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Debate brings out volunteers Shady Cove signs up members for advisory committee By MELISSA MARTIN SHADY COVE -- Don't complain about government unless you're willing to get involved, says Shady Cove resident Jacqueline Mulnix. The retired medical office manager marched down to Shady Cove City Hall and signed up for the Citizen's Advisory Committee that's been working on a hotly debated transportation plan. "I was tired of all the `he said, she said.' It was like a bad divorce. Everyone's perceptions were so different. I finally decided I was going to try to join the committee." Mulnix is one of six Shady Cove residents appointed this month to the committee, bringing the number to 13. "I'm looking for commitments from you," Mayor Tom Anderson told four applicants who attended a study session Thursday. "When the exciting part -- the transportation plan -- is finished, we want you to stick with it because there is a lot of work to be done," Anderson says. New committee member Shirley Williams says she's ready to roll up her sleeves and work. The retired Kmart office manager lives in the Shady Cove Mobile Home Park that stood in the path of a proposed street in an earlier draft of the transportation plan. "After going to all of these public hearings, I thought, `I want to be involved on the ground floor of this work and find out how they come about making their decisions,"' Williams says. The other applicants are Mary Perry, a bookkeeper at Shady Cove Mobile Home Park; Bill Kyle, retired from a Minnesota commissioner's office and residents Rudolph Zazueta and Wayne Barnes. "The transportation plan brought them out of the woodwork," said Fred Wendt, Shady Cove council member. "But now that we've got them, let's hang on to them." The transportation portion of the comprehensive plan looks much different than it did a month ago when two public hearings drew more than 100 people each night. And they got results: the advisory committee has made several changes. They include: Cut what neighbors dubbed "the road to nowhere," because it was shown on the map with cul-de-sacs on each end; cut the proposed street south of the bridge; relocate the loop road around the west side of town; and reroute the proposed street closer to the hillside and away from the mobile home park. Committee meetings will continue at 9 a.m. Wednesdays, with City Administrator Jerry L'Estrange serving as facilitator. The City Council Thursday also called back a member of the citizens committee who had resigned because of the street controversy. Jim McBee, the mayor of Central Point from in 1972-76 and a Shady Cove resident since 1986, told the City Council he hopes Robert's Rules of Order will be used from now on. McBee also called for sending three or four committee members around town to take an inventory of property that can be built on. "Right now the list includes 40 acres that the school district owns, a privately owned airfield and what they call Christmas Mountain with its terribly steep slopes," McBee says. Anderson agreed that the city needs an inventory. Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA