Parks Co-Chairs Lauren Wilkes Fralick and Jack White will conduct walking tours of the propsed changes to John Howell Park.
To see the article about proposed improvements and maintenance to John Howell Park, click here.
Landscape Architect Tour of Proposed Changes to John Howell Park
Virginia Highland-Druid Hills See map
Comments + Leave a Comment
Boards
All Boards »
Jeff Young January 26, 2013 at 08:38 pm
Ms. Sears, Clearly, you don't want to engage in a reasoned debate on this issue. When you wrote…Read More "let's work together" you forgot to add "so long as we do it my way."
If your real concern was removing invasive non-native plants, would you be spending all this time and effort raising money to build expensive bridges and a 31 mile trail?
Jeff Young January 26, 2013 at 08:42 pm
Since our announcement unveiling the PMG web site, I have been waiting to see if anyone from SFC…Read More would substantively address the thoroughly reasoned positions and impressive factual sources you will find if you visit the PMG web site. But no, and at first you might think that it’s the few pro-SFC commenters who are the small, but loud minority.
However, SFC all along has chosen to work behind the scenes, as though they were trained in Washington politics. They don’t want to face up to neighbor concerns, or new academic research on trails, or even have to provide half-detailed specifications to justify the cost and impact of their grandiose scheme. Could it be they know how to obtain funding and approvals the political way, without the bothersome public? Could it be they know what is good for the rest of us and just need us to shut up? What country is this?
Here is an example. SFC managed to get DeKalb County to file a grant application with the State without any public hearing, telling the County Commission that the community supports the SFC connected trail plan, and seeking funds for connecting Zonolite park to their other proposed trails. This contradicted what SFC told MLPA, that connecting trails were not part of the Zonolite work. And, SFC did not tell the Commission or the State about the negative feedback acknowledged in the Park Pride Report. (continued)
Jeff Young January 26, 2013 at 08:43 pm
At that MLPA meeting, PMG’s position was that we would not oppose work confined to Zonolite…Read More that was not for connecting to the larger SFC trail plan, if that was the result of an open process involving the impacted neighbors and businesses. Did we feel snookered by the DeKalb grant application? You bet.
So what I say to SFC is: let’s debate this out in the open and have the same sort of dialog we all now expect when the use of property is taken up a notch, whether it’s a for condo, or a road widening, or a re-zoning, or a trail. PMG will keep on sharing facts with decision makers and impacted neighbors until that happens.