Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Commission should put Barnum committee on track

The Ad Hoc Barnum Design Committee didn't take long to show its true colors. At its fourth meeting Monday, the committee laid bare its single-minded approach to Barnum: Give Beaumont the boot and tear down the building as soon as possible, ensuring for a small but vocal group of neighboring residents an oversized, underplanned 8.3-acre backyard park.

With its letter to the City Commission (see story below) the committee dashed any residual hope in the community that it is truly interested in and capable of master planning a park.

The effective design: A vacant lot, "some grass and trees," as committee Chairman Jeff Van Dorn put it.

Given the committee's conclusion, it might as well have asked the City Commission to abandon the idea of an RFP altogether. Nobody needs a professional firm to design a vacant lot.

We feel like we're on a merry-go-round.

As recently as January 23, the commission voted down a virtually identical proposal to evict Beaumont early and tear down the building. The proposal failed for good reason. No firm plans exist for the park, and no reliable official estimates exist for cost of demolition and park improvements.

That's why the commission appointed the Ad Hoc Design Committee: So that the community could rest assured that a master plan is put in place to take us from Point A, which is where we are today, to Point B, which is what a master plan would show.

Contrary to Chairman Van Dorn's assertion that demolition is "what the citizens want," two previous ad hoc Barnum committees have extolled the virtues of the well-maintained Barnum School building as an asset to the community that can be put to good use -- use we hasten to add that could help fund park improvements.

Since January, little has changed. The design committee hasn't yet issued an RFP, and so we are not much closer to a master plan.

The City Commission should either put the Barnum committee on track, or put the task of evaluating potential planners into the hands of a committee willing and able to do the job.