There’s been a great deal of fuss over Judge Sotomayor’s statement that a wise Latina woman might reach a different and better conclusion than a wise white male. For the full context, read the speech

A couple more questions about underground wiring and light poles. Kisela said he’ll wait to address comments until everyone’s had a shot.
And that was the last comment, so …
Kisela: What they’re trying to do with driveways: If they have a DO that commits to one, the city has acceded; it’s also expanded driveways where the business routinely gets deliveries bigger than the regular driveway width. And Eisler is one of maybe a dozen people who’ve had problems with the city removing parking from the side of the street and putting the cars back on the lot.
Moving people across the street is something the city’s been studying: “It would be silly to have a parking lot on the north side if we can’t get them safely to the south side.”
As to Mr. Trammel’s concerns: The street lights on the north will remain; the decorative south-side lights won’t be enough light.
The raised curb has been used elsewhere to discourage people parking on the sidewalk; it will also direct stormwater into the swales. “We think it’s an enhancement, not a detriment, to have a raised curb.”
Underground utilities: As in other cases, nothing can force owners to pay to underground the utilities on their own property in a project like this. So they’ll work with the owners, find the expense involved and see what can be gained aesthetically by undergrounding. The easements will be given to the utilities for the work, not to the city.

Jeff Fanto of Okaloosa County Growth Project Coordinator and MIchael Bomar of Tetra Tech will speak.
Fanto: This is about the influx of military people coming to Eglin with all the mission changes. The JLUS is not a noise study, which is a separate project.
Bomar: Will try to make this brief, since they covered the issues back in September. This is about the conclusions that came out of JLUS.
The study tonight is a draft report, the real deal will come out in June.

THis is moving faster than I thought … unanimous to pass the consent agenda.

Christian Science Monitor discusses the possibility here

Moves that staff draft an ordinance to prevent this, decreasing the maximum density by increasing the minimum square footage.
Sam Seevers: Could someone divide up their lot by transferring a deed to a family member, as happened recently?
Kisela: Yes, but they’d still have to meet the square footage requirement.
Sam: So why would we do this? What caused all this to happen? There are houses already where things have been subdivided. How would this widespread area be degraded.
Kisela: “It changes the nature of the neighborhood.” Seevers: “It’s not a neighborhood, it’s an entire coastline.”
Barker: The city recently received a letter from someone who says their property has been devalued because the city’s policies allowed a nearby owner to subdivide.
Trammell: “They were expecting the next door lot to have a single house on it … Now she’s going to be having four houses on a lot that’s essentially next door to their back yard. Normally you would expect everybody there to be facing the water … That just doesn’t fit the quality of what’s already there .. WHen you work really hard and you build something you want to live in your whole life, you don’t want someone to move in next door to you and” change things. If they’d bought next to a lot with multiple houses, that would be obvious; subdividing a single-family lot is a change. It’s not what people expected.
“I think the citizens along Choctawhatchee Bay and Joe’s Bayou and paid good sweat equity to have those properties need to know they’re single-family lots.”

Being progressive and having a history don’t always mesh together.
Ling: There’s a researcher who’s studied that. He’s not found many that manage to balance past and future.
Trammell: “When I describe Destin to people in my travels, it’s my American dream. You can get everything here, you can get the opportunity to do what you want to do, besides it’s beautiful.”
Sam: We are perceived as being incredibly wealthy by the rest of the county. One mayor in the League of Cities keeps telling them that “Oh, Destin can do it, you have all the money in the world.” We are challenged financially, but Northwest Florida sees us as very well off.
Ling: “When I tell other cities how small you are in staff, they say ‘No, Destin has 6-700 people that work there!’”
Trammell: “We’re one of our best kept secrets.”
Jim Wood: Some Web sites say the median income is $80,000 “and that’s totally bonus.”

Bagby: Regarding partnerships, what’s the intersection between us and our partners and potential partners? Kisela: It depends on the partnership; there’s no set contact point.
Bagby says he ran into someone who’d expressed an interest in providing parking to the city, and he had no idea who she should talk too.
Sam: Everyone on council is involved in the community in different ways. We’re all representing one partnership or another. Perhaps we should send them all to Greg Kisela?

“We’ve spent the past fifteen minutes ‘overcompensating for a loud minority’” which is one of the problems listed in SWOT. Council should keep in mind that the majority of citizens feel life in Destin has improved; that doesn’t mean everyone’s happy, it doesn’t mean there aren’t people spewing inaccurate information, but most people aren’t single-issue voters. “I don’t think we should spend a lot of time overcompensating … that’s not the majority of our citizens.”
Kisela: City staff are working on strategies for this. We have addressed some of this stuff in our newsletters, TV shows, etc., but maybe there’s more to be done.
Shane Moody (chamber pres.): “This dominates every meeting we have … we don’t have the resources to do all this stuff. You don’t want to spread your resources so thin … it’s what we face in the Chamber all the time (in) every single meeting. Every. Single. Meeting.”
Webb Warren (IT guy at City Hall): This is what they call “Web 2.0″–”A lot of people hear Facebook and Twitter and go Bad, Not Good, I don’t fit, and others just don’t understand it.” As a result, not everyone’s willing to embrace it.
Sam: The other day, one of my employees said we’re doing an art contest and said “We’re going to put it on Craig’s list” and she had no idea what that meant, or if it was something Mayor Craig Barker was doing.
Chuck Garcia: Keep in mind, 54 percent of people get information from the newspaper. Chabot: But that’s because we’re surveying the older, retired generation. Weidenhamer: But that’s the demographic of Destin. And remember, the issue is not that things are aired online, but that they’re printed in the paper.
Jurate: We’re going in the opposite direction at the library: We have a bulletin board as well as electronic screens because some customers don’t want to get information off an electronic screen.
One guy speaks up: Destin Log does a great job. And they’ve gotten better over the years “and I really think the editor has made a lot of enhancements that’s made the paper a better source of information to the general public.” A lot more people get to throw in letters to the editor, for instance.
He agrees the blog comments are often vicious, “but I’d look at that as a source of information about how you conduct your business.”

Since my hard drive won’t be ready by Monday, I’ll be using The Log’s office laptop. Took a couple of tries to work out the bugs, but I should be able to post from the visioning session and meeting Monday just fine.