The decision Thursday by Councilman Batt to withdraw the resolution, one supported by thousands of citizens and many organizations, raises questions about his commitment or the advice he has been given about the necessity for a city Master Plan that is integrated, open to maximum feasible citizen participation, and based on a rational assessment of needs and publicly enunciated goals.

Using one excuse after another, like the tone and language of SaveAudubonPark.org’s website and demanding the names of its authors, then relying on a misconstruing of the City Charter’s language, are, in the larger picture really small potatoes, but the City Councilman used them to avoid making the Audubon Nature Institute, and its governing board the Audubon Commission, accountable to objective planning standards and responsive to the public interest.

And where is our own Planning Commission in all this? It spends thousands of dollars and asks hundreds of citizens to spend hundreds of hours in developing a Land Use Plan (adopted by the Council in 1999!), drafting a new Master Plan and Zoning Ordinance. But when asked repeatedly since November to evaluate the Audubon Nature Institute’s plans and operations with the same comprehensive study and provision for thorough public input, it replies first that it did (but cannot provide the date) and then is says it cannot without direction from the City Council!

The Planning Commission should defend and promote its own work, or it should tear out page 43 of the 1992 Master Plan, pages 90, 95, and the insert map of the new Land Use Plan, pages 65, 77 and 78 of the Master Plan Blueprint draft, and pages 51, 54, 55, 61, and 63 through 65 of the Parks, Recreation and Open Space Element of the Master Plan drafted in February.

If the Commission is unwilling to support the substance of its own work, the Council must make them do it and stop ignoring the eight hundred pound gorilla that manages Audubon Park. Demonstrating political support for such reforms will have implications not only for Audubon Park, but City Park and other open space facilities.