GVCA Journal for 04/03/05
Summary:

busy week last week, a busy week this week, and I've lost count of the
journals (I know last week's number was wrong, but I don't remember what
number I said it was).

The highlights:

1) Our 9 Health Fair Benefit
    Thanks to generous support from community members, GVCA members and most
especially Patrick and Judith Farrell, we are donating $1,500 to the
hospital today to be used exclusively for vouchers to the Health Fair.

2) Health Fair
    This takes place on Saturday. Five GVCA members have volunteered to help
out and are awaiting their assignments. Thanks to Sandra and Richard Karas,
Jan Carroll, Pat Fullmer and Karen Jensen, who coordinated our volunteer
effort in addition to donating her time.

3) Design Standards
    Ready or not, the planning commission takes this document into a public
hearing Wednesday at 7 p.m. in council chambers. If necessary, the
commission has already made plans to meet on Thursday to finalize the
document before sending it to city council. We'd appreciate it if folks
would attend on Wednesday and speak briefly on the record about the
importance of having design standards in our community.

4) Council Candidates
    Ellen has been busy meeting with heads of city departments and brushing
up on our city charter. You're not going to find a more informed candidate
out there. In an effort to offer other candidates a chance to become
informed on some of the issues, we are planning an educational briefing open
to all candidates and the public at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 16, location
TBA. We want this to feed into the candidates' forum hosted on April 18 by
the Gunnison Country Times.

5) Community Clean-Up
    At our meeting next Sunday we will see who is interested in volunteering
to help clean our city on behalf of the GVCA. The ninth annual Clean-Up is
set for Saturday, April 23. If you can't make the meeting but would be
interested in volunteering, let us know.

6) Farmers' Market PR
    We finally got an assignment from the market organizers, but still need
to be given details about the market and our budget. Once we have more
information, we will be soliciting volunteers to help with this project.

7) WSC Fiscal Impact Study
    We have heard nothing about the results from this study, commissioned
way back in September. However, a short article in the paper promises "Eric
Zeeb-WSC Economic Survey" as a speaker for the contractors' association. I
have sent another e-mail query to Jay Helman about the status of the study
we helped fund.

Details:


1)  Health Fair Fund-raiser

    We served something like 80 people, and a number of others dropped
contributions in our bucket. We had a tremendous turn-out of volunteers, and
Richard Karas may have found a new career as a dishwasher.

Patrick and Judith threw quite the convivial party, with people table
hopping and enjoying the atmosphere. Like Kathy Seitz, I was a bit
disappointed that the polka party didn't materialize, but everyone else
seemed eminently satisfied with their evening.

One city council member, Paul Duba, and two candidates, Ellen Harriman and
Jarral Ryter, attended. The GVCA provided tickets to planning commission
members and staff to thank them for all their hard work these past several
months, and Diane Lothamer, Jonathan Houck, Jim Seitz and Harvey Harriman
took us up on our offer.

Hopefully we're getting a photo today of Patrick and/or Judith, volunteer
waitress Nancee Goodrich and a hospital official, to be submitted to this
week's Times with news of our donation and the details of where you can
apply for the vouchers. The blood tests, I believe, are $30, which means
we'll help 50 valley residents. If Richard or someone gets the information
on where to access the vouchers, perhaps he'll let all of us know, so that
we can let people who might need them know.

This was our first (surely not our last) fund-raising effort, and I'd have
to call it a huge success. Thanks, everyone!


3) Design Standards

    If you see any planning commissioners (Jim Seitz, Bob Beda, Harvey
Harriman, Diane Lothamer, Jonathan Houck or Kurt Schram) be sure to thank
them for their tireless efforts on the never-ending ordinance. They were
kind enough at the end of last week's meeting to applaud their
"indefatigible audience" (that's the GVCA) for sitting through all these
meetings as well.

The document isn't really exactly ready, and we still have a couple of
comments, aimed more about what got taken out that maybe shouldn't have than
at what is left, but the public hearing takes place Wednesday anyway.

Based on comments received and on their own opinions, the commissioners will
make a recommendation, probably either Wednesday or Thursday, to council.
Hopefully, after all this work, it will be that the council adopt an
ordinance requiring design standards on any retail building over 50,000
square feet.

The council will conduct two readings (and one public hearing), and because
of the election, Jesse Stone's stated plan is that the sitting council
conduct the first reading, while the new council conduct the second, which
includes the vote on whether to adopt. This doesn't make a lot of sense to
us, particularly when we factor in our belief that only one of the possible
11 council candidates has read the design standards (that would be Ellen,
again).

We think the new council should conduct both readings, the public hearing,
and the vote, and that, given the time frame, this vote should take place
much closer to the June 30 moratorium deadline rather than immediately
following the election. It may be that we are backed by legislative
procedure on this issue, and we are looking into that this week.

In the meantime, although we think the more contentious public hearing is
likely to be the one held by city council, we would appreciate support on
Wednesday.  Comments could be as simple as, "Thank you for all your hard
work, and I would like to see the city adopt design standards for big-box
retail."


4) Council Candidates

    After Jim Pike asked Vikki to provide him with the fiscal study and the
proposed design standards (one member spoke against doing this, suggesting
candidates should show some initiative of their own), she wondered if we
shouldn't offer the same service to all the candidates.

We are planning to offer 'Coffee with the GVCA,' the Saturday prior to the
candidates' forum, open to all candidates and any interested members of the
public. Although we think discussions on design standards and the fiscal
imapct study will occupy a considerable amount of time, we are going to ask
Mayor Ferguson if he would like to attend and briefly touch on other issues
facing the city. We will also be asking city representatives familiar with
the fiscal study and design standards to attend.

We are offering this in keeping with our mission of providing education. We
will also not, as a group, be endorsing any candidates (it might even work
against them if we did), although we will encourage voters to be informed
and to know where the candidates stand on the issues.

That's why we're encouraging everyone to attend the Times forum on April 18.
(Chris, I don't remember the time, and I believe it's at the multipurpose
building.)  We did brainstorm on Sunday to come up with some suggestions for
the Times as to questions that might be asked of the candidates and a forum
in which to ask them. With somewhere around a dozen candidates, that doesn't
offer much time to give everyone a chance to respond thoroughly to very many
questions.

One format we suggested, although the final decision will of course be the
newspaper's, was giving all the candidates a list of questions, which would
also be avaible to all audience members, ahead of time and then giving them
five minutes to address the questions they feel strongest about. That would
take up more than an hour, but it might leave time for the moderator or
audience to follow up if someone wanted a specific candidate to address an
issue he or she didn't cover.

We also hope the paper will do what it did two years ago, and publish the
candidates' written responses to questions asked of all fo them. I for one
found that very helpful in deciding how to cast my vote.

I should say here that we have relied heavily on the Gunnison Country Times
to disseminate information on our behalf and for the general populace. In
addition to offering our thanks to the paper, we ought to bear in mind that
it is a small, locally-owned business that deserves our support. I'm as
guilty as anyone, and not all of us have things we need to advertise, but
please show your support where you can (subscriptions don't pay much of a
paper's bills, but every little bit helps).

I'm beyond out of time, so have a fine spring day -- or winter, whichever
Mother nature is delivering today.

TL