Geneva's Downtown Master Plan

I’m flattered that my initial Patch blog as a mayoral candidate generated no less than four responses from my opponent!  I’m even more gratified that he agrees with the main points of my plan, Building Geneva’s Future Together:

• Fiscal Responsibility
• Accessibility
• Economic Development

And when my opponent referred to my newspaper interview quote that the City of Geneva’s Downtown Master Plan was “a waste of time,” he was absolutely correct.  I said it was a waste of time because it was.

During that interview, I was accused of avoiding Master Plan meetings, but the truth is, I’d attended more than one before determining they were pointless. 

In the middle of the greatest recession of our time, discussing pie-in-the-sky ideas that will never find the proper financing nor ever see the light of day does nothing to help our great downtown thrive.

There are others that have felt the same way.  The very even tempered Geneva Patch Editor Rick Nagel referred to the plan as “sound and fury signifying nothing,” also writing, “Geneva's Downtown Master Plan is filled with wonderful ideas, most of which won't ever happen.”

The concept of a Downtown Master Plan is a good one, but only if the planners and consultants involved are willing to stay grounded in reality. Someone has to have the presence of mind to be the grownup and say, “Can we afford this?”

Real economic development must be rooted in some semblance of reality.

You can find the final plan, released in November 2012, right here.  While it certainly is nicely compiled, the real question remains; without any costs associated with its implementation, was it time well spent?  

I hope you will support my efforts to build Geneva's future together by voting for me on April 9th.