RDA Mission Statement Matt Baker.mp3
RDA Chair, Joe DiSciullo, “The RDA does not currently have an adopted mission statement. RDA board member Mr. Baker will lead the discussion on the RDA mission statement.”
Mr. Baker, “Good evening, Looking at other Redevelopment Authorities in the region’s websites one of things that I think we are all in agreement with the website does need to be updated. There are some things that would help both people that are visiting the website as well as potential buyers that would be interested in looking into properties.
One of the first things that they see is your landing page and for that we need a mission statement. One of the things that we talked about is what can we do to change what we currently have.
I went over 25 different Redevelopment Authorities across the US and I’ll be more than happy, I apologize, I’ll be more than happy to forward that over to everyone here. But what I want to do is just go through the mission statements that I found for the board and have them look at that and have a consensus at to what you agree to.
Some of the things that I saw that were interesting is that if you use Redevelopments such as the Redevelopment in Erie, Johnstown, or Allentown, Boston, New Orleans what you’ll see in most of them is that they use action words. But they also invite the person who actually goes to the website: they actually invite them to come in… they thank them…for the business, they welcome them in. And then they use what was contusive in the website to actually keep their interest.
A lot of them probably don’t have the biggest budgets and some of them do. Like, I saw one from Lancaster California, had a great website. The City of Pittsburg actually if you look at the properties you can actually click on the property and almost pull a 360 view. So if you’re an hour away and you don’t want to travel down to a property, you’re able to click on them. And most of the types of things that would give people interested in looking at properties either to buy or rent, you know, the first pass before they decide to get in the car.
It’s frustrating, any of you that have bought a home what you see, especially what you see online now once you actually get there is cookie cutter.
And now the real estate companies have actually taken cameras inside and have given you that 360 look. The same with automobile dealers, you’re not just seeing a picture, you’re seeing every angle of it.
So from the mission statement standpoint, some of the things I saw..One that I’d liked in particular was from the City of Erie…
They actually break just break it down to “Renew, Rebuild, Revitalize” they are just action words you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. But it’s just to give the potential reader an idea of what our goal is. And I think… the mission statement needs to tie to our overall plan. In regards to both a business plan and a strategic plan moving forward. A one, three and five year, for what we want to do…
Most people if you walk on the streets of Coatesville and surrounding areas, they don’t know what we do. We should be…we should very succinctly be able to look at your website, a website and pretty much look at your front page and get an idea of who you are, what you do and what your goal is. What’s the net, what’s the goal and what you’re trying to do in the first place…
And I know that Ruth Ann has been nice enough to, and I apologize for not being able to work with you and Mr. Marking, they went through the shell that we need to get done in order to do that. But what I started with, Ruth Ann and Mr. Marking pretty much said, Hey, come back to the world.”
Ruth Ann Mowday discussed the ongoing changes that are being made to the City of Coatesville website. If you have used it in the past you will see some of the changes have already been made.
Mr. DiSciullo, “I’d like to thank you for the time you’ve put into this. Obviously you’ve… spent a lot of time working on it. For many people the first contact they have is our website. What you say, if you’re an hour away and our website looks good they might spend the time to come see us. And I understand that we only have so much space and so forth and you have to try and take your ideas and shrink them a little bit and make them fit to the space. But, I appreciate the efforts that everyone put into this. I think it’s time well spent."
Mr. Kasitz, “Will we need to work on a catch phrase?”
Mr. Baker, “I can forward over everything we get…It looks good, what can we do better, what can we do to take what looks reasonable And then once we sign off on it I’ll talk to Ruth Ann see if she can get that done. Because we know that Mr. Marking is pushing for us to finish up on it."
Mr. Kasitz, “What’s our schedule, timeline?”
Mr. Baker, “We can knock it out in the next day or two if you guys can get it to me by the end of the week, if that’s acceptable. If we can get this done, signed off, the mission statement and I guess also the content, is that OK?”
Ms. Mowday, “Yes, for the new stuff; you, Mr. Marking and some of us have been able to update the current website that we have. I just got, a couple weeks ago the Velodrome on there. They actually sent all the information and everything actually for case of the Velodrome is up there. But I can try to get some of your stuff on the old one and then forward the stuff Mr. Marking has put on.”
Matt, “Even like little stuff now, I know you got a lot to do, but like some of the maps and things that you see on the others, is, even if they’re not the best maps …they get the viewer the ability to click and pull it up. Our redevelopment map, it’s got a big picture, but you can’t do anything with it. You can’t drill down like Google. And I understand that at that particular time, at that particular moment…”
Ms. Mowday, “That’s what we were talking about. Mr. Marking said instead of putting it on this one we’re working, because the other one’s supposed to be up…instead of putting it up on here, we are going to push to get the newer information up on the…
Mr. Barry, “The Chester County Planning Commission has maps of that type. I’d like to maybe have some interactive maps."
Mr. Baker, “Like the City of Allentown, they’ve got some pretty good maps as well. Maybe we could just reach out and talk to them. Obviously there is a cost involved. How did they get to that point, if we can get some help there."
Mr. Colon, “Is it something we have to adopt as a group?”
Mr. DiSciullo, “I think we should adopt it. Once we see the information that Matt puts out to us and we sign off on it. And we put it on the agenda and formally adopt it.”
Daily Local News:
I know the reporters don’t write the headlines. The headlines are designed to sell the paper.
In the article, I think that Stacy Bjorhus understated the effect the Velodrome would have on the Coatesville, not just on Coatesville but Chester County. That’s really her job, finance managers are supposed to deal with what appears to be possible.
I think the Velodrome has the potential, even in a tough economy, to dramatically change Coatesville’s place in the world and bring Chester County along with it.
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