Redevelopment committee content

Deirdre Newman

Disgruntled members of a committee to improve the Westside realized

last week that they can work within the larger group to get their

concerns met.

But the handful of Community Redevelopment Action Committee

members still want to meet after the committee presents its final

recommendations to ensure their proposals are heeded. The

redevelopment committee, which has shrunk to 34 members from its

original 80, has been meeting since June to create a blueprint for

the Westside.

The disgruntled members, who had issues with the facilitator-led

process last month, are now content to work with the facilitators to

get things such as rezoning the bluffs to residential, member Janice

Davidson said.

But they don’t want their hard work to experience the same

forsaken fate as the Westside Specific Plan, which city officials

abandoned two years ago after two years of community investment,

Davidson said.

“Everybody would like us to keep a finger on the pot and just see

nothing happens to it,” Davidson said. “The last one got tossed in

the trash.”

The Redevelopment Agency -- the City Council wearing another hat

-- created the Community Redevelopment Action Committee in January

2002. The goal was to engage competing factions of the community to

find common ground for the future of the neighborhood.

In February, the committee created a tentative vision statement

for the Westside, with descriptors such as physically attractive,

safe, socially vibrant, economically desirable and accessible. At its

March meeting, the committee began devising action statements to

achieve these attributes.

Last week, the committee members came to conclusions on a few

issues, but did not complete the entire process. They are expected to

finish in one to two months.

One of the smaller group’s members, Paul Bunney, has grown

discouraged with the long process.

“I’m one of those people who keeps pushing to get things moving

and accomplished,” Bunney said. “I’m real frustrated with how long

it’s taking and how we don’t get council support for something like

the 19th Street bridge.”

Terri Breer said that at first, she thought the problem was the

committee’s large size. Now she is hopeful about the larger

committee’s ability to reach consensus.

“I just felt that as we were honing in on our vision, that we were

finding areas of consensus and that we were basically moving things

closer to finalizing a vision,” Breer said.