Davis Islands Neighborhood Planning Task ForceAdministrative Meeting Minutes Present: Lisa DeVitto, Shelia Spicola, Dennis Cavanaugh, Charner Reese, Lee Medart, Jeffrey Siewert, Lorraine Smith, Renae Tvedt, Terry Cullen, Rose Petrucha (HCC Planning Commission), Jessica Sandler, Ben Stasiukiewicz, Klaus Palinkas (Residential Participants) Absent: Henry Gill 1. Meeting was called to order at 6:34 pm. Quorum was noted. 2. Minutes of the Oct. 7, Meeting Approved The Chair reported that she had been requested to not follow the Agenda in the order as presented but to take up the Follow-up of the DISCOs first. There were no objections. The Chair stated that each of the Task Force members get a copy of the Tampa Heights Plan before they left. Lorraine Smith handed them out. New Business:DISCO reports: The Chair asked Lorraine for a general overview of the Discos. Lorraine stated that most of the people that attended the Study Circles were interested in the planning prior to the circles being established. The Chair asked that each Study Group give a verbal summarized report on their meetings. Parks & Recreation Charner indicated that overall she thought that there was a good turn-out which continued to grow at each session. She stated that they had an excellent facilitator, Phyllis Pacyna. City Parks Department was represented through all of the sessions and they opened up the Pool, which is closed this time of year, and they talked about opening up the area below for a recreational space. They walked the entire way from the Hospital to Barbados and took pictures along the way. They took their likes and dislikes in pictures which she will show us later. At the last meeting, after a full discussion of all the issues and opportunities of each “theme”, the participants will rank each theme. The only thing we didn’t get to was “Action Strategies”. This will require more information anyway and possibly our group will get into a little later on. One of the things that we didn’t get into fully was on the one hand we’re saying “we’ve got to preserve our existing space, we can’t have them reverted to other uses all the time”. On the other hand, “Well we need a recreation center”… So where are we going to put it? They do conflict in some ways because there is so much public land. Transportation/Utilities/Public Safety – Jeffrey Siewert This has been a great experience going through this study circle; thought a lot had been accomplished. Met on 3 occasions. They had a small turn-out each time but each person was very intense. The first meeting the technical staff of the city, Karen Herrington and Mr. Porth were there. They were very informative about how they go about getting things done. They also gave a little bit of education of what the tools are available for Traffic Calming. Jeffrey indicated that he would give a full report, which would include graphics to be able to know what was going on. So the first meeting seemed to set the line, which followed, which was how are we going to deal with speeding. That was the primary issue which everyone seemed to gravitate towards. The result was that we had to employ some physical treatment in the streets, meaning traffic calming. Jeffrey reported that he, Lee, Gene Boles met with a representatives from the Chamber, Civic Association and the Adalia Condos and discussed approaching the City with a request that a consultant group that is aware of “pedestrian-friendly” methods of calming traffic be employed by the City to do a study on the main streets of Davis Islands. This is just an initial step to getting the City to contribute to the Planning Process on Davis Islands. And a list of things we have will be determined later in a more detailed study. The second meeting, we tried to stay away from speeding and concentrate more on walking, biking, transportation, public transport and pedestrian features. Comments on where people think there should be a walkway along Channel side; Village, additional cross-walks there and a list of other places that people think we should have cross-walks. Public transportation came up again with “curb-rights” which is an element used by the Transportation group how to insure that your dollars spent in your taxes are spent and are returned to you. Because everybody pays for the transit system but the majorities don’t use it so we have that right to go back and talk directly to Hartline. Alternate means of having public transportation on the Islands, a dial-up bus, a taxi cab stand on the Islands so that anyone wanting a ride. Several of these types of suggestions were interesting, since they would be a lot less expensive than the big buses. Bicycles; where should we put bike lanes. The last meeting’s goal was to brainstorm on solutions but we had a poor turnout, it was on Election Day, but there were some interesting suggestions, especially from Neil who is full of ideas. We used it as a summary of what was accomplished and Neil told us how to deal with Hartline, railroad and the airport people. As a wrap-up, Jeffrey believed that they had accomplished their mission; we see what residents see as overall issues of transportation and we have a general idea about advising the community on how to solve it. Esthetics/Commuity Character – Lisa DeVitto Planned 6 meetings but held 5. Definite ideas on what they would like but no concrete ideas of how to get there. Mostly there were negative ideas of why it couldn’t be done. People tended to shy away from the “big” picture. At the first two meetings asked if they would like to have professionals come to the meetings and they refused. The outcome was that the meetings became increasingly less productive without some type of technical foundation. Talked about bringing other people to the meetings, taking pictures and other things we might do associated with aesthetics but for one reason or another we never did it. We talked about a lot of the issues that were on the comment sheets from the kick-off meeting but the focus was basically that there was overlap: in parks, zoning, etc. but we tried to focus on the community character aspects of these issues. The number one result was that speeding issue was against our community character; it completely affects our community character as we wish it to be; it affects our children, anti-recreation, anti-friendly. We decided that speeding destroys our desired character. We decided that multi-family homes on the Islands’ ratio at present was good and did not want it increased. The last agreement was that we should start a preservation program. That there should be a new survey to get the number of buildings that qualify. An interesting aspect we discussed was “is Davis Islands a destination vs. a residential area.” In what way are we a destination? Talked about public transportation. Some people don’t think that it’s relevant to our community character and some people did. Some people went on about new forms of public transportation and how it could make us more of a destination. We have a potential of community character but we lack recreational facilities for children. Some of the people that were here from many years ago felt that if we wanted to recapture our identity that we should replace some of the structures that are no longer here. We talked about appearances, business center and how it was to be used. The uniqueness of businesses was a very heavy topic. One of the issues was if we got our plan together how would there be follow-through. At the last meeting there was discussion on how to get more people involved in the Civic Association organization. Lisa thought that the group was good that it brought out a lot of issues that could be developed in the future but they didn’t come to conclusions so that is yet to be discussed. Land Use/Zoning – Renae Tvedt Renae stated that she thought the attendance was discouraging. The Chair announced that between all of the Study Circles, there were a total of about 36 people. Renae stated that a lot of the things they found out had been brought up at the community-wide meeting. At each meeting they found a few more things that they could touch on. Rose & Terry came to the second meeting to answer some of the questions that they had regarding the things they didn’t understand on the land use map. That helped to guide us in different directions that we could go. We had three meetings and we brought up the issues, didn’t try to resolve anything. Terry advised that we just look at the big picture. At the last meeting, we overlapped with everyone else such as Mom & Pop shops so at the end we just listed questions. Such as supporting education; things along the lines of what it could become without offering any solutions. One question that came up was “do you want more density, less density or the same density?” And the comparison between residential vs. commercial. Things we need to look into such as the RDU and we need to compare that with how other cities are. Such as if we want to look at an area like Celebration we could find out what their ratio is. We can find these ratios out for other cities and can compare Davis Islands’ visually with other known cities. This is what the Task Force should be doing… a lot of these things need graphics and Renae offered to produce graphics because it is easier to see the “picture” rather than “imagine”. This would mean more to people. The Chair pointed out the maps she had brought color coordinated, displaying major landowners on the streets of Davis, E. Davis and Columbia. She stated that this demonstrated how much more visual these were than the 4 folders of individual sheets from the Property Appraiser’s office. And supported Jeffrey and Renae’s statements of “graphic” presentation would be best to show people. The summaries completed, the Chair asked that we go to the next section of “Where do we go from here?” Klaus had comments on the structure he had written out on the board, that of getting the information and indicated that it was very good to have options for people and so yeas and nays can be to concrete things. He listed an outline as to getting community consensus and the task force was very receptive to it. There was some changing of wording by Terry and Charner but essentially it was as Klaus wrote it out. It is attached to this summary. Jeffrey stated that the Tampa Heights plan is very graphic. It has zoning, traffic, greenways, parkland, school. And is documented so that the City Council will make decisions in favor of what they want. But how do we get there? We have to back up and make the steps intelligently. He stated that he feared when he heard talk about preferences and thought “options” are the key. Just so we don’t offend people. The process is got to be a very gentle and a very “feely” thing. He stated that options instead of preferences, are the words we want to use because we don’t want to scare anybody. This is what we learned; this, this and this these are our options. Have a meeting and present the options. It was stated that we should know if the options are possible and Terry commented that no, we present options first because that is how we create a vision. Lisa brought up that people on Davis Islands don’t participate. And referring to the webpage the Chair had sent to the Task Force and asked that they look at, Lisa thought that the part about going door-to-door was the way to gather people in, not having meetings. Cause if we don’t gather them in then we will be rejected. She suggested that we have a workshop among ourselves to figure out the basics because we know we have overlap. There was general agreement to this suggestion. Charner suggested that the “inventory” (from the chart that Klaus presented) gives us a baseline, for example the knowledge of what the parkland was in 1962 compared to what it is now, gives us a baseline and a rise up to the issues that we are now all dealing with. Therefore, we should document those baselines as we move through the development plan. It’s an exercise. All of us that have been moderators have a lot of information, which can be organized and given to the stakeholders. It is a good idea and it will be polished and cleaned up but will give us a good starting point. There was general agreement to this suggestion. Terry spoke on being pleased with the effort and time the volunteers had put into the study circles. Also, not to be disappointed in the numbers of people that showed up, as that is what happens no matter what neighborhood you come from. And we need to understand that people out there that know that a planning process is going on put their trust in a task force such as ourselves. They feel that as we go forward you’re doing the best you can to represent their interest. They will pay attention at community wide meetings it is very hard to sustain an interest by any group of volunteers for any length of time. So don’t knock yourselves down over participation, because he went to several of the study circles and was very impressed with the caliber of the discussion that was going on. He felt that we had collected a lot of information. He also stated that we had cast this out as being approximately a 2-year planning process. And remember the whole idea behind this planning process is one very, very large consensus process. When you’re starting out you’re trying to figure out what that universe is and as time goes by you’re roping that universe in by consensus building with decision making and choices with the community to frame a plan for them. It’s too early in the process to be talking about what the options and the alternatives are. That might be part of the matrix but it’s not a box you throw out right now. Right now we’re heading toward a community-wide meeting in the next few months where you are going to ask the community where you’re framing choices for them. How they select those choices will help you recommend ultimately a vision for Davis Islands. And Jeffrey, when you looked at that plan map of Tampa Heights that is only one small part of the plan. There are 10 statements included in the plan describing intangible things that cannot be graphically illustrated. We have to be very aware that this is not just a physical development plan but is a lot of aspects of Davis Islands that you are going to sell or people will want to try to protect. We haven’t captured it yet but as we go on we’ll capture those things. Coming up to the meeting in March, it’s important that you broaden back and not zero in on the issues of today because you don’t need a 10 or 20 year plan to do that. You know that there is an issue in speeding and you want to go ahead and get a consultant and do it. Why do you need to go through a 2-year plan process to deal with speeding? The idea I was talking about in Transportation in broadening out and thinking about how people move on the Islands. Because if you just look at what the problems are today maybe you will just solve the problems you have today and you don’t necessarily change, what your future is going to be. There was some initial feedback at the open house. That initial feedback is not selecting the choices for you. They are just the initial ideas of what people have. You need to expand upon the initial ideas and as you do, the ideas become more definable of what the people see the future is. Then once you recommend a vision back to them, then you start exploring as to what are the alternatives and options to go there. Lisa agreed that maybe we needed to go through each study circle and flesh out the issues. Charner agreed and said we could give our own perspective on each one. There was general agreement. It was agreed that Monday, December 9, 2002 (8:00 am) all written Study Circle summaries are due. They are to be sent to Lee who will in turn forward them on to Terry and Rose. The Chair brought up about the importance of getting summaries into the Davis Islands News. She related that earlier in the year, the Task Force had voted on passing publicity through the Communications Chair. As the Chair, Shelia Spicola is in and out of town presently; Lee and Jessica Sandler were getting the material together to go into the news. If you want to be specific about what goes in under your name then get it to Lee on the 17th of the month because hereafter, no articles that have already been sent in by the deadline will be changed. The Chair brought up the question of pictures at the March meeting and that it needed to be decided if we were going to do pictures and which technique we were going to use. Terry Cullen suggested that we decide that as we go through the study circle summaries and look at the graphics to determine if and where we might need pictures. It was agreed that we would do that. It was agreed that the Chair would get a late March date for a place to have the meeting. Terry stated that there are many variations on how to do the planning process that Klaus put on the board. For example Klaus has vision at the end and that’s actually “plan” at the end and “vision” is somewhere up in the middle. Statistically created solutions are not always going to work because of human factors brought in and that works out very nice but when I give you a quality of life issue that is not quantitative… Most of Davis Islands is not going to be based on what you “need” because you’re not impoverished, you don’t have the roads but rather most of the things you are going to be addressing is “what is going to improve our quality of life now and in the future”. So people are going to tell you that I love the sense of community and I want to build, enhance that sense of community. Well now how am I going to “forecast” that? And all of a sudden the qualitative intangible stuff isn’t modeled. We are taking an inventory we want to take to the community to develop a “vision”. And from that when that is presented to the community then you are going to get into the detailed work of “what does it actually mean”? What does it mean if they say they want this to happen to their downtown? You have to be able to broadly describe it to them so they can broadly envision a future state and what implications that might have. That’s why it’s so important to interconnect and that’s what we are going to start to do at the next meeting. All of these things are linked together to create a system that makes this a community. You can’t talk about them in isolation you do have to sit around this group sorting it all like we did in the Kick Off meeting. We need listen to Jeffrey describes transportation, then Charner we know this came up in Parks & Recreation and Lisa says there is something here in community character and Renae says this is in Land Use and then you will see how all of these systems work together. That’s what we’re going to talk to the community about, “Do you want to keep what you have or do you want to change what you have”? On airport operations there is so much data available. But we do not have a lot of basic information on a lot of intangible stuff. From healthcare and education … we have reams of information on traffic but not so much on other things. I can tell you the projection of how big the population will be in a part of the county and how big a road we’ll need to bring in to support it, but I can’t tell you the root causes of why our children aren’t ready for school. There are still a lot of quality of life issues of a community such as yours that is built-out, reasonablely affluent that we want to take a look at, how can we make ourselves even better. It won’t revolve around basic needs, so you will be looking at a lot of quality of life things so it will have a lot of physical and social implications to it. Jeffrey suggested that the Planning Commission people look at his map dissected into seven sections, and see how we can dissect it even more. Terry stated that public outreach is very difficult… getting people to do it is difficult. The people that are likely to participate will probably have very strong views and this is true in any public effort of this type. We have to be careful because that type of participation is building in a bias. Whether or not they participate, building awareness is very important. When you have people ask you “What do we need a plan for? I like DI the way it is.”, you can respond that you think we should have a plan to protect that quality of life. They will agree, “Yes” then you say, “well what do you like about that quality of life?” “What do you like about Davis Islands?” You can get the people involved. Flip it around and start working towards a reason for the plan. If there is conflict on the Islands you’ll go through a period of compromises – in Tampa Heights it was from May to November. Lisa reported that the under unfinished business that DI Chamber did approve donating $250 to the Planning Task Force for administrative expenses. Receipts for reimbursement from the funds that have been donated from The DI Chamber will go through Lorraine who will present them. Lorraine requested that she get hard copies of the Study Circle Reports. Terry cautioned that we not let moving forward on getting the City to commit to allowing their retained planning consultant group do a study on the areas of speeding (Davis, E Davis, S Davis & W Davis) overshadow what we were working on. Don’t let it detract from the process at hand, and Don’t let it skew the process at hand. And don’t let any issues that come out of that swamp or undermine anything that you are doing. If you want to integrate it into the process that you’re doing they should follow in the same lines of what you are trying to do. The Chair brought up that collaboration with other neighborhood planning groups had been on the agenda for three months. The Task Force agreed that the Chair could move forward on that and have an initial meeting with the other neighborhood groups so that we could bind together in our projects. Next Meeting will be December 16, 2002 at 6:30 pm, Davis Islands Tennis Courts Meeting Room. Meeting adjourned at 8:55 pm. Submitted by |
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