Springdale’s Director of Community Development, Tom Dansie, has just released his graphical report of the results of the “Future of Springdale” survey. You can read it here.
I won’t directly discuss the results of the survey … yet. There will be a discussion of the survey in the Springdale Planning Commission on August 6, 2013. Planning Commission meetings start at 5:00.
Let me shift gears for a second instead.
Everyone should do what is called a “vanity search” every now and then on the Internet: search for hits on your own name. In a spare moment, I did one this evening and since I hadn’t done it before, I restricted my search to videos. I found a YouTube video of a Springdale Planning Commission meeting held in February 2011. (Actually, several.) Someone (I think I know who, but it’s irrelevant here.) had gone to the trouble of making a video of the meeting and posting it. The quality isn’t too bad. You can view the video at this link.
I was the chairman at the time and relatively new to the job. We were discussing the pro’s and con’s of allowing various types of entertainment in Springdale. (A bowling alley was one idea.) I have a tendency to simply blurt out my point of view in situations like this. Here’s what I said during that meeting.
It is a serious question as to what the vision for the Town really is. I think there’s a large segment of the population that says, “We’re not Gatlinburg, we’re not West Yellowstone. We’re not (one of) these gateway communities that have amusement parks. We are a different kind of gateway community and we want to stay different. That is a seminal difference of vision that … I think you need to decide one way or the other. Are you going to try to cater to the sort of people who demand video games, who demand an amusement park, who demand arcades? Or are you going to say, “OK, we’re not even going to even pursue that particular segment of the market. We are going to pursue the segment of the market who does come here for the Park – who does come here for the silence and the serenity.” It’s a fundamental philosophical difference. At this point in time, I’m not advocating for one way or the other but I am saying there is that difference and that is the reason our ordinances prohibit it.Actually, I did advocate for maintaining the silence and serenity later in this and other meetings.
Two years later, it seems to me that the survey shows that most citizens in Springdale agree.
Do you agree? Reply and let us know … and go to the Planning Commission meeting. It gets very lonesome in that chamber on many nights.
And …. ps ….
Since I started this website, there has been a profound silence from all the ZiCC people here that I hoped would gush forth with a cornucopia of comments. There has been one comment.
I’ve received several private emails (which I won’t quote without permission) with some very insightful comments. I suspect that the reason so few people are willing to “come out” and say something is that they just don’t want to expose themselves to the glare of an unforgiving public.
C’mon in! The water’s fine! I feel pretty good about the points of view I expressed back in 2011 and not at all bothered that someone posted it. If you have a point of view, you should express it.
(Just remember Rule 1 – We’re all friends here. Treat everyone like a friend.)