We want to give City Traffic Engineer David Roseman big props for an e-mail he sent out to encourage residents to come out to a community meeting Thursday, and simultaneously give the city in general a big raspberry for its, um, low-key outreach.
Roseman's e-mail, which we'll get to, promises a frolicking good time at the upcoming SEADIP community meeting. Quite a promise to live up to.
The city? No so much.
SEADIP stands for the Southeast Area Development and Improvement Plan, and is actually a zoning master plan approved in 1977. It has since been an area of contentious debates and issues for years now, from restoration of the Los Cerritos Wetlands, to the proposed Home Depot Center, to traffic flow, to development of the SeaPort Marina Hotel.
On Thursday night, a town hall on developments in SEADIP is being held at Rogers Middle School from 5:30 to 8.
After reading Roseman's pitch about his session, we went to see what the other sessions would be about.
Went to the city calendar ... not only did we not find what the other sessions were, there was no mention of the meeting.
So we googled and found a cool document from the city about a website to update the community on all things SEADIP. Ta dah, we thought. Typed in Http://www.longbeach.gov/plan/pb/apd/special_studies/seadip.asp which, oddly redirected us to Long Beach's Development Services http://www.lbds.info/ where we found ... nothing.
Well, at first.
On a hunch we downloaded the department's newsletter. And after watching our toenails grow druing the download process, lo and behold, deep in the calendar section of the newsletter was the mention of the meeting. Not what the sessions would be, but, hey, it's a start.
Here, then, is a slightly edited version of Roseman's pitch,
"I want to encourage you to come out for the Southeast Area Development and Improvement Plan, or SEADIP. There will be three sessions and I'm moderating the Mobility Panel that will start at 7 p.m. and I'm really excited about it. I have assembled a great group of panelists and its our intention is to present something a little different and innovative. Let's face it, we are all experts at using our transportation system and we all have ideas on how to make it better. What I hope to accomplish is to provide you, the audience, insight into how transportation decisions are made by witnessing a discussion and debate of possibilities by panelists that are passionate about making Long Beach a better place. Rather than your typical stiff bureaucratic presentation the mobility panel will endeavor to leave our big words and acronyms behind as we candidly debate potential transportation solutions in a lively and engaging manner. So I encourage you to put down the remote control and come out to Rogers Middle School tomorrow night I promise you it will be better than channel surfing."
So, you might want to TiVo "Law and Order."
Oh, by the way, we did find out what the other two sessions are about. Craig Beck, director of Development Services, will be available for a Q&A session at 5:30 and a session will be held on the retail market, urban planning, sustainable development and other issues.
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