The ‘Your Downtown’ campaign; being pushed by the selectmen’s office is doing a disservice to the public. The publicity efforts, like posters and the website, are creating an unrealistic expectation; that the ideas for downtown have not already been decided upon by the committee.
Last week I watched the minutes of the Downtown Steering Committee on the westportct.gov website. My jaw dropped to the floor as I listened in to the discussion.
A question was raised, “what if special interest groups overwhelm the ‘Charade’ ,” -public planning session scheduled for the weekend of the September 20-21, “will the special interests groups overly influence the new downtown plan?”
Another question was raised, “who actually will make the decision on the final plan?” (I thought the reason they had said they wanted to hire the planning company was to come up with the vision? The fact that they are asking this question among themselves, at this late date, is scary)
“The outside-planning-company will take the final recommendations from this committee,” was the answer from the Chair. (apparently the outside planning company is only being used to give authority to the committee’s ideas, of course this is what I have been pointing out on this blog since the inception of the committee/ and during the decision to hire the outside firm)
Melissa Kane is the Chair of this appointed committee, but in fact — has no authority whatsoever, aside from being appointed. The authority resides with the elected Planning & Zoning commission. This is where the false representation comes in, the committee might be able to make recommendations to an outside planning company, but that’s it. Somehow they want it to sound official with posters and publicity.
“How effective has she (Kane) been in contacting and getting input from the people who actually own buildings downtown,” is my question. My answer, “not very.” I was asking this question to myself, while watching the meeting, and also as I do my rounds with the various building owners.
Of course, this was moments after the elected representative of the P&Z commission stormed out of the session saying, “We (P&Z) are not on board with this committee. You are representing this as something that is going to happen, as a fait accompli. Which is false advertising.” I am paraphrasing, if you want exact quotes watch the minutes yourself.
It took a lot of moxy for Cathy Walsh, P&Z commissioner & former chair of that elected body, to stand up to this body of political appointees and tell it like it is. After Cathy Walsh left the room I could hear side comments, but my friends, the people making those side comments actually have no understanding of planning, they think, arrogantly, that because they sit on an appointed committee that somehow their ideas about downtown will be approved, if they can do enough publicity. But that’s not how it works, you have to get elected to P&Z to make the decisions!
Here are the tactics being used by the Downtown Steering committee that I think are doing a disservice to the people of Westport:
They are appealing to the emotions of the public with no regard for the actual law. They have, as a committee, not looked at the actual problems downtown that need to be solved before any new plans can move forward. For example: Parking and Zoning regulations.
This past Saturday I rode my bicycle downtown before the rain storm, total parking chaos. People screaming at each other — out of their car windows — and not a parking spot in sight. Sure, there are times when it’s easy to park, like 7 am or after all the stores are closed.
Here is the point: What the Downtown Committee wants to do is create a park in the Parker Harder parking lot along the river. It doesn’t matter that they want to take away more than 30 percent of the parking spaces that were paid for by the building owners, the very reason for the success of Westport as a shopping destination in the first place.
Who is going to maintain the park?
I can’t tell you how many times and for how many years I go out there to Parker Harding and hang out with Lee Papageorge, owner of Oscar’s Deli as he does all the weeding and clipping of the bushes along the water’s edge. Town maintenance? Lee always has his landscaping tools in the trunk of his car. You see, Lee actually has a vested interest in making it beautiful, he has been the only one who really cares what it looks like, for decades.
The people want this idea and that idea/ free candy and a whole panoply of things. But my friends the Downtown Steering Committee has missed to the whole point. I found listening to the meeting, actually, to be disgusting. At one point they wanted to create the United Nations of Downtown, as a suggestion to promote the Charade. (now if they wanted to create the UN of parking I would be impressed) And then the whispering heard in the background was totally disrespectful. There was no planning being discussed at all; only about their posters and the timing of the Charade, which they admitted really had no impact on their final plans. When the issue of parking came up as the biggest obstacle everyone admitted that they hadn’t looked at the numbers, including the outside planning company who were just trying to move things along.
What I really think is — that the town leaders, not the P&Z, have kept downtown in shambles on purpose so as to create the false perception of a need. We have a riverside green park already at the library and Jesup Green. And, Morley Boyd pointed out at the Steering Committee meeting, and rightly so, that the maintenance track record is horrific. Thanks Morley for pointing that out, but the other committee members moved right along after his comments, as if the concept of fixing what we already have ran against their agenda.
These people don’t have a clue as to how downtown works. Your average public person may have ideas about what they want from downtown, but how much have they really thought about it? (does the public understand the mechanics of why downtown is successful as a shopping destination) And, it is a fact that the survey was unscientific and the questions were biased / misleading. In fact, during the meeting I watched the committee members talk about how they were surprised that most people wanted ‘no change’ – but that the way they were going to interpret those survey results — as that they wanted change that was consistent with a ‘small town character’. Okay, so, now the committee is interpreting the unscientific results of a biased survey. Wow, totally off the wall logic going on here.
The people want a movie theater, I actually agree with that one, but in order to fill a cinema on Main Street, regularly, parking needs to be provided for – no plan. They want to expand the library, I don’t mind that, I think Maxine Bleiweis is a town treasure (probably the best library director in the country), but they have no plan to add parking. Just add thousands of square feet of usage, having nothing to do with books, spend millions on glass, — no plan to add parking spaces (in fact, coy remarks about the parking issue, coming from library board members – downtown is not a joke or a pie in the sky dream for those who actually invest their time in money in making it great).
In the zoning regulations any new usage needs to add parking – that’s the law. But of course no attention is spent on the actual law or how downtown works.
All the attention is spent on emotional triggers; like ‘embrace the river’ or a ‘green necklace’ or let’s make downtown walkable.
The Westport Arts Center – don’t even get me started on that one – okay fine I’m there already – they want to build on Jesup Green – just take away parking spaces to get the job done. Not to mention the fact that when I was a kid the whole idea behind the Westport Arts Center was to provide studio space for Westport Artists. Now their only concern is their new gallery – featuring the greatest guy from somewhere else. Look I like ‘em and they are cool but they got to back-off Jesup Green; because first of all, they are starting to sound like a broken record and second, it’s our town green and they are insisting on taking it over. Of course they have political connections….maybe they should go into politics and get out of art—ha ha, lol. Back-off Jesup Green, I could pull emotional triggers as well. I could get every hippy who ever smoked a joint there to hold endless viduals on the green – “save the green” – ….. It is insulting when you put us in the position of having to defend our heritage from the monument you want to build to yourself. Buy a piece of land and put your arts center there – you have the money – or so you say — so spend it on your private agenda and leave town-owned land alone…unless you somehow work to find a parking solution! It is arrogant for them to think the Arts Center should be on the town center green, and embarrassing for them to continue to push this idea. Bad idea – not going to happen!
Getting back to Melisa Kane and her committee; you are not elected to make planning decisions downtown. You have only used emotional triggers to stir the pot of unrealistic visions among the public, with Marpe’s consent. I like Marpe, he seems highly intelligent. But his ideas about committees are more of a corporate cover-your-ass technique. They have been pulling this bullshit for years, and this is part of the systemic reason why none of the downtown plans ever get acted upon – none of them – and I see no change in addressing the real issues. Take the beach, it’s sexy to be on the beach make-over-committee, but what we really need is a beach bathroom committee, not as sexy a concept but the only real problem with the beach.
The “Your Downtown” publicity campaign is only a tool / or strategy to give the appearance of public input, they have known what they wanted to do all along. In fact none of the ideas they have come up with jive with the reality on the ground, it’s all a phantasy. This is the disservice.
The outside-planning-company, at one point said, this whole process is about educating the public; I have only seen pandering to public emotions / the actual blockage of the actual stakeholders from the process (the people who own buildings) and a slick promo push. No education at all about what the problems are, or the mechanics of how to fix them.
Get to work on solving the parking issue people, or all of your pie-in-the-sky dreams will remain on the drawing table for another 3 decades.
I actually have the parking solutions but that is for another posting of The Green.