The Big Questions

Planner Running for County Leg

At the October 9 meeting on the comprehensive plan, a number of people in the audience talked about the need for better city and county coordination in handling vacant and abandoned properties, and the problems caused by the current system where the county takes over foreclosed properties and auctions them off.

Anyone who has an interest in that might want to pay attention to the race for the District 7 County legislature seat. With no Republican and the incumbent not running on a third line, the race is, interestingly, between an unappealing Democratic candidate (more on that in my next column, it's not so relevant here), Brian Scavo, and Green Party candidate David Lussier. Lussier is a student in the SUNY urban planning masters program, and one of his primary platform pieces is reforming the abandoned buildings procedures. He knows Albany inside out (the "Dave tour of Albany" is well-known among his friends and includes fascinating bits of history and context about every neighborhood), is familiar with the SDAT plan recommendations, and has a shot at winning the seat.

Given that cities cannot operate in isolation, someone at the county level who's interested in thinking about ways in which the county can support better planning and development in the city would be a huge boon during, and especially after, a comprehensive planning effort.

(full disclosure: I vote in District 7 and I am actively supporting Lussier as a candidate.)

The pieces we need to stitch together

Because everyone keep talking about them, for your background reading, here are some links to existing plans or the starts of plans in Albany:

Neighborhood Plans: South End/"Capital South," Arbor Hill, Midtown, and Park South
There are also a number of older neighborhood plans not listed on this site. I'm not sure if they're available in electronic format or not. I'll work on that.

Special area/projects: Harriman Campus, Albany Pine Bush Preserve Management Plans

Economic development/downtown: Capitalize Albany and ReCapitalize Albany

Sustainable Design Assessment Team (inital PowerPoint, not final report)

Not a plan, but relevant: Albany Convention Center

Which ones am I missing?

Good Government

So I am way behind on picking up on this because I have been relying on contact info I already had for members of the Common Council, but I was please to see that the printed pamphlet with the 2007 Albany Common Council calendar and contact info for the council members has a lot more information it in than previous iterations. Things like:

• a description of how to comment at council meetings and public hearings
• an explanation of who the people sitting up at the dais during council meetings are
• a description of how the president pro tempore and majority leader are chosen and what they do
• a listing not only of the committees and their chairs, but also the city boards, their purposes, and when they meet

It's a small thing, but it's one of those small symbolic things that can a lot about governmental attitudes toward participation. Kudos to whoever added it in there.

(You can pick up your own copy at the Common Council office of City Hall, Room 206.)

"Albany has the assets to succeed"

I am a bad blogger. This is because I no matter how much I poke around, I do miss news stories on topics I'm interested in. For example, I missed this op-ed by Barbara Smith from late August. It's worth a read.

The skinny on the comp plan board/committee

We also learned a bit about the status of comp plan committee (I guess it's being called a committee now, not a board?) at the meeting tonight. People have been asking me what's up with it, so here's the word:

It seems that the deadline for resumes/letters of interest was extended a couple times in order to get a sufficiently diverse pool of applicants (and it's still open!), as the response by the first two deadlines was a little anemic. They have about 80 applicants now, and are just starting to interview people.

The planning department is hoping the Council will be able to approve the final membership by January, although Doug was careful to say that might be optimistic.

Wow. On the one hand, you want to do it right, and rushing together a non representative committee would not have been the way to go. But it does also seem like there's a danger of losing the momentum from the SDAT, tonight's meeting, etc. if the committee isn't even seated until more than six months after the enabling legislation passed. I guess as long as the committee is able to shoot out of the starting gate and get going it will be able to rekindle things. But only a small number of people, even devoted citizens, have unlimited attention spans.

Guess we'll do our best. In the meantime, take your last chance to apply for that committee! Send a letter to your councilperson, or [email protected].

The Art of Public Meetings, Part II

So meetings are not one-way streets. There are facilitators and there are participants. As I wrote about with the AIA Sustainable Design process in August, I find myself a little conflicted at many of these public meetings. I am a die-hard believer in the importance of public process, but then I also frequently find myself wanting to shake people and say "Stay on topic!" or "Didn't you listen to what the man just said?"

I'm trying to balance this tendency with a growing suspicion that if you want people who are not meeting junkies to participate in a given public process, the first step has to be letting them have a chance to vent about whatever's on their minds before you can nail them down to focused contributions to solutions. In that light, that's what tonight was for many people, I think.

There were a lot of personal pet peeves (like the tangent of people complaining about historic codes that won't let them paint their house the color they want or how there are too many bars on South Pearl) and general storytelling about how the neighborhoods used to be and how it's all gone downhill.

Much as at the beginning of the SDAT charettes, there was also a lot of concern about the comprehensive plan process not duplicating all the neighborhood planning that's been happening. Doug answered that quite well by saying that they would be drawing together the existing plans and looking at how they relate to each other and how the city relates to its larger region. A comp plan, he noted, should be, among other things, a single document that can sit on the podium at every planning board and zoning board meeting, making sure that all decisions are being guided by a single vision for the city. (Archie Goodbee, in a characteristically brief appearance, compared the need from a comp plan to a business with many branches needing a guiding vision for its presence in a region.)

It's a good answer. It will be, of course, harder to answer the people, especially those who've been part of the recent South End planning, who are complaining about general meeting burnout. I'm not sure there's a good way around that, except to draw in new blood.

In amongst all this, though, there were also some clear planning themes emerging that could definitely carry into a comprehensive planning process: vacant buildings/lots; infrastructure, especially failing water and sewer; local hiring for public works; and getting useful retail into underserved neighborhoods. The people in that room had some very detailed knowledge of how the water/sewer problems and vacant buildings and codes issues were playing out in their neighborhoods.

Given that, I wish again that these folks had been part of the SDAT process. Not only would they have contributed a lot to the discussion, but they would have been, I think, heartened to hear the very concrete, achievable  suggestions about changes to the handling of vacant and abandoned properties in particular that the SDAT team suggested and that the city is looking into trying to implement. I did wish that some of that had been brought out in response to some of the comments.

In general, I think that one key to getting folks like those who came tonight involved long term in this  planning process may be being able to show some concrete action on issues they care about so they don't feel like they're treading water. In fact, that wouldn't hurt for any us, of course.

One of the women at the meeting said to me afterwards that while the overall tone may not have been quite what the organizers had been hoping for, she thought it was a good and hopeful meeting and that when people were given a chance to get into the meat of the issues, they would. That could be pretty neat, I think.

The Art of Public Meetings, Part I

Tonight's comp plan info session was held in the lobby of the Albany Housing Authority, and moderated by Barbara Smith. It began with a short presentation by Doug Melnick, the city's planning director, and then Doug and Barbara listened to comments and answered questions.

The content of Doug's presentation was right on target and really nice to see. He started at the beginning and laid out all the basics: What is a comprehensive plan? What does it do and what doesn't it do? Why should you care? What topics might it cover? How will the process work? This is exactly the kind of information that is often skipped over, which leads to only people in the know feeling welcome and able to get involved.

How much of the audience got as much as they could have out of the presentation isn't entirely clear. Doug had competition from the singing in the neighboring meeting room, but even without that, he was speaking softly and quickly. As countless older people have beat into my head at places I've spoken, slowing down and speaking up is essential. And tough, I know.

Also, he fell into a very common problem with Power Point presentations: He had put a fair amount of information on each slide, and he seemed to think it would be repetitious to actually say everything on there, so he'd start to describe each slide and then trail off. Even for the speed readers like me in the audience, this made the presentation a little hard to follow and made Doug seem more unsure about what he had to say than he probably was. And many people don't absorb information visually that well at all. Making sure you are always amplifying what's on the screen, rather than summarizing, is much safer (Doug has promised to make the Power Point available. Perhaps I'll be able to  link to it or post some it later.)

Both Doug and Barbara handled the wide-ranging discussion (more on that next) quite well.  Barbara has a knack for diffusing hostile comments without dismissing the concerns expressed. And I in particular have to give Doug major kudos for being a city official who is (1) willing to say "I don't know but I'll find out" and (2) willing to say "We didn't do X as well as we could have; We've learned from that. We're going to do it differently next time" (in this case outreach to communities of color for the SDAT) instead of being defensive. Or really just being able to respond to hostile questions in general without seeming defensive. These are simple, but very very powerful and all too rare things (especially the latter). They are much harder to learn than the finer points of public speaking.

Report Back on South End Comp Plan Info Session

As I mentioned earlier, tonight was a meeting organized by Councilwoman Barbara Smith to encourage residents of the South End, Arbor Hill, West Hill, and Park South (i.e., people who are often underrepresented and especially people of color) to get involved with the comprehensive plan. As usual, I'll break my notes on the meeting into a few posts based on theme.

Overall, this was a very hopeful meeting. They had a great turnout—I counted in the vicinity of 50 people, about half people of color (and of the white folk most were actual residents of those neighborhoods). And while there were some familiar faces, there were a lot of folks who have not been involved much with citywide issues, and some that even the regular neighborhood activists said were new. So the basic goal of the meeting—expanding who was participating in the conversation about the comprehensive plan—was clearly met. Not that it's all over and done; this was the first step. But it's started.

Also, and I hadn't really processed this before when I passed on the meeting announcement, this was technically the first official public community information session about the comprehensive plan. It was nice symbolism not only to be really working to get these neighborhoods represented, but to actually go to them first.

So, on to the details...

What's Albany's elevator pitch?

The following is how Denver's mayor answered the question "What's Denver's unique selling proposition?" in the City Hall column of The Next American City (Summer 2007):

What makes us special, I think, is the place itself. We're nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and have 300 days of sunshine with four distinct seasons. We've got 850 miles of bike paths, more than any other city. If you were able to measure the percentage of people who choose to live in a city based solely on quality of life issues, I think we'd come up number one. I also like to mention our values, which I see as uniquely Western values. We're a place that's more defined by our future than our past; people's achievements here are not defined by who their parents were, but by their own skills and exertions.

What do you say when you lay the cynic voice aside and respond to someone who says "Why Albany?" What would you say if you were mayor and trying to sell the city?

I'll post my own, and some that people have said to me, in a few days.

[Edit] Extra credit: Write one that doesn't also apply to Troy. (Hey, I love Troy! It's just an interesting exercise.)

Smart Parking

The transportation expert on the SDAT team made some comment about lack of coordination between parking options in downtown, and I'll admit that I didn't really understand what she was talking about. My thoughts about parking tend to stray in the direction of keeping the perceived need for it from destroying other planning goals.

But I recently stumbled across the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership's reserved parking program, and I have to admit, it's a pretty cool idea for making people more comfortable with coming into a downtown. Basically, if you know you're going to need a downtown parking spot, you can reserve one in any garage through a phone call or e-mail to one place, 24 hours in advance.

What I don't get is why it's only active for 10 am - 2 pm. It seems perhaps (since you can park for free after 2 pm) that demand drops off steeply in the evening and it's not hard to find a spot. Even though that's true here too, I still think in Albany the ability to have a guaranteed spot at the nearest garage might encourage people who want to go to a show at the Palace or the Times Pepsibocker.

Of course I'd also like to see the bus schedules extended to allow for evening excursions like that, but I know that's not going to capture a large percentage of the entertainment crowd any time soon.