Trail:

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A change of tactics

After the meeting, Deutsch said it probably could have gone better, and it showed the community has a lot of confusion and frustration about the project.

The problem, she said, is residents are wrongly assuming that trail master plan projects are set in stone and coming soon. This couldn’t be more wrong though, she said, because most of the proposed trails won’t be started for decades and the plan could change in the intervening years.

“I think there's a lot of frustration because the perception is we're not listening,” she said. “But we are listening. We're just not making final decisions yet … People see these plans, and they presume that we are starting tomorrow.”

One problem is engaging people who typically don’t participate in public meetings, but who actually need the trails in the project.

“The areas of town where people have to walk are always woefully underrepresented with our meetings,” Deutsch said. “How do you convince people that are working two jobs or have three children at home, to come out on a random Wednes- because there’s a newsroom willing to follow local officials there. day night and join in?”

We have problems getting metropolitan dailies to show up at city council meetings to cover the city council.

Local news is not always local. Just because Roswell is strategizing in Opelika doesn’t mean what they do there happens in a vacuum.

Chattahoochee Hills is not Las Vegas. What happens there comes home.

Shelby was in the room when Alpharetta approved requests for funding increases.

Amber got to walk along the Reedy River with the Johns Creek City Council as they took notes on Greenville’s public art, civic partnerships and cohesive branding. Now those are all lessons the city will hope to implement as the Johns Creek Town Center moves forward.

I can tell you this much, Delaney’s report from Opelika is going to be a lot more comprehensive than the one that comes from the city.

So, we think it’s important to go. If the Johns Creek City Council is meeting, the Johns Creek Herald should be in the room. Even if we have to pay our own way.

The city hasn’t scheduled any more participation meetings on the trail master plan, but Deutsch said officials are going back to the drawing board to see if there are different methods to get more feedback from underrepresented community members.

Despite calling the meeting “unsuccessful,” Deutsch said the city probably has enough information to identify their main priority for the initial project.

“Dunwoody Village is a big priority of ours, but in full transparency, I think Perimeter is where the need is the greatest,” she said.

If they work on connecting the Perimeter area to other southwestern areas like Georgetown and Winters Chapel Road with trails, she said they will bring vital new connections to areas where many families don’t have vehicles and rely on public transportation.

“Just because you may not think you'll ever walk to the grocery store doesn't mean that other people won't,” she said. “We're not building for today or tomorrow. We're building for the next 20 years.”

For more information about the Dunwoody Trail Master Plan, visit the city’s website, dunwoodyga.gov/, and look under the “Government” header.