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I Commentary: Comprehensive planning process suffered from structural flaws • In response to many requests for corn- facilitate all of these meetings 1 ments from members of the commune- Commentary ran December 2, 2001 in the There should have been fewer, but Duluth News Tribune. Reprinted here with ty and media, we are submitting this more focused, planning district point of view column on SmithGroup permission of the paper. workshops. JJR's perspective on the Duluth Com-prehensive Plan and our firm's termi- should have been more directly ■ We should have undertaken a nation as the lead consultant for the involved in the planning process mailed opinion survey of all project. and the public meetings. households in the city, in lieu of ■ The concept of having two leader the excessive number of planning We offer these comments in the spirit district meetings. SmithGroup JJR of sharing some constructive insights ship committees —the Steering proposed a survey, but it was elim- into the planning process. We share Committee and the "watch dog" Mated by city staff for budgetary ` Citizen's Advisory Committee I the recognition by many community reasons. members that Duluth needs an updat- was counter-productive The two ed comprehensive plan that reflects a committees should have been On a technical basis, we feel that the broadly-shared vision for the future merged early in the process. It SmithGroup JJR team, including our would have been much more con- subconsultants, Arrowhead Regional Regarding the reasons for Smith- structive to have key members of Development Commission and Jane Group JJR's termination from this the CAC in the tent helping the Silberstein, performed well We have project, we believe they are primarily process —rather than outside crit- complied with the terms of our agree- political in nature. We believe the iciznng the process. ment with the city We have attended planning process has had some serious numerous additional meetings and structural and procedural problems ■ While we had a good Steering have undertaken extra work tasks, at 1 that have impacted the outcome. We Committee, we lacked representa- the request of city staff, which were believe the primary reasons for the tion from many important ele- beyond our contracted scope of ser- termination of our contract reside in ments in the community, such as vices. • • these structural "flaws" in the plan- the school district, University of fling process and not with perfor- Minnesota Duluth, the hospitals While there have been some schedul- mance issues. and organized labor. These key ing glitches, there were clear reasons institutions should have been rep- 1for these delays, and city staff has The following points summarize some resented on the Steering Commit- been kept fully apprised of the sched- of our key areas of concern about the uling situation. As for the next steps, tee. process: we hope that we can successfully 1 ■ The initial rounds of the planning bring SmithGroup JJR's role in the • The City Council and Planning Commission should have been at district meetings were primarily project to a reasonable and logical focused on organizational issues. point of closure With some careful the table from the beginning of the rather than on substantive plan- coordination between our firm and project. The notion of an adminis- ning issues. The decision to reor- city staff, we believe the maps and tration-led plan versus a council- ganize the city into the 10 plan- data we have assembled and our work led plan has been an ongoing issue ning districts, which was made with the planning districts can be of concern. before we were hired, was con- wrapped up in a manner that allows • The recent opinion by the city at- fused with the comprehensive plan the plan to be put aside and picked up torney that implementation of the process. The organizational as- at a future date when the entire pro- comprehensive plan requires City pects of establishing the planning cess can be completed. During the re- Council approval changed the districts should have been separat- mauling weeks of our involvement complexion of the process We ed from the comprehensive plan with the project, we will remain com- support the city attorney's opin- process. mined to helping the city move for- ion. This opinion should have ward with the comprehensive plan ■ The number of planning district been rendered in the early part of meetings, which were publicly process the process, rather than toward the announced by the city admimstra- John Stockham,a principal with end. tion to be over 240 meetings, was SmithGroup JJR,was hired to lead the ■ The director of planning and de- excessive There is not enough comprehensive planning process for • velopment and other senior staff trained and qualified city staff to Duluth. December 2001 :.. ___ _ � planer . -