Gulfport agencies share ideas
SmartCode gets boost, Destin doesn’t
GULFPORT — Members of the city’s Planning Commission, City Council and Zoning Board of Adjustment and Appeals met Tuesday night to share ideas about how to plan for development in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The workshop among the three groups was the first time the current council had met with the two bodies that hear planning and zoning matters. Previous councils and commissions have met in the past.
Commissioners, council members and zoning members said they want to see development, but agreed it should be smart development. Several members talked about what they would like to see in Gulfport and what they don’t want a rebuilt Gulfport to look like.
Two cities that some council members said they don’t want to model Gulfport after are Gulf Shores, Ala., and Destin, Fla.
“The thing going for us . . . is that we’re not just a condo city,” said Claudia Keyes, a member of the Planning Commission and a real estate agent. “We have a family atmosphere. We can entertain them all year long.”
Keyes, however, said there is a demand for condo development. Gulfport has a few beachfront condo projects under way.
The group also discussed SmartCode, the benefits of it and how the city would oversee it if the council votes to adopt it. SmartCode, used as a guide for developing compact, walkable, mixed-use communities, was the subject of a six-day series of discussions in February that would provide diverse living options.
Mayor Brent Warr said he hopes to present the SmartCode recommendations to the council in the next 40 to 45 days.
Council President Barbara Nalley said the meeting was productive. She learned how the commissioners feel about SmartCode.
“I was pleasantly surprised that they agree with SmartCode thinking,” Nalley said.
Readers should know that the Saucier Community Plan includes provision for the unincorporated areas of Harrison County to adopt the SmartCode. This is a positive measure to help ensure that the future development in our area is a pleasure to live with.
What Next? - 5/10/2006
Public services accented
Storm revealed a host of problems
When Gov. Haley Barbour signed a bill creating a regional water utility board in April, it became one of the biggest victories for the Governor's Commission.
The public services subcommittee chair called it the "cornerstone" of his group's recommendations, which included more cooperation between municipalities, an improved communications systems and disaster preparedness.
"I think that's one of the biggest things that's come out of it," said Bob Occhi, the general manager of Coast Electric Power Association. "It's probably one of the biggest things that will come out of it."
The creation of the utility board, which was initially opposed by the powerful county supervisors lobby, allows the region to tap into $600 million in federal funds to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.
The commission cited the existence of 14 municipal water and sewer systems, eight water districts, 19 water associations and more than 30 private water companies as a key inefficiency that could inhibit recovery. That fragmentation is even more problematic in light of expected population redistributions north from the coastline.
The commission also encouraged consolidation of school districts and police and fire departments in light of expected budget shortfalls from the decimation of tax bases, particularly in Hancock County. Bay St. Louis and Waveland, for instance, have been studying the economic feasibility of merging some or all of their cities' services.
The public services section also added a healthy chunk of responsibilities onto the state's new Wireless Communication Commission. It was created by the Legislature last year before the storm, but its mission soared in importance after nontechnical governmental officials learned communications' dirty little secret.
"It's really demonstrated the lack of interoperability between all agencies," said Bill Buffington, a communications specialist with the Wireless Commission. "For the first time, we've made a big push in this spirit of cooperation to get everybody on the same page. Before the storm, everybody talked the talk but nobody ever talked about how bad it could be. Basically, they experienced a complete failure of a number of individual systems."
The agency is well along toward acquiring a statewide voice and data network, with bids due in early June. That system will be installed starting in South Mississippi, but it obviously won't be ready for this hurricane season.
The commission has helped form interoperability agreements between the Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks Department; the departments of health and public safety; the Mississippi Department of Transportation; and the military. In turn, other arrangements should improve state agencies' communication with local governments.
What Next? - 5/9/2006
All roads lead to ill will
Transit battles the toughest
The Sun Herald is planning a series of reports on the Governor's Commission and its progress over the next two weeks. The series started on Sunday May 7th, and will go on until May 18th. Read each article here.
Transportation concerns in the wake of Hurricane Katrina have set off a string of confrontations between locals and MDOT.
Some of the Governor's Commission recommendations were direct challenges to the way the state transportation agency has operated. For instance, efforts by Ocean Springs to tame MDOT's bigger-is-better mantra for the U.S. 90 bridge over Biloxi Bay stewed for months.
The city gave approval for a bridge with six lanes of traffic, four breakdown or emergency lanes and a bike/pedestrian lane. Then it took it away, then gave it back again when it became clear there would be no downsizing.
A later hiccup with the lack of a drawbridge resulted in rebidding the project for a 95-foot bridge, 10 feet higher to help appease protests from Harrison County development officials, the shipbuilding industry along Bayou Bernard Industrial Seaway and the governor's office. A contract is to be awarded early next month.
The commission didn't want to put itself in the middle of an obvious political struggle, but the Mississippi Renewal Forum had argued for a four-lane bridge. Instead, the commission recommended returning U.S. 90 to a four-lane, pedestrian-friendly boulevard.
It also recommended the acquisition of the CSX Transportation rail bed for conversion into an east-west thoroughfare. The funding for the acquisition stands as a lightning rod in an emergency spending package that's been approved by the Senate but still needs House approval. If passed, the bill could be President Bush's first veto.
The commission's vision of a multimodal east-west corridor isn't being talked about in the same terms anymore, either. Instead, it's likely to wind up as a new U.S. 90 that can be rerouted off the beach.
"We would just love it if everybody would say instead of a major highway, this needs to be rapid transit, this needs to be light-rail," said Susan Henderson, a New Urbanist involved in the Renewal Forum and later in recovery planning. "It does need to connect New Orleans to Mobile."
Gulfport won a concession from MDOT in its plans for a Canal Road connector. Also referred to as Interstate 310, it would connect the state port of Gulfport to I-10 just east of the current Canal Road exit.
MDOT had federal approval to build an elevated connector all the way to the port, but with the Port Authority, city officials and business leaders armed with new ammunition from the commission, it earned a reprieve. The agency has agreed to do the project in two stages, postponing design south of 28th Street so it can weigh changes at the port and with CSX.
MDOT has also been active with development of two long-range transportation plans. It's worked with Coast Transit Authority and the feds to develop a public transportation vision, and with Gulf Regional Planning Commission for a regional multimodal plan.
What Next? - 5/8/2006
Land use plans get varying reactions
Bridge, Biloxi decisions concern design director
The Sun Herald is planning a series of reports on the Governor's Commission and its progress over the next two weeks. The series started on Sunday May 7th, and will go on until May 18th. Read each article here.
Judging the pace of how recommendations made by the Governor's Commission on land use may have something to do with where you live.
Susan Henderson, the director of design for Placemakers, the Florida-based originators of the SmartCode, which the commission recommended be adopted to supplant traditional zoning ordinances, is pretty happy with what she's seen.
"It's not absolutely perfect response, but for that many communities and that many different political perspectives and different local needs, as a whole, Mississippi has responded very well," she said.
For instance, four of 11 cities along the Coast are on the path to adopting SmartCodes in some form or fashion. Six others are considering it.
Former Biloxi Mayor Gerald Blessey, whose law firm now deals with zoning and land use issues and who served as the land use subcommittee chairman, sees things through a different prism.
"It's kind of a checkerboard," he said. "Like so much, we're so happy with the good things but we feel kind of impatient of the slowness of the other things."
The SmartCode is the New Urbanists' answer to creating walkable communities featuring mixed-use buildings where housing at all price levels is sprinkled throughout. In some places, they will be adopted as overlays, providing alternatives to the existing zoning structure. Other places may use them in certain districts particularly hard hit by Hurricane Katrina.
Henderson said her disappointments center on the U.S. 90 bridge over the Bay of St. Louis, which they considered too big, and some decisions Biloxi has made in its planning.
"We'd really hoped for a re-establishment of an East Biloxi village, which obviously isn't going to happen," she said. "But of course there's been a lot of pressure from casinos and developers. You can sympathize with (Mayor) A.J. (Holloway), but at the same time you'd wish it had gone in a little bit of a different direction."
The commission recommended the CSX Transportation rail line right of way be acquired to build an avenue with light rail. That idea has morphed into putting a new U.S. 90 through Harrison County in that footprint, another disappointment for Henderson.
Blessey said he's excited by the possibilities, although he's anxious in that area as well.
"The railroad is so close you can taste it," he said.
One recommendation remains hanging from the vine ready to be picked, according to Blessey. The report called for the state Legislature to create the Mississippi Renaissance Corporation to help link residents, developers and governments together to redevelop destroyed areas.
For instance, a group of neighbors could pool their land together to be developed to create a larger project they could live in a part of, thus helping recreate capital for those who lost so much.
Blessey said some developers are looking into doing it, but if one were to take the leap, it might cause a domino effect and entice others to join.
"New casinos would be ideal partners to marry up with a neighborhood and develop a new neighborhood," he said.
The state Legislature also fell well short of adopting more stringent statewide building codes. Eventually, it settled on watered-down legislation that affected the coastal counties, but provided an opt-out clause.
There is also a study commission that is supposed to make a recommendation to the egislature next year.
What's Next? - 5/7/2006
Commission offers a menu
Recovery means different thing to each city
The Sun Herald is planning a series of reports on the Governor's Commission and its progress over the next two weeks. The series started on Sunday May 7th, and will go on until May 18th. Read each article here.
Gov. Haley Barbour says the 238 recommendations of the Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal are not a community to-do list and that it would be wrong now, or maybe ever, to go through marking them as done or undone.
Some notable recommendations have been met. Most remain undone. A large number are likely never to be tackled. That's not the point, Barbour says.
"The purpose of the commission was not to tell the people on the Coast how to rebuild, so it's a mistake to look at how many were adopted and how many have not been adopted," Barbour said. "The commission succeeded enormously in illuminating for people what could be - showing community leaders their options, their alternatives, what other cities have done and why."
Barbour created the commission shortly after the storm ripped South Mississippi apart, announcing plans for a "renaissance," not just a rebuild. The work of the commission, privately funded, included 500 volunteers on 20 committees investing more than 50,000 hours developing recommendations. It included a charrette, or brainstorming session, of historic proportions, drawing hundreds of top urban planners, architects and experts from around the world. It spawned numerous public town-hall hearings in most communities across South Mississippi.
The commission's chairman, wealthy Mississippi philanthropist Jim Barksdale, noted "We crammed the work of decades into three months."
The result was a 178-page bound volume titled "Building Back Better than Ever," which includes recommendations on improving land use, housing, business, tourism, health care - almost every aspect of South Mississippi life.
Barksdale, whose commission technically was disbanded Dec. 31 after its report was delivered to Barbour, declined to be interviewed, saying through a spokeswoman he's lately been detached from the subject. But in the introduction he penned for the report, he said the commission began its work by noting that in similar efforts - in Mississippi after 1969's Hurricane Camille, in Galveston, Texas, and elsewhere - there was a failure to follow through with plans for renewal after disaster.
"The fact is, we're facing some of the same challenges of recovery, rebuilding and renewal in 2006 because we failed to engage them fully after 1969," Barksdale wrote.
But by most any measure, the Katrina commission has already seen far more results than similar efforts after Camille.
"I consider it to be a home run," said Coast businessman Dave Dennis, who chaired the cultural preservation committee. "I don't want to handicap what percentage of the recommendations will be put into play, because I don't know. But I think Katrina popped this Coast hard enough that people know we can't just go back to business as usual. I think we'll see a goodly part of this process embraced and moved forward with."
Barbour said: "I don't expect anybody to agree with all the recommendations. I don't agree with all of them... I was asked the question by a lady in Pass Christian do I think in 10 years we'll look back and say the Coast is as good as it was Aug. 28, 2005. I answered that if that's what we look back and think, then we will have failed. If the commission's work succeeds, if community leaders succeed, if the governor succeeds, then the Coast will be bigger and better. If all we get is what it was in 2005, I will have failed. I will have failed not because I didn't impose my preferences. I will have failed because I did not lift people's horizons enough, will not have gotten people to see what could be."
Linchpin issues
But there do appear to be some linchpins among the commission's goals - common issues that must be tackled.
One is housing.
Lack of affordable, permanent housing has been noted as a chief concern of most committees in the commission. And housing must be built differently, with Katrina in mind. Schools face difficulties with students and their families living in temporary campers. Hospitals face loss of doctors and nurses who can't find housing. Businesses can't recruit employees because there's nowhere for them to live. Even the military and defense contractors are grappling with the issue.
The shortage is so bad the state is putting plans for a business incubator on the back burner and instead considering building dormitory-style housing for workers, which could themselves later be converted into business incubators, said Joe Cloyd with the Mississippi Development Authority.
Barbour has been lobbying in Washington for funding for "Katrina cottages" or some alternative to the FEMA-supplied travel trailers thousands of South Mississippians are calling home. Already a $4 billion federal grant promises to help many homeowners rebuild, but the program does not cover all and solutions must be found for renters and low-income residents. On the Coast, the housing market was already tight before Katrina.
So far, most of the commission's 36 recommendations for housing remain undone.
Another linchpin, some say, is relocating the CSX railroad tracks to allow building of an east-west roadway, something sorely needed before Katrina. Barbour and Mississippi's congressional delegation are pushing for funding for the relocation in Washington.
Barbour said: "CSX right-of-way acquisition and relocation is a priority... But here again is an example of where my views about how that roadway would be used differ with what the New Urbanists (experts who helped the commission plan) want. I think most people on the Coast think the highest and best use would be a connector for motor-vehicle traffic, so we could return Beach Boulevard to a scenic byway. I think (the New Urbanists) wanted a streetcar system and pedestrian walkway. But again, whether I agree isn't the point. The point is the people on the Coast get to look at ideas and decide which ones work and which ones don't."
One linchpin to the commission's goals appears already to have fallen into place: the creation of a regional water and sewerage board. A regional approach, Barbour said, will allow South Mississippi to cope with the expected northward migration of residents from near the coastline.
The Legislature created a six-county regional water and sewer board, and through agreements Barbour helped secure in Washington, it's expected to receive about $600 million in federal funding to expand services.
Will Longwitz, former communications director for the Governor's Commission who's now a lawyer with a Coast firm, said, "I find it encouraging that there has been movement of any kind on something as big as the water and sewer authority."
Can't be measured in tons
There's been nothing like 100 percent buy-in to the commission report by local government leaders. Some, at times, sound fairly critical of many recommendations and even the process. Ditto the state Legislature.
"Some of it was good, but some of it I think is too expensive - the people of Biloxi cannot afford it," said Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway. "A lot of people with the commission kept saying we're starting with a clean slate. We're not starting with a clean slate. People still live here and own the property. I believe in property rights - a person can do what they want with their land. A lot of these folks involved were people from the outside, and the governor said time and again this is just ideas and the communities can make their own decisions."
Bay St. Louis Mayor Eddie Favre said, "The problem with many of these ideas is still who's going to pay for it. Nobody's addressed the issue of lost operating revenues for the cities, counties and schools. Are we even going to be here as a city and a county and a school district? If that can't be figured out, what good is the rebuilding effort going to be?... From a timing standpoint, I don't know if it was the greatest timing in the world for the charrettes and planning. People were still trying to survive and get debris out of their houses and find a place to live. Planning for the future is difficult when people can't see beyond piles of debris. From that standpoint, a lot of (the commission plan) is grandiose and in some cases just not going to be practical."
But both mayors say they've parroted the Governor's Commission, and helped create similar organizations on the local level. And both believe some good will come from the commission's recommendations.
"I don't think it's going to just sit on a shelf and collect dust," Favre said. "Much of it can be used, although maybe modified. So much of it does make sense. I think a lot of it will come to fruition, but maybe the approach needs to change a bit - more like 'We're here to help you, whatever decision you make we are going to back you, fund you, any way we can.'
"I think some good things will come from it," said Holloway. "I don't know how much, but it's something we don't take lightly."
Longwitz echoed Barbour's views that the commission's success or failure should be viewed with a broad, long-term lens and that the key will be community buy-in, not work in Jackson or Washington.
"I find it unprecedented and astonishing that local governments are moving forward with their own plans, creating their own renaissance commissions," Longwitz said.
"Almost every town has been holding their own charrettes. That impetus is a major product of the commission's work... (The commission report) is like a menu in a restaurant. The patrons can come in and look at the menu in different ways and decide what they want."
He added, "This is not debris. You can't measure it in metric tons. It'll be a lot easier to look back with regret at what didn't get done then to look at all these moving parts now. It's like flying over in an airplane and trying to see who's on the ground."
Governor's Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal
The Sun Herald reports on progress
Where to next?
The
Sun Herald is planning a series of reports on the Governor's Commission and its progress over the next two weeks.
The series started on Sunday May 7th, and will go on until May 18th.
You may already be familiar with the work of the Governor's Commission, but if not, you can find out more about it
from the Commission's web site. In a nutshell, Haley Barbour set up a commission to study and plan for the recovery, rebuilding and renewal of The Coast after Katrina. The commission became known as a Charette after the rapid-development methods used to quickly create the 170+ page report that outlines plans and suggestions for the future of The Coast.
The full series of articles is already planned, and a list of their names and dates has been printed in the Sun Herald newspaper, and posted online on their web site. This is that list:
- May 7th: An overview of the commission's work
- May 8th: Land use
- May 9th: Transportation
- May 10th: Public services
- May 11th: Housing
- May 12th: Tourism
- May 13th: Small business
- May 14: Agriculture, forestry and marine resources
- May 15: Defense and government contracting
- May 16: Education
- May 17: Health and human services
- May 18: Non-governmental organizations
I'll post the articles here as they are printed, so watch the Saucier Community Blog daily over the next two weeks.
