There are several things I’d like to share in regard to the in-depth report by OHM, commissioned by the city and recently shared with Whitehall’s Council. However, this will not be that post. Here, rather, you’ll find copies of specific pages of the report, annotated with my observations and feelings on the information being given. If you want to view the entire 102 pages of the report (like I did) you can go to:

whitehallworks.com (where you can also still add commentary)

Pages which aren’t included here were either blank or contained information I felt fine with and so felt no need to comment on it or share here. The pages on this post caught my eye for a variety of reasons: those related to my fight with what I’ve exhaustively claimed is City Hall’s disreputable behavior, the current and rising positioning of governments as authoritarians tasked with getting their populace to tow the ‘company line’, where greed supersedes humans/citizens and those in charge of everything introduce a bland corporate standardization where individuality, personality and liberty are only as welcome as benefits the ‘powers that be’ (and the bottom line) and resistance to implementation of THE PLAN is intolerable.

Being as there is far too much glad-handing, nodding agreeability that stands in for sound judgement in Whitehall with so little critical thinking to balance any and everything, I felt duty-bound to offer up that critical thinking in light of its lacks presence elsewhere. However, just because one uses critical thinking to get to the true meat of matters doesn’t mean that one is not in support otherwise. The fact is that I largely agree with this plans wider tenets. Those which I was in agreement with long before it was even commissioned; when I brought a copy of ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ by Jane Jacobs to Whitehall City Hall to proffer as a gift to the city of my birth. That gift which was thrown back at me disrespectfully and derisively, the tenets of which, largely, they have all so approvingly jumped on board with when it was their efforts to bring it to the community, but which I was ignorantly given the collective backs of their hands for 10 years ago.

Regardless of that everlasting disrespect, the majority of this plan’s ideas are in alignment with what I’ve long understood and championed. I do have concerns, worries and reservations, those which I’ll share in another post on the matter.

As for OHM themselves, my issues are not with them. I applaud their work. It is exhaustive as well as skillfully and professionally executed. My concerns rather, lie both with larger disturbing sociological trends in government, business and development and with those at Whitehall City Hall who don’t understand deeper ramifications of city planning, don’t care about poor people, favor the wealthy over the poor and business over people and whose consistent betrayal to this city’s historical population demographic: the working middle-class, drives my fight and my rightly-placed anger towards them. It’s my belief they want to govern a city of people they favor, not the ones they have. And so it is.

For now, here are my annotated pages: