The city held its second Vision 2035 Master Plan workshop, which was quickly overshadowed by residents airing their frustrations about a lack of publicity for the event, last Thursday evening at Granite Coast Brewing Company.
The event, which seeks to gain and insert community input into the plan, was held at a more casual and social setting than the previous forum at Higgins Middle School. However, some of the roughly two dozen residents in attendance quickly began questioning the city’s communication skills and efforts as many said they did not know about the forum until the day before or morning of.
Resident Sudie Smaller said that she first heard about the event on the brewery’s website Wednesday night.
“It wasn’t until today that I started to see advertisements about tonight’s meeting. How can you expect people to plan?” Smaller asked Senior Planner Drew Levin, who was representing the City of Peabody.
Levin responded that a different approach was taken for this workshop compared to the largely publicized forum in November, saying that the goal was to present a casual pop-up for residents to see and come in as they walked through the downtown area.
“We get robocalls about the most irrelevant stuff. Why wouldn’t there be a robocall to tell people about this meeting? That’s on you,” one frustrated resident said directly to Levin. “It takes you to bring it up.”
Other residents, like Smaller, asked when new positions, such as a sustainability coordinator, would be created to help organize and promote events like these.
Levin continued to receive questions on the matter for roughly 15 minutes after the workshop began around 7 p.m. before groups finally broke out to look at the pop-up.
Ron Smaller said that after attending the first forum, he was expecting a little more for this workshop.
“I was expecting tonight to be the next step,” Ron Smaller said. “At least a little feedback to what they put together, some data, and tonight really was nothing. It was like hello, have a beer, and see ya later, so it was a little disappointing.”
At the beginning of the workshop, Levin said that the city is planning many more workshops similar to the one at Granite Coast. Ron Smaller added that he is fine with that, however he wants the city to be more clear so residents can go in with expectations.
“I really think they could do a better job communicating what they need, what they want, and when things are happening,” Ron Smaller said.
“The city needs a communications director or something,” Steve Andrada added. “Because they are doing a lot of good things, but you got to tell us about it.”
