It seems like a fine idea, add one more session at the tail of the existing schedule and set that as the topic.
Bob Ramsey's email states:
How about using open space technology sessions to help decide what the town center should be? I like the idea about getting the citizens involved, but a referendum? What questions could possibly be asked on a ballot? How long would the ballot be? [...]
I like open space technology, I think it’s a great tool if implemented properly. I think we could [...] get a real sense about what people really want. What do you think?
All good points. I think enough of the idea to promote it. With fair attribution, of course.
We should do that. I think Ramsey planning staff would be amenable to another session, that topic, as part of 2008 Comprehensive Plan deliberation.
How to manage a referendum?
Problematic? Yes, but it would be something that could be done and done better than that earlier sorry exercise where a ballot question was, "Would you like nice shops and restaurants," and then the 60% affirmative vote was postured and paraded by some as if it were an affirmation of a $19.2 million city hall plunge; and a ratification in advance of hearing about 2400, 2800, however many new dense shared wall housing units were in the works.
What would a more balanced question have yielded by referendum? What would the response have been if the extravagant city hall thing had been put to a fairly worded referendum? Go figure why it was not.
Here's a cut at fair and simple referendum wording:
Would you prefer no further build-out of Ramsey Town Center until there are shops and restaurants first?
Should shops and restaruants be publicly or privately funded?
Should the City spend more on Town Center before letting citizens know the full total of how much is planned to be spent, and what the money would be spent for?
Would you rather see Town Center stay just as it is, or have more public investment there to attempt to advance the project if that would mean your taxes increase within five years by $100 per year?
That last one seems key - a what's it worth to YOU question - hold onto your money or not - and, is seeing the turkey try to fly worth an extra $500/year to you, or not (even if the increment over the next five years is staged and not a single shot $500 up front increase)? How much do the voting citizens think that thing is worth to them? Why not ask and find out? What could be fairer than asking? If people do not really want it, why do it to people as a cram down?
Some folks in Ramsey, I expect, want to hide from what the answers might be.
Yet, why not be fair and simple? Does anybody have any problem with that?
However, even absent any referendum, I think Bob Ramsey's suggestion should have little or no opposition. I see nothing wrong with an effort at trying to find out what people who are participating in the Comp. Plan sessions think about how Ramsey Town Center is to be part of the plan.
My suggestion is that the planners, at the start of tomorrow's scheduled sewer/water session ask for a show of hands over whether adding that one futher session would be good as a final single topic issue instead of capping the sessions with the transportation issue? Indeed, how Town Center evolves will have a profound effect on transportation - all those people between Highway 10 and the rest of us, and changes we already have seen on that stretch of Ramsey Blvd. - the two more lights between me and a destination kind of thing is an impact on all of the rest of us.
I think we should talk it out. Others might prove more willing than I would be to continue funding the arguably failed Town Center experiment.
Perhaps the mayor would show up. And stay until the session ended. Novelty would be nice sometime. Or if Bob Ramsey stays for all the sessions as he has, perhaps he should become mayor? If he'd take the job untying the Grodian knot he'd be inheriting without tying a more inextricable one, of a different "property rights" kind.
Finally - in terms of Gordian knots and surprises - it is nostalgia time, and we can reflect on how appealing our 2001 Comp Plan was, talking of a MUSA line and sane ways of doing things, like that.
It is one thing to cut the Gordian knot as Alexander did, and a wholly different thing to hack about as if there were one, when none exists as cause for anyone's intense hacking effort. So, then, why was MUSA hacked apart? It was nobody's problem. It made good sense. Who in the world benefitted from hacking that up?