Todd Kuhns on City Council

Last night, the city council held a well-attended study session where they discussed the recommendation of passing an ordinance to 1) remove the awnings, 2) make the 2003 Downtown Improvement Plan into an ordinance, and 3) establish the downtown as a historic district. It was a pretty intense 2.5 hours, and they opened it up to business owner input because there were 11 business owners there.

Without a doubt, many of the business owners have good points and valid concerns about the awnings coming down. While they are encouraged to put newer awnings up in their place if they wish, many are unconvinced that newer awnings would function as well or better. And they are understandably hesitant to spend money on any changes when they’re unconvinced it will increase their business.

But as I see it, the roots of the problem are far beyond this awning issue. I couldn’t help wondering if we’re missing the forest for the trees. As I see it, the crux of the matter is that the downtown business owners and the city don’t have a clear, shared goal they are working toward – there’s no overall vision on how to proceed. The Downtown Improvement Plan has been in front of them for over 4 years, but it’s clear that the business owners are hesitant to commit to it. I’m not sure why.

One could certainly lay some of the blame for this on the past few city councils – ever since the plan was written and the council voted to approve it, there have been both spoken and unspoken assumptions that it should be followed. Yet communication has been lacking and it appears that there have been few efforts to assemble a willing coalition of downtown business owners to get everyone on the same page. It’s also clear that the downtown business owners have made little effort to get together and stand behind this or any other plan for downtown development.

Everybody wants “downtown revitalization,” but there’s no agreement on what that means or how to achieve it.

At one point, Jill McCord said, very diplomatically, “What I’m hearing is that you just want to do what you want to do.” And then a person from the TIF commission spoke and said, in essence: “What’s the point of spending any more taxpayer money on downtown revitalization plans when most of the downtown business owners don’t want to follow them anyway?” He also pointed out that, while the city has been following the plan by improving the public areas based on its recommendations (the courthouse area, the street widenings), the private sector seems to be resistant to investing in the non-public areas. I’m not sure how the business owners took this – it was relatively quiet and the meeting ended shortly thereafter because it was getting late.

From what I heard last night, some of the business owners honestly believe that the city doesn’t have their best interests in mind. My fear is that - safety issues aside- if the council votes to take the awnings down in this current climate of resentment, it may contribute to this troubling “us vs. them” attitude that exists.

I still believe there’s a way through this. Now that so many folks have finally physically “come together” in a sense and laid their fears out on the table, we need to find a small piece of common ground that everyone can stand on and work from there toward a positive solution. Together, the downtown business owners and the city need to commit to a common goal, work together toward it, and actively communicate to eliminate false rumors. Perhaps it takes a controversial issue like this to stir up interest and force all parties to work this out. I talked with Kim Moody after the meeting about his frustrations and it seems like we’re in agreement on this. I’m going to be meeting with him and a few others this week to see what ideas we can come up with.