Jim O'Bryan wrote:
Back in the days of the Visionary Alignment for Lakewood, we looked at retail, commercial,
and what Lakewood has almost always been a bedroom community. Which is the surer
bet for Lakewood, and what can be implemented the quickest. In all cases we came back
tothe VAL credo, CLEAN, SAFE, FUN. If a city is clean(streets/housing/parks), and if it
is safe(police/fire/businesses/walkability) and fun(entertainment, recreation) with a
good location it should be easier to accomplish here than anywhere outside of a very few cities in the region. This should be able to attract another 10,000 - 15,000 residents
which give us taxes, and makes all businesses more solvent, for more taxes.
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Jim,
I like the credo of the Visionary Alliance for Lakewood, but I have to ask, why did you leave out ‘good schools’, which seem at least as important as ‘entertainment’ to attracting families to Lakewood?
Or does the modern vision of Lakewood exclude families?
Is that why it seems okay with everybody to close the school in the center of the densest population of people and families in the city? Because maybe someday when the economy recovers, a mall can be put there? Is that the kind of entertainment you’re talking about?
Closing that school is going to drive away families looking for a good community in which to raise their young children—the very same people that you would think would respond to the “Safe Clean Fun” idea, only they’d also be looking for good schools, which we have.
When they consider Lakewood, with no centrally located school, they’ll see that all of the schools are clustered on the edges, south of Athens, north of Detroit, as if Lakewood was embarrassed to admit that they have families and kids, and they certainly don’t want people with strollers and little kids with backpacks walking, or shopping, or eating at restaurants, or paying taxes, right in the center of their safe, clean, fun town. Who was that beautiful new library, with the amazing children's section, built for?
As you know, I was part of the Phase 3 committee that researched population density and “walkability” as it pertained to schools. We found that Grant, which is right in the middle of the city, was the school that best served the city, along with Roosevelt, in the southern central part of the city, if the criteria was “walkability.” Or, if we wanted to put schools where kids and families are, have been, and will continue to be, if one believes the U.S. Census Bureau or the County Auditor's Office.
At the September 15th Community Forum, our findings were marginalized or hidden outright, in the presence of our elected officials on the School Board. There might have been those in the room that night, or in the community in general, who did not agree with the conclusions we reached with our data, but they were not given the opportunity to have that data presented to them.
The School Board has yet to make their official decision on this issue—which school to close, or if they even
should close a school--but they made no move to protect, support, or even reveal the findings of the committee that they themselves commissioned. They made no move to reassure the moms and dads and concerned residents who spent hundreds of hours working on that committee-- when they could have been home with their families-- that their time wasn’t utterly abused and wasted. There were more than fifty of us, every other Tuesday since January, for two hours a night, and a lot more on our various committees between meetings, more than 2000 hours all together away from our lives and homes and kids. All that time, all that work. None of it considered by the community at the forum set up for exactly that.
At the last School Board meeting, at which the Phase 3 Committee was to report their recommendations, the evening started with a petition being read that asked that the School Board disregard the "findings" of the September 15th Community Forum, and instead, make their decision "based on facts." The Phase 3 portion ended with a different member of the Coordinating Council, one who was trying to respect all the work that the Phase 3 Committee had done, telling the School Board that because of elements that had been brought into the second Community Forum that were "out of the scope of the Phase 3 Steering Committee," our committee wasn't going to make a recommendation after all. After all that work.
I'm very glad that a responsible person from the Phase 3 Coordinating Council stepped up and had the last word at that School Board meeting. But what about all the work we did? The Phase 3 Committee was not tasked with making final recommendations. By law, the School Board must make a final decision. We were asked to sort through a lot of information and make preliminary recommendations. We did have recommendations. We were not allowed to share them with the community at the "Community Forum."
Why did this happen?
When I continued reading this thread and I saw Shelly Hurd’s message to Elected Officials, along with Jim’s “safe clean fun” comments, I had to jump in.
Shelley Hurd wrote:
Just how hard is it to investigate the facts, represent your constitutes interests (which by the way are what THEY tell you they are, not what other elected officials and or businesses types tell you is in their best interest) and treat these people as if they were human, have legitimate concerns, are aware of what’s good for them themselves. And they also know what is in Lakewood‘s best interest. Show some humility and realize you are NOT omnipotent . Then deliver and state truth.
Really, how hard is that?
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This sounded so much like a voice crying out from the Phase 3 committee, I wanted to make sure that it was.
So what I'm saying is that maybe Lakewood doesn’t actually want families here if their elected officials are willing to treat them this way.
I know that there’s a concern that in the latest census Lakewood will fall under 50,000 people. You would think families moving here would help. You would think keeping families from moving out of here, because they no longer have a pleasant walk with their young kids, but a haul to one end of the city or the other—might as well drive, or move—would help.
Whose vision are we following?
And is it important that the regular citizens of Lakewood are kept blind for it to work?
We worked for more than 6 months to try to shed some light for our fellow citizens on a matter as simple as where students live and are likely to live, and which building sites were best suited for schools, only to have our "Coordinating Council" taken over by one politically connected person who decided that the regular parents in Lakewood didn't need the information we worked so hard gathering. Even though it was precisely our task to gather it.
Many of us had been told from the beginning that we were wasting our time on the Phase 3 Committee, that "the fix was in," that the Board already knew which school they were going to close but they wanted it to look like "the community" had made the decision. We took the School Board at their word and did good work, and in the end, had that work buried. The school we were were told would be "chosen", was miraculously "chosen" by "The Community", who were never given the chance to see the actual information we spent all that time researching.
To give the School Board credit, even though they immediately posted the September 15th Community Forum "findings" online, as if it was indeed a done deal and the September 15th Forum had actually been honest, in the end, they did not allow those "findings" to result in a recommendation from the Phase 3 Committee. The Board accepted the decision of more responsible voices on the Phase 3 Committee, when those voices stated that the Phase 3 Committee, in good conscience, could not make a recommendation. The Board is now back at square one, having to make this decision by themselves.
I have loved this city and these schools and the care they've taken with my children, which is why I joined the Phase 3 committee in the first place. If the people who "really" run Lakewood, don't understand what's valuable about this city, and try to suppress information that would help it survive into a difficult economic future, what are we to do?
I thought the answer was that we regular moms and dads and residents make sure that everyone is registered to vote, and then make sure that everyone does vote. But if the people we elect are going to step down and appoint more insiders, with their narrow vision of what is "good" for the city, what are we supposed to do?
Betsy Voinovich