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<br />PUBLIC COMMENT: <br />Alan Rosen is a board member of The Village Project. He said that the people of The <br />Village Project will be pleased about the recommendation of a consultant. He said that the key <br />is to get the right consultant. He said that the plan is very good and there are a lot of strengths <br />in it. He said that the consultant should not displace the strengths in the plan. He said that <br />there is a commitment to concurrently plan for all of the main elements at once, citizen <br />participation is central, and the advisory boards are being strongly integrated into the project. <br />He said that since there are other small area plans going on, The Village Project and others <br />have concern that decisions regarding the Comprehensive Plan may conflict with or adversely <br />constrain positive outcomes. He agreed with accelerating the process. He said that there has <br />not been much outreach to the public at-large. He thinks that broad community input should be <br />emphasized at the earliest opportunity. He suggested that the advisory boards be brought in <br />earlier on, before next July. He suggested providing coaching and technical assistance to <br />volunteers. <br />b. West Ten Soccer Center Construction Schedule Options <br />The Board considered options for completion of West Ten Soccer Center. <br />Rod Visser said that this is a follow up to the Board's discussion at the September 14t" <br />work session. The staff was asked to provide an analysis of the cost differential in regard to <br />developing all of the soccer fields atone time versus building now with the money available in <br />the first phase and then following up several years out with completion of the project. <br />Recreation and Parks Director Lori Taft said that the dollar figures estimated with Corley <br />Redfoat Zack show ranges because the phase design is in the early stages. There is a <br />difference as shown in attachment b between option 1 and option 2 . The total cast in two <br />phases would be $3,688,000 on the upper end of the range. If the Board considered doing the <br />entire project beginning next year, the top of the range is $3 million. <br />Chair Jacobs reminded the Board that there was a letter from the Mayor of Chapel Hill <br />that almost exactly matches the total amount that is being discussed for this phase of <br />construction of West Ten. <br />Lori Taft said that she did attend the Project Planning Committee meeting in question on <br />September 19t", and there was discussion about several Chapel Hill projects that involve the <br />County. In particular, the Southern Community Park project was recently bid and the low bid <br />came in over $1 million over budget. Part of the budget funding included a $500,000 PARTF <br />grant from the State. Chapel Hill could not drop any of the elements of the project because it <br />would lose the $500,000 grant. She thinks that it may have been the consensus of the Project <br />Planning committee that it would be better to find a way to get the money and go forward with <br />the project as is. Then the idea came up that there might be Soccer Superfund money <br />available, and that's when the idea came up to write a letter to the County asking for money. <br />Chair Jacobs said that 2l3 of a million dollars was allocated to Twins Creek and $1.3 is <br />allocated for West Ten. <br />Commissioner Halkiotis said that he is torn about this. He finds it interesting that just <br />now the discovery of additional rack removal money is necessary to the tune of $250,000. He <br />read from the letter from Mayor Foy as follows: "The County would be funding the installation of <br />fields that would serve residents on the fringe of the urban areas, but we would potentially be <br />unable to construct any fields within the urban areas and adjacent to large numbers of <br />residents." This troubles him because he thinks that it is pitting County residents against <br />County residents. He has been troubled by the fact that nothing has been done on this piece of <br />property besides the additional site preparation work. He stated at the last meeting, long before <br />this letter was put together, that he was in favor of doing something with that $700,000+ such as <br />at least get two fields going. If something is not started at West Ten, there will never be <br />