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January 28, 2007
What's The Plan, Stan?
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| Last week the Chico Area Recreation District
(CARD) started the update of its Master Plan. If you read through the
existing and proposed Bidwell Park Master Management Plans you'll see that
CARD is expected to be the provider of Chico's recreational amenities.
That philosophy has been mouthed by local government for a couple of decades,
but never seems to really get implemented. I listened during the Bidwell Park Plan update meetings as "that's CARD's job" came up during discussions about recreation. It always seemed like a "punt". When I looked around nobody from CARD was there. At the time I sent an email to the CARD board and acting director saying "hey why aren't you guys here for this?", but no response. Mary Cahill (previous CARD director) had attended the citizen's advisory committee component of the meetings, but was let go from CARD about half-way through. I always wondered when the City and CARD would have a discussion about who is supposed to do what. The technical advisory committee consisting of the General Services Director, our old City Manager, and other city officials has begun meeting. I applied to be on the Citizen's Advisory Committee, which consists of about a dozen people, and was appointed to it. We met last week as well. It looks like that discussion is going to happen in the next few months, and I'm curious to see the results. The CARD plan update is being managed by the same consulting group that is working on the Bidwell Park Master Management Plan update (EDAW), although not by the same employees that worked on the Bidwell Park plan. I think I'm the only person on the citizen's panel that will have taken part in both updates. I can already see stark differences in the process. For example, the Bidwell Park citizen committee started with somebody reading a bad poem. The CARD citizen committee started with brief introductions and a statement that we'd leave by 8PM (a 2 hour meeting). Even with a year-and-a-half head start I think the CARD Master Plan could be finished before the Bidwell Park Master Management Plan update is complete. If that turns out to be the case I'm not sure what conclusions should be drawn. But I'm sure it could be related to "better, faster, smarter" in a way that's not terribly positive. |
Posted by Lon at January 28, 2007 10:50 AM