. However, they never told the NPA this when we were selecting names. They also went counter to what they voted on at their Sept 23rd meeting. They removed the BTown Golf Club from the committee but gave them 2 special seats to provide “technical input.” However, they didn’t provide any other group, like ecologists, or traffic engineers, with a special technical seat at the table. So now we have a 6 member working group most of whom have stated their support for the course, and two more from the Disk Golf Club. All of them are middle aged men representing 80% of the disk golf demographic. This is far from a balanced group. The Chair of the Commission e-mailed me yesterday and said “Our goal was to maintain objectivity / impartiality to the degree possible, …”
However, when they selected the names on October 9th, it was obvious that they had very little information about these people. In fact, the Chair couldn’t even correctly pronounce the last name of one person representing Ward 4! Their knowledge of whether someone was impartial on not was clearly lame. One commissioner stated that the City is in favor of this course by a margin of 10 to 1 so the Working Group should reflect that ratio. Another Commissioner stated that “we were rich with parks” implying that it would have little impact on our overall park wealth and we should just suck it up (or some thing to that effect). Yet another Commissioner looked at me and told me what my opinions were toward the disk golf course when I have never written them down or told anyone. Neither my fellow NPA Steering Committee members, (nor my wife!), knows where I stand on this, but this Commissioner somehow has the ability to read minds, I guess. For the record, I am undecided, like many people, What I am opposed to is a Parks and Recreation Commission shoving through a development that would alter 5 to 10 acres of woodlands without the wisdom to do an objective environmental impact assessment or the respect to inform the neighbors.
The Parks and Recreation Commission is clearly stacking the deck to get this project through. When they asked the NPA to limit our list to 5 names they implied that they would select two from our list. If they didn’t intend to use our list as an initial cut then we could have submitted as many names as we wanted - like the BTown Disk Golf Club did as well as the rest of the City. The NPA was the only organization that was asked to limit their list. And the NPA is the organization recognized by the City as representing this neighborhood. They then further categorically eliminated about half of our list when they decided to not include property owners who border the park without telling us before hand. These actions in concert display an effort to manipulate the process for a preconceived outcome.
They changed the rules and the process in mid stream without telling us, they went against their own approved motion from last week, they claim to know the opinions of people without asking them simply by knowing the location of their home, and in the middle of all of this they are asking to raise our taxes. I urge you to vote no on their ballot measure; they haven’t shown enough responsibility to have the right to tax us. If you want to try and correct this process, write to the mayor and your City Councilors and request that the Parks and Recreation Commission select all of Wards 4 and 7 representatives from the list of names that the NPA sent in.
Michael Crane
NPA Steering Committee