A group focused on guiding the future of Mayfield as it rebuilds after the December tornado outbreak through community voices met Monday night to discuss their goals and next steps of their work.
The updates focused on Mayfield Rebuilds’ yet-to-be-released website and what each of the seven committees within the group had decided to focus on for their current goals. There were also representatives from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Integrity Group, a consulting firm which is helping the city and the committee navigate the recovery process.
One of the big discussions around the group’s website was what else needed to be done before it could go live for the public. Each committee will have a designated section of the website for community members to browse from, which includes committees for business, utilities/transportations, quality of life/arts/recreation and more.
An idea floated was to include personalized surveys for community members to fill out to provide input for each committee. The survey results from the website would then be used to help fit the needs of various projects being worked on. Jill Celaya, the Mayfield Rebuilds committee chair, encouraged every committee to complete their section of the website so it could be released as a resource for the community.
“The more we get the word out and speak with people, they want to know more, and they want to be involved, and that's exactly what we want,” Celaya said. “The quicker we can get this running, the easier. I don't know if you all are having to keep a list of people that want to do things and where to put them and all that, but I am and it will be easier if we have it all combined in one place like this.”
Each committee then presented updates on what the hopes of their committees were moving forward. The business committee presented a focus on moving forward with a farmer’s market for the summer to help the city see signs of recovery. Jason Lemle, one of the business committee chairs, described it as an “achievable, attainable goal.”
“This is an effort in which we've talked with the mayor about, we talked to the urban planner about,” Lemle said. “They were really fond of this idea, possibly moving the location from its current place to the downtown area as kind of a quick win and exciting celebration for the community to make it happen, and so we're kind of working through some of those logistics and trying to understand how that might work at this time.”
The education committee discussed what could be done for a variety of age groups in the community, such as vocational skills and how they might be taught to younger students including a possible summer camp option or a program during the school year.
The health and welfare committee talked about their recent meetings with their committee members, including about all the groups and organizations they’re still learning about focused on tornado recovery, such as Project Recovery. Members of the committee want to create a resource for the community on their part of the website with a list of all the resources available for tornado recovery. Dave Anderson, one of the chairs of the health and welfare committee, said the committee was having a hard time deciding on a project to focus on.
“I think what we're kind of struggling with — we’re in the forming to [brainstorming] kind of part of our journey together,” Anderson said. “It's hard to kind of know what to latch on to as like a project because most of the things are ideas…we're trying to work to get those topics brought to actual project level, impact type things that we can do.”
The housing committee pointed out how discussions in their meeting had focused on the need for both single and multi-family housing in the city. They also discussed some of the housing resources available for those in need such as grants from realtors to help pay hotel bills and rent.
The arts, recreation and quality of life committee presented their narrowed goals of focusing on things like a building community center and a sportsplex. Nate Cox, one of the committee’s chairs, presented an idea for a series of small parks in the area in places that were being rehabilitated.
“We have all this space downtown. Everybody's got a corner, every business has a corner,” Cox said. “So what if we had 23 benches — which is the people that were lost — but what if we had 23 different areas downtown, almost 23 separate pocket parks? “
The rebuild and design committee is focused on the redevelopment of downtown Mayfield. One of the committee chairs is former Mayfield Mayor Teresa Cantrell. She said the tornado presents Mayfield with the opportunity to rebuild in a unique way.
The last committee to present was the utilities and transportation committee. The committee chairs acknowledged they didn’t have a lot of new information, since progress was limited due to remaining questions about how the city and state will move forward on issues such as roads. Tim Choate and Ricky Binkley, the utilities and transportation committee chairs, said they have been talking to people, such as the urban planner the city recently hired, about what they can do to help the process on the governmental side.
“There's not a whole lot Ricky [Binkley] and I can do,” Choate said. “I can throw out all kinds of ideas, but it's all got to be coordinated with the land use.”
The committee chairs plan to meet again in June.
