Posted on by John Edwards

This Survey Is No Joke

I made fun of this survey a while back. But in retrospect, I really dropped the ball. This is no joke. LHENA is about to decide how to spend money based on the results. There’s going to be a community vote at the October 15th board meeting. It’s hard to say if the voting will include options for “Improving Housing Stock” that go beyond the two choices in the image below. My hope is that they don’t spend all the money on a brand new historic district and some historic walking shoes. Let’s withhold the “sudden windfall” until LHENA can figure out how to assess neighborhood priorities without rigging a survey.

Now you understand why I call them LHENAMRRDCHealyProject.org.

One more thing about historic districts. Some Healy/MRRDC-types who attended the historic district information session a few weeks ago were extremely interested in expanding the proposed boundaries. One of the difficulties with that is it would take money that the city doesn’t have right now. There were questions directed at John Smoley about finding an outside funding source. It wouldn’t surprise me if they try to funnel some neighborhood money into downzoning the neighborhood via historic district (but with this conservation district nonsense happening, maybe they don’t need to).

Peter Kim wants to buy himself a historic district. Asks if donations would provide city the resources to expand north of 24th.
— Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) September 23, 2014

So if my theory holds, there should be big turnout. And when you gather so many long-time residents in one room, there’s a greater than 50% chance of weirdness. It should be fun to watch; and you can vote while you’re there. They’re holding the vote in the Jefferson cafeteria instead of the media center.