What would you do to help bridge the difference between development and neighborhood interests?
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Information, perspective and discussion on quality of life in the Brazos Valley
6 comments:
Why do we need to build a bridge? The neighborhoods, and more to the point the citizens, run the city. The developers are alway talking about market forces, yet they feel that they should be exempt. All of this stuff about development will not come if we do not do what they say is just bull. We do not want any and all development and we do not want developers whose idea of communicating is to make threats. Not all developers are the same. The developers we currently have are into nothing more than quick return on their investment with no regard to the community. We need developers who are more willing to work to the desires of the community. As long as we continue to be run by cheap development, we will not attract quality development. Build a bridge....what other set of business people is demanding so much? I'm waiting for some part of the real estate and development community to come forward and say that they want to do things differently than Weingartens and this political block that is trying to trash good citizens running for office. Until then the developers can take a leap from that bridge.
First; at least one side would have to WANT a bridge. I do not see that. Instead, I am seeing the gap widen. The effect that important issues are being ignored. It is getting harder and harder to make progress because fewer and fewer in our community are willing to look for areas of common interest.
Our local politics are getting toxic. If someone were to try ti build a bridge the snipers from both sides will begin taking potshots. It just isn't worth the effort.
While the first poster makes a good point, developers really are a special class of business that require a special relationship with the city. It is worth nurturing those relationships.
Anon II, I'm certainly not unbiased, but I don't perceive shots being fired from both sides. We need to have vigorous discussion of ideas and practices. Which is different than the stuff we have seen coming from both Gay and Dictson. John Crompton has been absolutely above board. He certainly has not tried to smear his opponent with the ideas and actions of his supporters. Maloney made a fairly snide comment at the forum about Gay's visit to see the Pope but he has not, that I have heard, misrepresenting what Gay has said.
There would be no need for a bridge if the development was in the best interest of the neighbourhood (citizens). And it is the neighbourhood (citizens)that should be the judge of that, not the developers or their puppets on the council.
The bridge that needs to be built is between the Eastside neighborhoods and the rest of College Station's residents. How many times has the city spent money on a traffic study the size of the one done for the East side?
Why are we spending money to solve POSSIBLE traffic problems when there are REAL ones on the West side of SH6?
They are the ones seeking to use the city's finite resources for their own agendas.
The money on the traffic study was spent because of proposed developments, not because of the neighborhoods. I do not live on the East side and I have worked with those residents on development issues. I have been very grateful that those folks cared enough to mobilize. Hopefully the rest of the town will start to fill this way because these issues really do impact all of us.
We should have impact fees connected to development that would finance more comprehensive traffic studies for the whole town and developers should be required to provide more localized studies that are connected to development applications.
The number of trips that would have triggered these studies in the staff’s recent recommendations was a start, but way too low. Nonetheless, the City Council was swayed by the developers to throw away the work that the staff had put into making those recommendations at the request of the very council members who voted against it.
Post a Comment