The Planning Commission meeting at City Hall room #12 and starts at 6:30 pm and will have a public hearing at 7:00 pm time-certain.
There are 4 items for discussion during this public hearing. Let me draw your attention to item #2 which is the Parks department asking the Planning Commision to alter the parks lot coverage by 5 to 7 fold. It is now 5% in all parks They want to change 5% to 25% in some parks and 35% in others. That is a huge jump and quite a leap of faith.
In 2008 the lot coverages were all set to 5% with no data on actual current coverage for the time. Assigning an arbitrary percent without actual data has tied the hands of the Parks Department. Are they using the same process now to assign new lot coverage percentage? It seems they might. We need to be there to be sure the change is based on intelligence rather than just a new arbitrary request.
Lot coverage is what amount of man-made structures and other park features allowed.in the park. Some of our parks are small and do have much more than 5%..City Hall Park is an example. Thus lot coverage increase makes sense in certain cases. But even in these cases the lack of data raises a red flag.for many people.
We need to understand what the parks lot coverage is, what the needs for maintenance are and the projected plans that may change what is on the park's lot.. This will provide an intelligent lot coverage proposal. The current request does not come with the data that explains why all parks are to have 5 to 7 fold increase.
Why does this matter? Can we imagine Ethan Allen Park if the Parks department actually used these new numbers. That would totally change the park character.. Another reason it matters is that without information to the public, how can we be expected to know how to respond at a public hearing?
So what about the data? The Parks department says that there is urgency to these changes. So it may seem that there may not be time to wait for data. But that is not true. The Plan BTV Parks Master Plan is being developed. The early stages are either complete or near complete. The data we need for ihe intelligent request is available or soon will be. The Master plan is scheduled to be complete in just a few months. That means that the projected changes will be known and even better understanding of what actual lot coverage makes sense.
Without intelligent proposals our parks character could change in ways we do not want..Please attend the public hearing to learn what is being asked for and why. We need full data and time to digest what the data translates to in the real world.
Hope to see you there.
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