Here we go again – another town planning project
To the editor:
The Town has held two meetings for its “Vision Our Town” planning project so far and I’ve attended both sessions.
Larue Planning and Management Services and several relatively new town staffers are to be congratulated on their enthusiasm for the project. It’s their first time around with this planning process in our Town. For those of us who have been here for more than just a few years, the history of planning the town’s future has been somewhat less than stellar. I sensed a “Here we go again” attitude from many participants.
In recent years, Charter Revue, Traffic Mitigation and a host of other ad hoc committees, not to mention some very expensive consultants, have put in countless hours creating plans, the bulk of which were either talked to death or simply blown off by previous Town Councils. I suppose one keeps participating in these exercises on the outside chance that, this time, something might actually come of it. It’s either that or the TV schedule for that evening really stinks.
In the first session in June, the same group of “usual suspects” (interested citizens) broke up into several groups and basically created the same list of usual issues, which have been identified and studied here ad nauseum. In the second session, the issues identified in the first were somewhat distilled into a “ballot” of 61 yes-or-no questions that attendees voted on by placing little sticky dots in the box of their choice.
The most relevant questions dealt with how to live with the new FEMA requirements – issues like permitting and regulating mobile vending carts beneath any new structures that now can’t have permanent installations at ground level. Other questions made one wonder if whoever put the ballot together know any of the town’s history. There were several, like “Providing residents with a sticker for parking in certain areas, with all others paying based on time of day and time of year,” or “Include drainage management practices into all Town projects and applicable private permit requests.” Come on, people, we already do that.
In any case, strategic planning, like pizza and sex, even when not spectacular, is still better to have than not. People need to come out and be heard in future sessions, or forever hold their peace if things happen they don’t like.
On a related matter: In the first meeting, the term “Keep it Funky” emerged as an umbrella title covering questions about the future character of the town. And the very reasonable question, “What’s that mean?” was raised. Since I was one of those who proposed the term, I feel it only proper to explain it as I see it.
My American Heritage Dictionary has a quite extensive article about “funky.” It turns out that, like pornography, it is almost impossible to define, but you know it when you see it. Once you get past the first definition, “having a moldy or musty smell” (Actually on some very calm mornings here, that’s true, too.), and the second, dealing with “the blue notes or mood in jazz,” you arrive at something more useful to our inquiry – “Earthy and uncomplicated, natural, characterized by self-expression; originality, and modishness, unconventional.”
Perfect! I hope enough others share this vision to ‘keep it funky.’ The last thing any of us needs is to have Estero Island turned into “a sterile island.”
Jay Light
Fort Myers Beach