Citizens For A Neighbor-First Traverse City

After a stinging defeat in May of 2022, we are changing course – from organizing citizens around a better Parkway to a network of citizens supporting a better Traverse City.

This new citizen-led network works to shift power from those with competing priorities to citizens with one priority – improving the lives of their neighbors.

We’d accomplish this by building/deploying our power for City policy, procedure, and practice change.

After what happened with the Parkway, some practices, policies, and procedures worth changing could include:

• giving private nonprofits access to more City information than citizens
• using private nonprofits as proxies for citizen voice
• providing private nonprofits opportunities to weigh in/influence City decisions before citizens
• requiring affiliation to a nonprofit to be a member of the City’s Active Transportation Committee

Is it time to think/act differently on behalf of the people of Traverse City?

What if we put those who live in Traverse City – those of all ages and abilities – at the center of our decision-making?

Let’s not settle for just a little better – let’s push for lots better.

We deserve it.

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In the spring and summer of 2022, we asked what was important to the people who call the Traverse City area home.

SUMMER 2022 SURVEY RESULTS

PDF of Summer 2022 survey results

SPRING 2022 RESULTS

PDF of spring 2022 survey results

NEIGHBORS HELPING NEIGHBORS FORM NEIGHBORHOOD ASSOCIATIONS

After the Grandview Parkway design debate, a few Traverse City neighbors are helping neighbors without a formal neighborhood association form one.

Many residential neighborhoods – those east of Garfield, south of 14th, Bayhill/Fitzhugh, Morgan Farms – currently do not have a formal association. 

We believe that residents in neighborhoods without an association have less representation on City issues. And with important planning processes like the masterplan rewrite happening this year, now is the time for more engagement, not less.

Traverse City is small – just 8 square miles, with a significant amount of this being the airport. However, the summer 2022 survey determined City residents wished to continue to have multiple neighborhoods.

Below is an organizing template used recently by the Oak Park neighborhood to reactivate their association. Neighbors without an association can use this template to form one.