Thursday, August 11, 2016

Final Open Space Workshop Plays To Small Crowd


FINAL MEETING HAS DISMAL TURNOUT
The final community workshop for the Open Space Master Plan was held Wednesday evening at the Costa Mesa Senior Center and played to a disappointingly small crowd.  Fewer than a dozen people showed up although the room was set to accommodate five times that many.  And, of those in attendance, fully half had attended previous meetings.  Parks and Recreation Commissioner Kim Pederson attended this meeting - he's been at most of them - and helped provide perspective for us.

CONSULTANTS LED THE WAY
City Engineer Bart Mejia introduced consultant Zach Mueting of RJM and his assistant, Tamara, again conducted this meeting.  He provided us with a brief history of the scope of his work and the results of the previous three workshops.  I attended two of those and wrote about them HERE and HERE.
PRIORITIZING
We then broke into two groups and went through an exercise prioritizing "Programs" and "Facilities", then further distilled them down and the results were presented to the group as a whole.  As you can see from the images, the two groups had different ideas.
A REPORT IS PENDING
The results of all these efforts - the four workshops, telephone survey, outreach to the sports community, all of which represented more than a year's worth of work - will be compiled, blended and presented to the Parks and Recreation Commission at its September meeting and to the City Council in October.
NOW WE WAIT...
This meeting wrapped up around 8:30 after a couple hours of discussions and completing those exercises.  Concerns were expressed by some about how the results of this effort might be interpreted by members of the City Council - it is an election year, after all.  Personally, I'm eager to see the report from the consultants, and to hear how it is received by the Parks and Recreation Commission and the City Council.  Stay tuned.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Casual Viewer said...

Councilmen ignoring committee results they don't agree with = low attendance

8/11/2016 07:28:00 AM  
Anonymous heart for Costa Mesa said...

Yep. people are fed up. What point if you know you will be ignored and they will do whatever they want. I have never seen a City Council majority so consistently selfish and self absorbed. Three men against two 2 women. 3-2 vote, 3-2 vote, 3-2 vote, 3-2 etc. NEED change in November!!! (except Sandy, we need to keep her!)

8/11/2016 11:03:00 PM  

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