Living very near to City Park and the proposed new golf course concerns me for these reasons. The 36 member board all voted yes on phase I of this new PGA style course. There has been no solicitation from any of the board members at our Oak Park meetings to discuss how we would want this course to affect development in our neighborhood of Oak Park, yet the course is touted to increase property values. What if there is more we want besides increased property values? I know we want more residents. We want to encourage single people who attend UNO nearby to find a place to live in our neighborhood so we want to be creative in the types of housing available, (Mother-in-law type attached apartments to single family dwellings is one idea I promote). We want as many people to reside in Oak Park to increase density to encourage better transit for the neighborhood and to attract an array of businesses to our area. We want the majority to be able to consider to live here and not just one segment of the population. In all of that no one from City Park Board of Commissioners has listened to that at one of our meetings.

To my council representative Hedge-Morrell and her co council members, mayor's office, and my other elected representatives,

I am writing out of concern for my city, my neighborhood and of course myself and the courses of action being used for the recovery of my city.

At the request of the president of my neighborhood association, Oak Park Civic Association, I have been attending the Neighborhoods Partnership Network's (from hereon referred to as NPN) Capacity College. It was hard to see where it might go in the first class, but after having attended the fourth class I can say it is vastly helpful in bringing other citizens from around the city together to exchange ideas, support one another. (Please click http://www.npnnola.com/about/view/219-273/2009-neighborhood-educator-fellows to see synopsis of all the educator-fellows)

I have learned most especially from the last two classes with Jennifer Farwell, Davida Finger, Barbara L. Keller and Pam Dashiell that as members of neighborhood groups we must be the first ones to develop our plans for rebuilding our neighborhoods to seek and screen outside groups with which we may or may not want to partner all for the betterment of our community.

I am concerned when Mid-City residents aren't consulted by any authority regarding their displacement for the proposed LSU-VA complex, that plans are not straight forward that land will lie unused until funding for the second phase becomes certain, that even state Treasurer John Kennedy spoke heatedly to LSU System Vice President for Health Care Fred Cerise that there is no business plan for the new hospital and that a north Louisiana state representative asserted that the new hospital is of broader concern for all of the state.

Living very near to City Park and the proposed new golf course concerns me for these reasons. The 36 member board all voted yes on phase I of this new PGA style course. There has been no solicitation from any of the board members at our Oak Park meetings to discuss how we would want this course to affect development in our neighborhood of Oak Park, yet the course is touted to increase property values. What if there is more we want besides increased property values? I know we want more residents. We want to encourage single people who attend UNO nearby to find a place to live in our neighborhood so we want to be creative in the types of housing available, (Mother-in-law type attached apartments to single family dwellings is one idea I promote). We want as many people to reside in Oak Park to increase density to encourage better transit for the neighborhood and to attract an array of businesses to our area. We want the majority to be able to consider to live here and not just one segment of the population. In all of that no one from City Park Board of Commissioners has listened to that at one of our meetings. This is why, as an attendee of NPN's Capacity College, I am concerned, worried and suspicious of those who promote the new golf course as a way to increase property values. We need to get people back in homes first, paying taxes first. Increasing property values by any factor still equals zero if there is no one there at all. Most people in this double whammy of a post-Katrina era and a recession can hardly afford the new flood and homeowner insurance bills. Why and how would most people move into a neighborhood with more expensive houses in this depressed economy?

Indeed, this plan has morphed several times over since before Katrina and now with the recession financing is not guaranteed. There has been no hydrological or environmental studies on how the proliferation in water traps will affect surrounding neighborhoods come another major flooding event such as with Katrina. One board member in particular, Gary Solomon, was a member (if not still) of the City Park Board of Commissioners yet is also involved with the group awarded the contract to build new mixed income housing on the former St. Bernard Housing site. Regardless any benefit a project may bring, if a person has even an appearance of impropriety, then that person needs to step aside to remain silent and uninvolved; there are many, many people out there more than capable to make recovery happen. Avoiding impropriety should be for all. Again, this is supposed to be a public park and the builders act as if this a private defunct course for sale; that may have been the case in the project in Atlanta, but New Orleans' City Park is now also a state funded entity.

In a word, I do not trust any people associated with any of the groups (Fore!Kids et al) involved with building the new development at St. Bernard to come into Oak Park to direct any projects. I have never met any of these people at any of our Oak Park meetings. In the future when we have definitive plans for our neighborhood outlined we would research their group (and others) to see what they have to offer, but they will have to prove themselves again and consider our needs and not their past achievements. I am basically going by what I have learned at NPN's Capacity College. We all first meet for the neighborhood's needs and to ONLY accept what outside partners have to offer that meet those needs and not inverted where outside partners offer what they want to achieve their goals.

It seems to me in both cases of the hospital and the golf course outside groups devise plans first and avoid consulting neighborhoods on what their needs are. This in the end will not grow New Orleans.

My concern is who is really in charge of rebuilding our city. The work I believe needs to always reference back to neighborhood groups with the cooperation of elected officials and not with private groups coming making promises that will of course first benefit themselves and not consulting these very same neighborhood groups. The UNOPlan and the Master Plan should reflect the work of the neighborhood groups and Goody Clancy, government officials should be the ones working tirelessly seeking out continually the thinking of residents of course through more and much better publicized meetings at city hall and elsewhere, (listing the meetings the day of in the paper or the night before on newscasts is not publicizing at all).

My question is do city council members truly give any considerable weight to the thinking and work that comes out of NPN and the Capacity College and out of the processes of neighborhood groups? If council members do approve of this work then you must consider what I say here and more importantly solicit the thinking of others educated through these same entities.