Madison Park Community Council representation was decidedly absent at a March 21 community meeting to discuss creating a neighborhood comprehensive plan.
Historic Madison Park, a relatively new community organization, is stepping in to encourage creating a comprehensive plan in the absence of interest by the Madison Park Community Council, members say.
Community-council president Maurice Cooper doubted a council representative would attend the meeting. "We don't think it is particularly important," he said.
When city money was available a decade ago to create comprehensive community plans, the community council considered the idea, checked with the general community and rejected the idea, according to Cooper. He said the feeling then was that it was better not to draw city government's attention to Madison Park.
"The feeling is still that way," Cooper said of the council and the community. "The fear is that with city involvement in a comprehensive plan there will be pressure for increased density. We are less than interested in that."
MADISON PARK NOT 'INVISIBLE'
Cooper dismissed Historic Madison Park as "basically a creation of one person who was on the community council." He said the council would prefer to work on these ideas through one of its committees, rather than a separate organization.
Lisa Taylor-Molitch, director and founding member of Historic Madison Park, said that, as a member of the Madison Park Community Council, she was rebuffed in her efforts to form a subcommittee to create a community plan for Madison Park.
Taylor-Molitch said she and former council-member Sean Smith and Carol Simon, board secretary for both the community council and Historic Madison Park, jointly founded the new group.
"The responses that we have had within the city [government] is basically that 'if Madison Park thinks they're invisible to us they are sadly mistaken,'" Taylor-Molitch said. "That just seems odd to me. We're not invisible. We're just three miles from downtown."
Her sense of the community's attitude is that a comprehensive plan is needed, not that the community should keep a low profile and hope for the best.
"I think it would be welcomed by the city, and I like to see things going on that benefit the community," said community-council president Alice Lanczos. "I don't see the necessity for a separate organization."
SHARED SUPPORT
Lanczos said that both organizations need volunteer help and community financial support, but Madison Park is a small community and both organizations are asking the same people for support.
"I really applaud the energy that Lisa has poured into this," Lanczos said. "I just would like to see her bring that energy to the community council."
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