SW Employment Area (SWEA) on Thursday 10/2

This is a heads up that the SWEA (pronounced like wheee!) Stakeholders Advisory Committee (pronounced SAC - duh) is holding its first meeting tomorrow.  The SWEA SAC (it's almost fun to say) meetings are open to the public, and like other land use plan meetings (think Foothills, the TSP, or the Comp Plan), there will be opportunities for citizen comment.  

Meetings are listed on the City Meetings Calendar on the City website, and some materials will be posted under the SWEA planning project page (Case # PIP 13-002)

Thursday, October 2

Lakeridge Jr. High School Library

(Formerly Waluga Jr. High)

 4700 Jean Rd. 

4:30 pm - 6:30 pm

There are only about 4 SWEA AC planning meetings before the final draft is produced along with Open Houses for the general public.  

It would be helpful for the public to get a thorough, unfiltered background view of the project.  I would like to see ALL of the project materials posted on the project website where the public can access them easily.  Key documents can be labeled as such.  
Here are some important documents that are NOT on the project web page:

• Internal Governmental Agreement (IGA) with staff report, contract, and deliverables  (starts on pg. 89)
• Request for Proposal (RFP) for consulting services  

These ARE on the project or meeting website: 

• SWEA Draft Project Schedule (09.25.14) 
• Resolution 14-56 (See excerpt below detailing the purpose of the SW Employment area from the Comprehensive Plan)
• Draft Project Goals*

* See No. 5:  Why is there a need to execute a buildable plan in such a hurry?  Is there something happening I don't know about?  Is this Detroit?  Perhaps a developer is waiting for accompanying code changes, public infrastructure, public financing or incentives to take effect, or maybe Metro has a multimodal, TOD plan for the area. The rush just seems odd. 

Who are "stakeholders?" Generally the city creates a list of people who own property within or next to the plan area along with someone from the planning commission and city council if they so choose.  In this case, the Commission for Citizen Involvement requested citizens at large be included to represent the rest of us. So if you want more input or feedback, these are your go-to people for representation.  All meetings will be facilitated by a consultant team.  

Southwest Employment Area Advisory Committee:

Skip O'Neil - City Council

Ed Brockman - Planning Commission

Brent Bianchina - Rosewood NA

Lisa Volpel - Rosewood NA

Rebecca Crew - LO Chamber of Commerce

Lynn Barra - Owner Paradigm Froodworks, property owner

Mike Duyn - Commercial Real Estate Broker

Sean McNamara - Commercial Real Estate Broker

Scott Stoddard - Micro Systems Engineering Inc. - Employer

Terry Keyes - At Large

Ann Mestrovich - At Large

Joseph Taylor - At Large

Jennifer Sachmeier - Alternate

USC NOTE:  A larger discussion about how other CACs, SACs and ACs are formed and what they do will be for another day.  If you are like me, it has always remained a mystery to me who these committee people were and how they were selected.  I only found out about them after the fact which was (and continues to be) not very helpful to me or anyone else.  The very strange practice of having consultants manage citizen committees and public meetings will also be discussed.  All cities do this these days ($$$), and you have to wonder why.  But it at least explains why the public feels "managed" during these land use plan processes - it's because they are.