Some comparisons...

Here's something interesting, I think. Check out this link to the City of Fort Pierce website. I had a project up there last year and got to know the community. It has its share of political intrigue recently. But I thought you would be impressed by the 360 degree automated panorama of their major projects. Click around on the page and check out the cool way the "searchlight" shows you where the camera is pointing in plan view. (You will have to use Internet Explorer as the functions don't seem to work in Firefox or other browsers)

Also of note is that they are initiating a new trolley service and the vehicles look exactly like the ones we had. The same ones that Mike Frey said should be painted yellow since they were such lemons.

There is also a letter from their City Manager, Dennis Beach (ironic). It is written to correct what he and the City considered misinformation as reported in the local media regarding the restoration of the Sunrise Theater and the involvement of their Redevelopment Agency, grant monies and a local foundation. It is also gives an assessment of what other community assets represent in investment of public tax dollars and the revenue generated by them.








So, what can we learn from this. One thing is I find it all too easy to do a search and replace - Sunrise Theater for (our) beach. The following is a list of what I think are some salient comparisons that are highlighted in the letter:

• That we can learn from other municipalities. Fort Pierce is about the size of the City of Lake Worth, is a coastal municipality and has its own electric utility.
• That it is an important function of City government to "get the word" out and defend itself in the media. There is interpretation and then there are facts. I haven't had the opportunity to read the article that spawned the letter but I would like to see a letter from time to time sent out by the City of Lake Worth in response to some articles in the press.
• That there are public and cultural assets within communities that need care and attention over time in order for them to continue to be contributing community assets. There are various means that cities use in order to make that re-investment and the sources outlined in the letter make up a representative summary of some of the forms they can take.
• That there are other communities that have to do battle in order to make those re-investments in community assets.

Another set of comparisons come from Decatur, Georgia - click here for their website. I have some friends that are planning on moving there in the near future and they've done some research. It turns out that Decatur is one of those first ring suburbs immediately east of the City of Atlanta. According to Wikipedia, it has the largest proportion of gay couples within the State of Georgia of any community.

First of all, their website is First Class. I encourage you to travel around their site and see what interests you. A couple neat things that I found is that they have a Flexcar system. That's where a company provides fuel-efficient vehicles around town in certain parking spaces and that's where you pick up the car you want to use for an hour or a day, whatever! Then you just return back to the same parking spot that you found it. Kind of cool and a nice way to have flexibility in transportation choices and compliments a mass transit system well. They say that for each Flexcar they put into service takes 15 privately owned vehicles off of the roadways. Hmmmm. They also have special parking spaces within the downtown that are only for scooters - a traditionally sized space can accommodate 8 scooters. I see some scooters down here (besides my dogs - HA!), but not too many. They must be more prevalent there.

You know, it comes to mind that a "community bike" program might be a good idea for our City to implement. This is where we get impounded or unclaimed bikes, paint them white and saftey orange (so they're easily identifiable as part of the program). These could be left around town in certain places - the downtown would have a concentration, along with shopping centers, the beach etc. People could use them and return them to where they found them - and this would be free for the user. Think about that!

That's all. Enjoy!