MyWHaT

North Traverse Heights Neighborhood Association

Mayor Chris Bzdok was in attendance at last night’s North Traverse Heights Neighborhood Association meeting to give his spiel about changing the process of implementing city projects. He’d like to see city commissioners act more like “advocates for city residents“, taking direction from them individually and from the neighborhood associations. As well as, getting city staff to look to the neighborhoods for direction at the beginning of projects instead of in the middle or near the end. Amen.

What came out last night was that the mayor had asked the 7 neighborhood association chairpersons to make a list of the most important city issues.

Vicky Springer, chair of the Oak Park Neighborhood, read a draft.

Top on the list:

• The calming & improvements of city streets. She expressed a collective interest in limiting cut-through traffic, reduction of speeds and better maintenance.
• Improvements for non-motorized traffic. There is strong interest for increased education and enforcement of traffic laws for automobile drivers, as well as more bicycle pathways and amenities. She listed several problem areas: 8th St., Garfield Ave., Woodmere Ave. and in-particular the pedestrian cross walk at Washington St. and Garfield Ave.. That cross walk has been been a failed attempt by the city at least twice in the last decade.

Other issues were access to the beach, improvement of parkland, tax increases during a time of home devaluation, festivals and improvement of BATA. On the last note, she expressed a strong interest in riding the city buses if it was more convenient.

As expected, the issue of increasing number of pedestrian and bicycle commuters was discussed with the standard complaints: running of stop signs, lack of lights, walking or riding on the wrong side of the road. What needed to be corrected was the perception that people not driving cars must be related to past drunk driving convictions or “something”. A resident quickly spoke up to say that many people are making the choice to ride for economic, environmental or lifestyle choices.

Clearly, education opportunities remain.

Over 30 people were attendance at the North Traverse Heights Neighborhood Association

Last night’s meeting, like most, began with reports from the sector patrol officer and planning and zoning department. There wasn’t anything unexpected–many citations, signage issues, and a 25-year-old male, who rides a bike, who is prime suspect number one for some recent “tagging” on garages, buildings and signs. The discussion then went into a lengthy discussion about self-protection and the use of pepper-spray. Huh?

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UPDATED:With photo at 11AM