So how do you like the process?

Back in September the Friends of Lents Park released a letter expressing serious concerns with the public involvement process for the Lents Park Master Plan (see previous posts). We called for the process to be slowed down and opened up to better reflect the community.

We were listened to! But have we gotten everything we need to have full confidence in this process? Our members will need to be the judge.

As detailed in previous posts, a delegation from the Steering Committee met with Parks Department staff and staff from Commissioner Fish's office. Out of this meeting, and the informal Project Advisory Committee meeting that followed, came a proposal for an expanded public involvement process. How this process will work has been further clarified by recent communications from the Parks Department. It will go something like this:

* The Project Advisory Committee (PAC) adopts a "preferred design" map, incorporating public input from the three previous concept maps. This is proposed to take place at the PAC meeting, Wednesday, October 13, 6 - 9 pm, at Marshall High School. This meeting is open to the public, so you can have input into this decision! (See the post immediately prior to this for meeting details.)

* The City, with input from the PAC, develops a comment form for the preferred design map, to be finalized by October 20.

* Three "listening sessions" will be held the week of October 25, for open-ended public discussion of what we want for our park. Proposed schedule is:
October 25 - Active Recreation, 6-8 pm, Lents Commons
October 27 - Community Spaces, 6-8 pm, Lents Commons
October 30 - Sustainability, 9-11 am, Lents Commons

We understand that the preferred design map will be available for review at the listening sessions, but formal public comment will not yet have opened.

* An Open House will then be held Monday, November 1, 5-8 pm (place TBD) to present the preferred design map. Public comment will open at this time, and will remain open until November 22.

* The Project Advisory Committee will meet again to review public comment on the preferred design map and adopt a final Master Plan to be forwarded to City Council.

The Steering Committee felt very positive about the idea for the Listening Sessions, and at a September 30 meeting of the Friends of Lents Park, the members agreed. However, the concern remains: how is the input from the Listening Sessions going to be translated into the final Master Plan? FLP has asked for the City and its contractor to hold off on generating any new maps until after the Listening Sessions happen. Instead, the City proposes to go ahead and generate the "preferred design" map now, along with the comment form that goes with it. It looks like the PAC will vote October 13 to go ahead with this (remember, that's the meeting you get to go to and have input). It would then fall to the PAC to find a way to incorporate what they hear at the Listening Sessions into the map and comment form that have already been written.

So how do we feel about this? Come to the October 13 PAC meeting and make your voice heard! If you can't make it to this meeting but have input you would like the PAC to consider, please contact the Friends of Lents Park representative to the PAC, Kathleen Juergens de Ponce, lentspark@gmail.com, or 503-331-0326.

Come to PAC meeting Oct 13!

The next meeting of the Project Advisory Committee (PAC) for the Lents Park Master Plan will be this coming Wednesday. PAC meetings are open to the public and will include opportunity for public comment. Details are as follows:

Lents Park Master Plan
Project Advisory Committee Meeting #4
Marshall High School, 3905 SE 91st Ave
Room C44
October 13, 2010 – 6:00 to 9:00 pm


The PAC will be considering a DRAFT "preferred design" map for the park. This design is intended to incorporate the public comment given on the three concept alternative maps, and consolidate the public's preferences into one map. How good a job did the City's contractor do with this? Come to the meeting, and you tell us!

The agenda for this meeting calls for the PAC to adopt a finalized "preferred design" map by the end of this meeting. This will NOT be the final Master Plan map for the park. Rather, the preferred design map will be the new map that goes out to the public for comment. There will be another comment form, another round of public comment, and at least one more PAC meeting, before anything gets finalized and sent to City Council.

The draft preferred design map is not available for distribution to the public at this time, but the following are some links to the meeting agenda and other meeting materials:

Here is a brief summary of the thinking that went in to whether and how to include specific features in the Draft Preferred Design.

Lents Park Master Plan: Draft Preferred Design – Rationale by feature.doc

Here is the Summary of the Comment surveys that helped shape the thinking about the reshaping of the Master Plan
Lents Comment Summary.doc


Here is the formal meeting agenda
Lents Park Agenda.doc



Here is a link to the Portland Parks and Recreation outline of the Public Input Process
Public Input Process.doc

We hope to see you all there! The PAC is the citizen committee representing the community in this process, and this is your chance to let them know what you think!

Thanks,
FLP

So what is the Project Advisory Committee?

The Lents Park Master Plan process is being overseen by a citizen committee called the Project Advisory Committee (PAC). Some committee members represent community groups with an interest in the process, while others represent the community at large. FLP's representative to the PAC is Kathleen Juergens de Ponce, an original founding member of FLP and current Steering Committee member.

The PAC will ultimately vote on the final Master Plan before it goes to City Council for approval. So get to know the PAC - they represent you in this process!

PAC meetings are open to the public, and we encourage interested FLP members to attend. The next one will be Wednesday, October 13, 6:00 p.m., location TBD.

PAC roster and meeting schedule can be found on the
City's project page for the Lents Park Master Plan. (This site is worth checking out in any case, since it contains a lot of useful information and background documents.)

Next FLP Meeting Thursday September 30

Next Friends of Lents Park meeting will be:

Thursday, September 30
6:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Lents Commons Coffeehouse
SE 92nd Avenue & Foster

This will be a short meeting to check back in with our membership and discuss next steps. How are you feeling about the new public involvement process that has been proposed in response to FLP's concerns? What can you help do to make sure the community's voice is heard in this next round?

The Lents Commons closes at 7:00, so we will try to keep things brief. This new local business has been GREAT about hosting Master Plan-related events, so please consider supporting them with your business.

We had originally asked people to save this date for a possible meeting between the group and Commissioner Fish. It now looks like it will take quite a bit longer to get on the Commissioner's schedule. We'd like feedback from our members as to whether this is still worth doing, given the expanded array of new meetings that has now been announced.

Expanded Process would add "Listening Sessions"

Prior to FLP issuing its letter on the Master Plan process, the next round of public involvement was going to look something like this:

Comment period closes on the concept maps. Comments are tabulated and analyzed. The City's contractor, Walker Macy, then gets to work consolidating the three concept maps into one "preferred concept." There is another open house where the preferred concept map is presented, then public comment opens again, prior to the map and Master Plan being finalized.

The FLP Steering Committee called for this process to be put on hold, based on the input we got from virtually all members we talked to. People's outrage at what they were seeing in the concept maps, and lack of confidence that the City was listening, caused us to conclude that it would be premature to proceed to the "preferred concept" stage. We called for another round of public involvement that would be more open-ended, that would engage the community in dialog about what we DO want for our park, instead of reacting to yet another map, which we feared would be full of yet another round of things we didn't want. We also worried that some of the community's good ideas that never got included in the concept maps in the first place might slip through the cracks without a chance to be considered.

We have been listened to!

Barely a week after our letter was sent, and a couple of days after FLP's delegation met with Commissioner Fish's staff, the Parks Department has announced a new, expanded public involvement process for the next stage of the plan. It's going to look like this:

Comment forms on the concept maps will be tabulated and analyzed (they're almost done with this), then summarized for the Project Advisory Committee.

The week of October 25, there will be three "Listening Sessions"
October 25: Sustainability
October 26: Active Recreation
October 27: Community Spaces

The preferred concept map will then be presented at an Open House to be held November 1, with a comment period open until November 22.

(Times and places for meetings are still to be determined. Dates may also be subject to change, based on input from Project Advisory Committee.)

So how is this better? Well, before we are faced with another map, we will have a chance to come together as a community and have open-ended conversations about what we want for our park and what changes we might be willing to accept. We will have the chance to hear the ideas of other community members and discuss them among ourselves before we have to respond to them on a form.

These events will be called "Listening Sessions" because the Parks Department, and the Project Advisory Committee for this Master Plan, will be there to listen to what the community has to say.

Topics for the three Listening Sessions will break down as follows:

* "Sustainability" includes community gardens, natural areas/native plantings, and trees.

* "Community Spaces" includes the dog area, paths, internal and external connections (to transit and Lents Town Center), playground/spray play, picnic area, entrance, and performance space/gazebo.

* "Active Recreation" includes Walker Stadium, sports fields, ball fields, tennis, basketball and the "skatespot."

Downside to this expanded process is that there are now more meetings for concerned citizens to attend. But this does not have to be a bad thing. Most of us have one area or activity in the park that interests us most. Make that the session you attend!

The FLP delegation that met with the City is feeling very optimistic that this expanded process will lead to a better result not just for our group, but for the entire community. Yes, we would have preferred the City to do this listening process at the front end, but better late than never.

We would like to know what our members think. Do you feel your concerns are being addressed? Do you feel any greater confidence in the Master Planning process? We would especially like input into the possibility of a meeting between our members and Commissioner Fish himself. Is this something you would like to see happen, or would this just be one more meeting?

So give us your feedback. Come to our next meeting (Thursday, September 30, 6:00 p.m. at the Lents Commons Coffeehouse, SE 92nd and Foster). Post a comment to this blog, e-mail us at lentspark@gmail.com or call 503-331-0326.

"Almost Final" Results from Concept Map Comments

Thank you to everybody who put the time in to fill out the lengthy and complex comment form on the three "concept maps" in the Lents Park Master Plan process. We know this wasn't easy, but it had to be done! As of the September 15 deadline, a whopping 330 responses had been received. This is a very impressive response rate (other Portland parks going through similar processes have had responses in the low dozens) and speaks powerfully to the love this community has for our park.

We are still waiting for the Parks Department to complete analysis of these comments and release a final report to the public, but members of the Project Advisory Committee have been able to see "almost final" results. Some highlights are as follows.

I have deliberately held off giving firm numbers or percentages on any of these items, since these are preliminary numbers. Be aware that these numbers are subject to correction, and watch for that final report!

* Respondents overwhelmingly have said: Keep the trees! People voting to "preserve as many existing trees as possible" outnumbered people voting "OK to cut if replacement trees are planted" more than two to one.

* Respondents overall favor keeping the park largely the way it is. Of people voting for one of the three concepts, the overwhelming winner was Concept A, getting more votes than B and C put together. The most common remark made for favoring A was that it makes the fewest changes. The number of people voting "none of the above" was larger than the vote for B or C, and almost as large as the vote for A. Again, many comments under this item state that people like the park the way it is.

* Respondents seem to like the "Skatespot," with all three proposed locations getting more "like" than "dislike" votes. (For those of you who have liveability concerns about the skatespot, this issue is far from over. Stay engaged in the process, and there will be future opportunities to talk about this!)

* Respondents favor keeping the dog park where it is, with many comments calling for it to be fenced in its current location.

* Natural/botanical plantings were popular, getting twice as many "like" as "dislike" votes in all three areas they were proposed. (Combine this with the vote on keeping the trees, and it is clear that people are envisioning plantings that are compatible with the existing tree canopy.)

* Respondents overwhelmingly favor keeping the children's playground where it is.

* Respondents favor making Walker Stadium multi-use over keeping it the way it is.

* For the central fields, the most popular proposal was the one in Concept B, which keeps both fields as natural grass and "flips" which field will be permitted. (Combine this with other answers, and it's clear that people did NOT like the proposed reorientation of the fields in this concept, which would have sacrificed multiple trees in order to provide for a direct north-south pathway.)

* Regarding the gazebo, by a large margin people preferred the proposal in Concept A, which would relocate the gazebo but keep it in the park's open central section. The proposal in Concept B to move the gazebo to the park's SE corner received more "dislike" than "like" votes, but it was close. People overwhelmingly disliked the proposal in Concept C to move the gazebo to the SW corner. Of those making comments under this item, the most common by far was to keep the gazebo where it is.

* About 3/4 of respondents favored preserving the current gazebo, while about half said they wanted to see a band shell. (OK, there's some overlap here. Let's discuss it.)

* By more than two to one, people voted no on a "paved plaza area."

* By a large margin, people preferred the pathways as shown in Concept A, which proposes a pathway between the two central soccer fields without changing the orientation of these fields.

* By more than three to one, people supported keeping the soft-surface walking/jogging loop in its current location.

* Almost everybody liked the idea of expanding the community garden (but it's clear from other answers that they didn't want to sacrifice a heritage tree to do it). Almost nobody liked the idea of moving the garden up onto a terraced hillside.

* Support was overwhelming (more than two to one) for keeping the north side football field, formally known as Vavrek Field, in its current location. People split much more evenly on whether they wanted this field to be synthetic and lighted.

* Most popular location for the large covered picnic area was the proposal in A, but B was a close second.

* By more than two to one, respondents support keeping the tennis court.

* Respondents favored the proposal in A to move the basketball court by a large margin over the proposals in B or C, but a large number of comments favored not moving it at all.

FLP members should feel vindicated by these results, as it appears that the concerns and opinions expressed by members of our group are widely shared by the rest of the community. There is room here for the genuine aspirations of our community to continue being debated, while the more outlandish proposals of the City's hired contractor have been decisively rejected.

Kathleen Juergens de Ponce
FLP Steering Committee
FLP representative to the City's Project Advisory Committee

They're listening! Thursday meeting brings expanded public comment and focus groups

Five members of Friends of Lents Park participated in a productive meeting Thursday evening at Lents Commons with city representatives close to the Lents Park Master Plan process.

FLP members Raymond Hites, Ken Park, Larry Sullivan, Kathleen Juergens de Ponce and Barbara Bader met with Elizabeth Kennedy-Wong,Community Engagement & Public Involvement Manager, Portland Parks and Recreation; Sarah Coates Huggins, Parks Project Manager for our Master Plan, and Emily Hicks, Commissioner Nick Fish's Policy Coordinator. We were joined by Cora Potter, representing the Project Advisory Committee.

In brief, the city reps seemed to listen closely to everyone's comments on the city's public outreach flaws. A result of the meeting will be an expanded open-house process with several focus groups as we move ahead with the planning process. Thanks to Cora Potter for the idea.

The upcoming meeting between all FLP members and some of Nick Fish's staffers is still in the planning stage. FLP wants the meeting open to everyone who cares about Lents Park. We hope Commissioner Fish will find time to attend that meeting with us all.