Columbiaassociation

Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend the Columbia Association board meeting this evening. Here are the remarks I had planned to make during the speak-out portion of the meeting; if anyone else wants to crib from these for their own remarks please feel free to do so: I have two points I wanted to make tonight: First, I have not seen the language of the Inner Arbor Trust easement, and am not qualified to comment on legal issues relating to the easement. However I have read pretty much every public source of information I could find relating to the various proposals for Symphony Woods, and everything I’ve read indicates that the Columbia Association has been accepting of the actions taken by the Inner Arbor Trust since its creation. That includes in particular the Trust’s decision to leverage the work already done by CA as part of the county planning process, and concentrate first on developing the part of Symphony Woods covered by the current Inner Arbor plan—a plan whose elements are those contained in the original CA-submitted Final Development Plan, including an amphitheater, café, play area, and so on. There is nothing in the public record to indicate that the Inner Arbor Trust was ever acting in violation of the easement as far as CA was concerned. If the current CA board is determined to test the issue in court I believe that the private record of dealings between CA and the Inner Arbor Trust will also show this to be the case. ...

How can we best promote the future of the Inner Arbor plan? I had a few thoughts following up from my previous post containing my testimony at the joint board meeting of Columbia Association and the Inner Arbor Trust. “Showing up is half the battle.” Apparently the original quote was “showing up is 80% of life,” which only reinforces the point and is coincidentally apposite, since apparently 80% of the resident speak-outs at the meeting were in favor of the Inner Arbor plan. (Per Julia McCready, of the speakers who expressed a clear opinion on the plan 12 out of 15 expressed support.) Promoting the plan online is great, but I think one speaker at an in-person meeting outweighs dozens of blog posts, tweets, and Facebook likes. There will be other opportunities for Inner Arbor supporter to show up and let their voices be heard, whether through speak-outs or written testimony or both. Let’s continue this practice. ...

Last night I went to Columbia Association headquarters for the CA board meeting that had been scheduled on very short notice to discuss the Inner Arbor plan. Due to family commitments I had to leave before the main part of the meeting, but I was able to be there long enough to participate in the “resident speak-out” and say my piece: Good evening. My name is Frank Hecker. I’m currently a resident of Ellicott City, and I’ve been a member of various Columbia Association programs. I’ve also blogged extensively about the Inner Arbor plan, and I’m a strong supporter of it. However I’m not here tonight to talk about my thoughts on the Inner Arbor plan; you can go to frankhecker.com if you want to read those. Instead I want to talk about other peoples’ opinions of the plan. ...