Getting Involved and Being an Informed Voter

As many of you are aware, elections for 2 Highland City Council positions and Highland City Mayor will be held on November 3, 2009. Early voting begins September 3, 2009, and the primary election will be held on September 15, 2009 for City Council only. This can be a very important election for our neighborhood as to how the Open Space Development agendas and parks are addressed. Many of the candidates are aware of the issues and concerns with Open Space Developments, and each has their own ideas for addressing these issues. Find out for yourselves and become informed. Make your vote count.

A "Meet the Candidates Night" will be held at Highland City Hall Thursday, September 3rd at 7:00 p.m. This will be sponsored by the Highland Elementary PTA. If you want to submit questions for the City Council Q & A debate portion of the evening, please email gina@highlandcity.org and she will add them to the list. If you cannot make this night to hear from the City Council candidates, you can contact Gina with Highland City and she can get you a recording on disk for review. The mayoral candidate debate will be held on October 22nd.

Two of the Planning Commission members are currently running for City Council positions. Brent Wallace, Vice Chairman, and Roger Dixon, Commissioner, have both been actively involved in addressing Highland Hills and Chamberry Fields Open Space and parks concerns. They both live in Open Space Developments. Brent has been very actively involved for implementing some vital changes for his neighborhood. Roger has some great ideas about forming a neighborhood Architectural Committee.

Each of the candidates will be contacted specifically about their ideas for resolving Open Space concerns and parks and a brief summary by the candidate will be placed on the blog for your review. There are many other issues in the city at this time and know that Open Spaces and parks are only a few. We are not supporting any particular candidate, but we are encouraging you to get involved, ask questions, and make an informed decision on your vote.

Parks and the Planning Commission

Last night, Tuesday, August 24th, the Highland City Planning Commission was given charge to review the city park construction priorities. This was identified because this is a good time for construction and land acquisition. However, the city has very limited funds at this time, so park prioritization is in order. There were several parks identified, Chamberry Park (Athena Park water retention basin) being one on the prioritization list for review. For a full listing of the parks to be reviewed, you can download the Planning Commission agenda for August 25th, and they are identified from page 61 to 65. Page 62 gives a list of parks and their corresponding numbers are listed on the maps to follow.

While this was not open for public hearing, Argo Circle Park and Chamberry Park were well known by the Planning Commission. This was because of your great emails to the Planning Commission members, as well as the pictures, petition, power point presentations, and personal grounds tours by some of the Planning Commission members. Because of the extent of review that is required for prioritizing parks, the Planning Commission has requested more time to review the information, acquire cost projections, review neighborhood demographics (i.e. number of kids in the neighborhood), and tour all sites for future parks. This will be addressed again at future Planning Commission meetings and will be a long process towards park completion.

With Argo Circle Park being considered a Mini Park, the city considers this as completed. We are currently in the process of trying to work with the city to bring trails to the playground and possibly install benches. This may be a difficult process, but we will keep working on it.

Chamberry Park (Athena water retention area) is listed on the Highland City's Existing and Future Parks map as a neighborhood park. We are working with the Planning Commission on bringing this open flooded area (water retention basin) to meet Highland City's Development Code specified guidelines for a neighborhood park.

Keep working on sending those great emails. The Highland City Council and Highland City Planning Commission's email addresses can be found on the city's website at http://highlandcity.org/. You can then follow the link on the left for city government elected and appointed officials.

Trees for 11800 North

The Highland City Tree Commission has received approval from the city forester to move forward with planting trees along the north side of 11800 North and entry streets to the Highland Hills development. This planting project will occur on Arbor Day 2010, the last Saturday in April. The Tree Commission is currently writing to obtain grant money to fund this project to be added to a small budget the commission has to work with. This money, along with multiple volunteers, Eagle Scout candidate, and city public works employees, will help to carry out this project. If you would like to participate in planning the layout of the trees, plan to attend a neighborhood tree planting planning meeting within the next month. Meeting details will be coming soon. During this meeting we will plan the design/layout of the trees, select trees, review how the tree commission planting projects are carried out, as well as update you on additional progress we are seeing with our open space improvements. This should be a fun and educational meeting and give our neighborhoods an opportunity to work together on beautifying our area.

Looking for Suggestions

A list is being gathered on all maintenance, landscaping, and development issues to take to the city in the next few weeks. Detailed information is needed on any areas of concern so that each item can be addressed individually and a course of action identified. If you have specifics, or something you would like to see done, please forward your suggestions to the email posted at the bottom of the page. These items will be compiled on a spreadsheet and we will look at ways to resolve them. Resolution to individual issues will be reviewed with the city. However, as a neighborhood we can resolve some of these issues together through a service project, an Eagle Scout project, Young Women's project, and neighborhood involvement. With this being open space, we will need so seek city approval before proceeding on any projects. Have fun, be creative, and enjoy the opportunity to improve our open spaces together!

Getting Started

Our petition was presented to the Highland City Council Tuesday, August 4th, and we had a good turnout representing residents from the Chamberry Fields and Highland Hills developments. Issues requiring immediate attention addressed in the petition included:

• Ithica Dr. Park near completion then "let go" with dying trees, no grass, and lots of weeds
• Poor maintenance of island to Chamberry development
• Missing sod on parkstrips entering open space trails
• Dying grass entering park just east of Ithica
• Poorly maintained grass along trails, primarily Westfield Road trails
• Weed field at entrance of Highland Hills extending to Athena Park
• Chronic flooding in Athena Drive Park
• Incomplete resolution of flooding north of Athena Drive Park
• Missing letters on Highland Hills development entrance sign
• Dead and dying trees throughout the development

Issues to be addressed in the future included:

• Open space park on north-west corner of Lausanne and Ithica, open space trails throughout Chamberry Fields development, and any other un-landscaped areas not yet prepared
• Lack of deciduous and/or evergreen trees and shrubs along Westfield Road entrances to the Highland Hills development
• Lack of trail or sidewalk in Argo Circle park for school children and access to playground

From this point the mayor, city council, and planning commission will take a few weeks to review the information. We are requesting that our developments open spaces be placed on the city council agenda within 6 weeks. Currently the planning commission has all of the information presented to the city council and will be reviewing it also. We are hoping to be on their next meeting agenda. In addition to this, we are requesting meetings with the mayor and city administrator where we hope to review the information, establish an action plan, and set up some work sessions and/or neighborhood meetings.

The Highland City Council meets every 1st and 3rd Tuesday of the month. The Highland City Planning Commission meets every 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month. Meeting agendas, council members, and commission members contact information can be found at the Highland City website: http://www.highlandcity.org/.

We hope to utilize this blog to keep everyone informed of the progress that is occuring in regard to our petition and open space development improvements.