In all our years of reporting on local governments, and the good, bad and ugly of their relationships with consulting firms, this is a first.
Forest Park’s longtime planning consultant has fired the village.
Muse, the village’s urban planning consulting firm for eight long and frustrating years, has given its notice. It will end its work for Forest Park on March 31.
Courtney Kashima, the firm’s principal, chalked up Muse’s ceased relations with the village to stalled updates to the zoning code, to a 12-year-old comprehensive plan, and to finally, after a quarter-century, making some sort of plan for the village-owned property at the Altenheim.
They’ve “all stalled out,” she said. “We’re an urban planning firm. There isn’t planning for us to do.”
There is, of course, planning to do and planning that has been done. But plans require action and in local government, that means leadership from a mayor and some sincere effort by elected commissioners to bring complex issues to a consensus.
On the three vital topics listed by Kashima, our elected officials have utterly failed. There is no way to soften that assessment. Voters elected five people to lead. Mayor Rory Hoskins has effectively been AWOL. Nothing happens on his watch. And the four commissioners gripe and whine over what seem to be fully resolvable aspects of the bigger picture, the waiting opportunities to move this village off its stagnant mark.
Years are going by.
We’ve said it before. Forest Park is broke.
There is money on the table if zoning fixes can be put in place and commercial and residential development can move ahead. There is money on the table at the Altenheim, where there seems to be a consensus to sell off part of the land there. Whether we agree with that or not, if that’s the plan, then execute it. Bank some cash from the land sale. Put property on the tax rolls for the generations ahead.
Do something.
It is abnormal for a consulting firm to turn down a steady paycheck. The message here should be crystal clear. Muse is telling us that Forest Park is not worth their time. That there are other communities that are serious about planning. And they’d rather work for them than for us.
Wake up!
