By Scott Unger • Of the News-Register • 

City of McMinnville starts study to balance access to public facilities

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Comments

tagup

Survey to determine access is fine, but it Seems like the mapping of sidewalks, public roads, waste & storm water systems along with park access should already be in hand. Don’t the city departments have this information? Is a committee & paid consultant firm really necessary? After the budget overruns that required a “service fee” added to utility bills, I would prefer that city leaders look to cut costs where possible. Re creating maps, seems redundant and a cost that could be eliminated. Maybe I’m missing something…?

McMinnville Planning Department

tagup, this is a pilot project funded by the state to look at public facilities through a lens of equity - meaning do we have the same standard of public facilities in our lower income neighborhoods (which in McMinnville is our older neighborhoods) as we do in our other neighborhoods? The grant funds both the analysis to determine gaps and deficiencies in these neighborhoods, and a new method of engaging the public in city planning efforts - ie not just the standard host a town hall, but go into the neighborhoods and meet people where they are, in places where they are comfortable. We will be providing the consultant team with our existing data and maps, and they will then be using those maps and data to model the gaps and deficiencies in these neighborhoods - which will be new data and maps for us to use in our public facility planning. The City is not paying for this portion of the public facility planning. We are though, currently updating all of our public facility plans as part of our urban growth boundary and growth planning work, and the data and analysis from this effort will be incorporated into that larger effort.

Local Yokel

MPD - That answer is simple. No. All the parks in the "older" neighborhoods have been shut down and dismantled, while the new neighborhoods are designed with parks in mind. I lived in these "old" neighborhoods growing up and used these parks and also know that there is no way to retrofit these areas with what we are seeing put into today's new neighborhoods. The walking paths aren't an option and adding restrooms to some of these older areas are seriously just asking for trouble. These older areas have a small park carved into cubbies in the housing and I am guessing that adding public use restrooms in these dense areas would not be a favorite of the people living there. I can remember constantly being yelled at as a kid for just having fun in the park. I Can't imagine how it will go when you add restrooms in the sake of "equity" just so they can be abused and not used for intended purposes.

Joel R

For the love of God, tell theae DEI people to drop this plan and instead use their time and energy to figure out a way to fix the homless and gang grafitti problems that are destroying this city.
Geez...Only the government would send in a repairman to fix the toaster while the kitchen is on fire.

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