New Urbanism Many Groups Absent From Citywide Planning Effort

From the start, Spokane Horizons has met with skepticism - from the very people participating.

Many of the volunteers have a vocal distrust of city government.

“Will all the hard work be thrown out?” asked Laura Ackerman, a neighborhood activist from the Garry Park neighborhood.

“If this is screwed up, they are going to have 200 very angry citizens on their hands,” she said.

City planner Chris Hugo isn’t worried.

“The Plan Commission has a high amount of respect for the process,” Hugo said. “Along the way, each step has been approved by the City Council. They have bought off on the process, and they can’t get out of it now.”

But fear lingers as volunteers look around and notice who’s missing from the group.

Few developers or Realtors are involved. Others conspicuously absent include ethnic groups, low-income residents and people in their 20s who will have to live with the results of the Horizons plan.

“What worries me is that in the end, a lot of people will come down and say, ‘We didn’t know about this,”’ said Ackerman.

Developer Cliff Cameron attended some of the land-use meetings, hoping to participate.

“It was a little too sterile, a little too predictable,” he said. “It’s hard for working people to attend long meetings.

“It would be a better process if it was more spontaneous, if the planners and the city went out into the community and collected a wider range of comments.”

Hugo agrees that the all-volunteer work groups are “sort of a double-edged sword.”

“But we do have new faces,” he said. “Three-fourths of the participants haven’t been around City Hall before.”

Despite doubts, there are signs the Horizons volunteers feel control over their emerging plan.

Recently, some representatives from Horizons work groups suggested that they present their top proposals to the public and not the city planners.

“Maybe they have created a monster,” said Bonnie Mager, a volunteer on the natural environment committee.

“People have really been empowered. The planners have taken an enormous amount of time and effort to listen and work with us,” she said.

“Here, the emphasis is on participation,” Hugo said. “We are spending a lot more time and energy getting the community involved.

“The community will make the decision, and then live with it,” he said. , DataTimes