The CAC is also applying for a grant from the Department of Environmental Conservation's Hudson River Estuary Program. The grant, if awarded, would fund hiring a consultant to manage the natural resources and open space inventory being undertaken by the CAC, to draft a conservation plan for the city which would be an amendment to the 2002 Comprehensive Plan, and to plan and implement a public participation process to inform the conservation plan.
COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK
The Recreational Conservation Zoning Districts in the North and South Bays (2011) came straight from the 2002 Comprehensive Plan.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't get everything we wanted in 2011 (e.g., the South Bay R-C District is zoned to allow a conveyor system down the middle), but there's a clear direction in all of this which is carrying the City's general conservation outlook forward.
But the only way it will work is if we keep fighting for it. For example, the sewer separation application for federal funding cited the Comprehensive Plan for things that weren't actually in the plan. Even worse, it disregarded things that were in the plan which could only be interpreted as arguments against the proposed action.
A conservation plan should clarify things that are already in the Comprehensive Plan, but are in need of updating.
But don't suppose that any consultant with the word "environmental" in the name will have their heart in the right place.
Never forget BFJ Planners, whose default instinct was to take the LWRP wherever the public couldn't reach it. In every instance, BFJ's first impulse was to discount the public; worse yet, the public was always disregarded in favor of the mining industry.
Anyone who lived through that awful experience has earned the right to demand that the next consultant be vetted, and that the vetters be vetted too.
Slow and steady, which is not what happened last time.
More thoughts on vetting the vetters:
ReplyDeleteIt sometimes seems we spend most of our energy and resources attempting to reverse the initial poor decisions of misguided City officials who trust their authoritarian instincts ahead of public dialogue.
It seems to be an ineradicable poison in Hudson politics, which undermines the participatory ethos by perverting civic discourse.
WE MUST NOT ALLOW AN ENVIRONMENTAL 'CONSULTANT' TO BE CHOSEN BY AUTOCRATIC DECREE.