CDC Calls for Mediation with MAD

The Greater Golden Hill CDC doesn't want their MAD to be upset with them anymore. Instead, the President of Greater Golden Hill's CDC is calling for a mediation to take place so they can move on and start focusing on their task at hand, beautifying the community.

In an e-mail, President of the Greater Golden Hill CDC, Kathy Vandenheuval, attributed the bitter infighting between the groups to a lack of communication. She says the whole thing could have been avoided.

Namely, the CDC's hiring of a program manager for the MAD without the MAD Oversight Committee's approval or feedback. Vandenheuval admits there was a lack of communication on the part of the CDC, but also thinks the members of the subcommittee, a joint coalition of members of the CDC and MAD Oversight Committee, formed to oversee the hiring, should have updated the entire Oversight Committee. "So from the CDC's prospective, the CDC included the MAD committee in the hiring process through the involvement of the program manager subcommittee established by the MAD Committee. Because the MAD Committee is relatively new, no procedures were in place to define how the communication should take place between the program manager subcommittee, MAD committee, and the CDC."

One mistake the CDC did make, says Vandenheuval, was appointing a CDC member to head up the program manager subcommittee. She says it made it appear like the CDC was assuming total control over the program, which was not the case.

Now that things are said and done, Vandenheuval is hoping the worst is behind them, and the two groups can work as partners to get the work in their community done. Vandenheuval does feel, for the property owner's sake, the MAD Oversight Committee can pick up the pace a bit.

"There is a lot of frustration right now with how slow the progress has been. With the hiring of the program manager, the CDC is now in a position where we can move quickly on implementing the MAD but we are waiting for direction from the MAD Committee. For example, the MAD Committee has been sitting on a cleaning Request for Proposal (RFP) for months. This RFP represents much of the services that are to be provided by the MAD and needs to be issued as soon as possible. This puts the CDC in a position where if we move forward with completing the RFP ourselves we will appear to be disregarding the wishes of the MAD Committee; but if we continue to wait we will be doing a disservice to the property owners who are paying into the MAD and who are expecting results and potentially be out of compliance with our contract with the City."

Contact information for the Greater Golden Hill CDC can be found at www.goldenhillcdc.org.