Northside Harrison Square Meeting

I was unable to find out any information about the Northside Harrison Square meeting, and was unable to call, so seeing how it seemed interesting, I decided to attend anyway.

First of all, the meeting was very well put together, in my opinion, right from the start. They discussed some (not many though) details of the project, went over the project itself as a whole, and then after about a half-hour they opened it up to questions and comments from the public for discussion.

One comment that I found interesting, was when a lady from the North Anthony (?) neighborhood association had mentioned a "sense of urgency". Mayor Graham Richards replied to this comment with different reasonings of why there is, if any, a sense of urgency, including the fact of how crucial it is to get this project underway this year, or the CRED money will be lost, as CRED will not exsist after 2007. This means that if the project hasn't gotten at least somewhat underway by the end of 2007, we loose the CRED money, which could essentially add up to a little over $10 million. This could easily bring Harrison Square to a hault.

Other questions included anything from funding to questioning of the bridges being able to take on so much traffic.

Overall, it was a very informative meeting.

City Officials that attended the meeting included Mayor Graham Richards, Deputy Mayor Mark Becker, Councilman Tom Smith, County Commissioner Bill Brown, Nelson Peters, and others.

If you were not able to attend this meeting, the Mayor's Report to the People sessions will take place next week, as well as other Harrison Square meetings to follow in the coming months.