Community Corner
News from the Sidelines
Over the last few weeks, the City of Rye responded to my request and installed two signs, one on either side of Laurel St. Each says “no parking here to corner” and describes two hour parking. The City also painted the areas where parking isn’t allowed. Thank you to the City of Rye, specifically City Engineer, Ryan Coyne, and the TPS Committee, headed up by Brian Dempsey. I appreciate the City’s response, yet still question the current role of the TPS Committee, transparency around its actions and the length of Mr. Dempsey’s tenure. Here are 3 basic suggestions that begin to address these problems:
Execute a consulting contract with TRC Solutions. Mr. Dempsey is a volunteer who has contributed considerable time to his position. It is also true that Mr. Dempsey’s firm has been contracted by the City on more than one occasion. Mr. Dempsey and/or his firm should be engaged on a consulting basis. The TPS Committee would name a new chair. The City will then have a transparent relationship with Dempsey and TRC Solutions. This also removes the potential conflict of having a committee head being awarded business for his/her firm.
As a side-note, I would have liked to include specifics on the structure of a consulting agreement with TRC Solutions but I am doing the FOIL shuffle with Kristen Wilson who says the scope is too wide -14 years- and search terms weren’t provided. How can we determine what kind of consulting agreement should be structured if we aren’t allowed to see how much work has been done historically?
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Post TPS Committee monthly meeting agendas on the City’s website. Take minutes during the meetings and post them to the website, too. If you don’t attend the TPS Committee meetings, there’s no way to know if your neighborhood is being discussed or what was discussed. There is a Committee Secretary but minutes –if they’re kept- aren’t required to be posted publicly. I submitted a FOIL request for TPS Committee meeting agendas and minutes. I thought this request would be the one with the wide scope. Not so, because the minutes don’t exist. I received a bunch of agendas with lists on them. There isn’t even a record of who was at the meetings. The intersection of Boston Post Road and Central Ave was on the agenda something like 12 of the last 16 meetings. That’s a lot of talk about an intersection without including local homeowners.
Commit to 3 year member and chair terms, across Rye committees. There are plenty of volunteers, plenty. Nearly 3,000 Rye residents voted in the last election, a non-Presidential election. There are plenty of concerned residents. I hear the late, great Doc Watson singing the classic, “Dig a little deeper in the well, boys. Dig a little deeper in the well. If you want a cool drink of water, you gotta dig a little deeper in the well”. It’s incumbent on the City Council to dig a little deeper in the well, so to speak, to diversify and refresh Rye’s committees. If you have a good candidate for a committee, please email the Council and Mayor. I hate to waste space even addressing this, but I don’t buy into the “people won’t volunteer because they’re worried about incivility”. Nope, not true. It may indeed be true that people the Council wants to serve on committees may be worried about incivility. So, move on. There were nearly 3,000 residents concerned enough to go to the polls.
