DATE: Sunday, October 26, 1997              TAG: 9710240232

SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON   PAGE: 08   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: ON THE STREET 

SOURCE: Bill Reed 

                                            LENGTH:   62 lines

COMMUNITY TALKFESTS ARE ROAD MAPS TO BEACH IN YEAR 2002

Community conversation can mean many things to many people.

To folks who attend Cooke Elementary School PTA meetings, it might mean heated discussions about getting the 90-year-old school fixed up so kids don't have to go to classes in broom closets.

In Kempsville, civic leaguers might weigh in heavily on the need for immediate improvements to the Princess Anne Road-Kempsville Road corridor, which becomes a parking lot during rush hours.

Out in Pungo or Creeds, residents might be stirred up about creeping urban development in their rural and bucolic areas, and they would want somebody to put a stop to it.

In Sandbridge, folks talk heatedly about protecting their homes from the rampaging Atlantic and they worry aloud that neither the city, state or federal governments really give a fig about their problem.

City Council members and municipal staff members have a different concept of what ``community conversations'' mean. They want to hear what folks across the social spectrum have to say about the future of the Beach - in the next five years.

Now this is a difficult thing to do, because Virginia Beach is home to a little more than 430,000 people. And finding a way to distill the opinions of so many into manageable and positive goals is like trying to corral Jell-O with chop sticks.

So, city officials probably have done the best they could, under the circumstances. They staged two meetings in the last three weeks with a group of handpicked residents and members of a vast array of municipal boards and commissions to find out what they would like to see done in the near future to enhance the Beach and the lifestyle of its residents.

These were invitation-only affairs, which might smack of elitism in some eyes, but nevertheless they have been productive.

The first session was held Sept. 30 and involved 75 Beach residents selected by the City Council. The second was held last Tuesday at Princess Anne High School and involved more than 200 people connected with city boards and commissions. In both instances members were asked what they liked best about their city. Then they were asked what goals they had in mind for the city - say for the year 2002.

Basically, the answers were the same. Participants liked the city's climate, beachy ambiance and amenities like the library system, the Virginia Marine Science Museum, the GTE Amphitheater, the recycling program, the soccer complex, the planned TPC golf course and the $40 million in Atlantic Avenue improvements.

The list is a lot longer, but folks attending the community conversations generally thought a lot more can be done to improve the quality of life in the Beach.

They scribbled their ideas down on index cards and flip charts in sessions that lasted well over two hours.

Their suggestions will be compiled and boiled down into manageable form by the staff of City Manager James K. Spore and released for public consumption in the next two or three weeks.

Hopefully, said City Councilman Linwood O. Branch III, the results will give city leaders an idea about where their constituents want to go and how they want to get there.

Then, providing the goals don't require massive and prohibitive increases in taxes, everybody can get where they want to go.

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