Bike St. Augustine Trail Celebration

Bike St. Augustine is coming back online (even though we know things on the interwebs live forever.” What a way to kick it off than a trail celebration since the BIKE TRAIL FUNDING WAS AWARDED!! More info to come, in the meantime leaving this flyer and press release right here.

Day 1 It takes a Village

On my personal social media, I use the hashtag #IttakesAVillageToRaiseASingleMother. While this personal passionate professional project of W.e. Are Planning is most certainly a touchstone in my career, it isn’t the first time I’ve propped up my own business. The LLC was opened over a year ago but it just wasn’t the right time. More to come on that, but this post is a first of many thank you’s.

I’ve been fortunate enough in my life to have a lot of support with family, professional friends and even members of the community I don’t know, that kept the flame going for nearly 2 decades. As W.e. Are Planning officially launches here in 2023, I wanted to take a minute and appreciate someone who believed in me enough, and made me feel confident enough, to leave a very unhealthy business environment, so I could get where I’m at today.

There’s an old blog I held for road safety advocacy in 2015 titled with a post titled “If you want something done, you have to do it yourself, but not all by yourself”, and that fact remains true today. I’m not by myself, or going on my own, not even close. In the rat race of building businesses, branding, and so on, rarely are reported the thank you’s to the helpers and recognition of  genuine appreciation on a personal level that assisted us professionally. We are all self preservationists but the important role gratitude plays can not be understated. Perhaps it's because growth is hard, and messy. But moving forward is about taking the good and learning from what wasn’t so great, and during that reflection, finding those pivotal moments of humanity. 

Make it stand out

Matching outfits promoting automation in South Florida.

Uyen Dang and I met during the pandemic and hit it off immediately. Not in the way that two friends might but in the way professionals with common goals can and have immediate success. It’s not often that you find someone that you can really work well together with and have arguments that result in products that come out on the other side better for it. She believed in me and I believed in her and we worked together to build up her new company, DDEC, at a time when I wasn’t ready as a single mother with minimal capital and all the bills. 

Over the next 12 months I supported her organization, lended my entrepreneurial knowledge, systems, and skills. For a year I also built my skills, expanded my network, and traveled this state with less worry because I was supported. 

I'm excited to see what the future holds for both of us. I’ve been an independent contractor and started businesses since 2004 and this time it feels like I’m at the beginning of a new adventure with what feels like all the tools I’m going to need to take on the challenges that will come. As humans we evolve hopefully learning from our experiences and I’m excited to take all that I’ve learned and move out on my own again. I had an epiphany and shared with one of my mentors a few weeks ago “do you ever feel like you are exactly where you are meant to be?”

I’m forever grateful to Uyen and her family for the support shown, for the current clients and projects we are working on together across Florida, and what the future holds as we go together, using the best of our skills in combination to continue to solve complex challenges for public and private clients alike. And have a lot of fun doing it. 

W.e. has a corporate mission of bettering the future by bringing women along and building their skill set and confidence in a tangible way, so that we can build better communities, businesses, and individuals for our world. It may seem like a lofty goal, but w.e. made a plan, w.e. have a village, and w.e.’re gonna stick to it.

If there was one feeling you could take into 2023?? M.O.R.E

2022 where would I be without you?

Making my list

Jan 1

Bird Island

STAFLA

I have a lot of feelings heading into 2023. I spent the last 365 days on the go with very little rest, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. As I sat New Year’s Day somewhere I had wondered to on Bird Island in beautiful Saint Augustine, Florida, the only thing I could think of was the feeling of wanting more. Not the kind of more where you need more things rather thinking through the things that matter to me and doing more of that.

2023 is going to be more Meaningful and Organized. More Respite and more Energy. M.O.R.E. In 2022 I started a business for myself and I am helping a friend with hers. Somehow I committed again to coaching youth soccer and figured out how to make that work. 2022 was about #winning, sports, maintaining fitness, and growing deeper into my professional passions. 2022 was learning new ways to make the world a little bit better place.

In recent months, I realized just how precious our experiences are and how they “chisel us “into the person that we’ve become. I had an Epiphany in December, or maybe it was a little bit of déjà vu. It was as though every experience, every triumph every long-term play, every relationship, every connection, all culminated in exactly one point in time and I knew I was where I needed to be. I saw the path of how to get moving forward and becoming the human I envisioned some 20 years ago.

For 2023 I’m committing to 52 installments of things that I think matter. Mostly professional things, but sometimes deeply personal. I think that’s the nature of who I am as a professional and an individual. Forever striving to help make my world a little bit better one starfish at a time. Using Feynman’s Technique (Nobel prize winning physicist), I’m going to do my best to break down seemingly complex topics, so even children can understand and maybe we all have a fighting chance for a better future.

I have transitioned yet again into a deeper sense of community and centralization of thoughts on how to make the world better. I’ve immerse myself in rail and energy as the next layers of importance in my planning career, and as I see it a way back to the future for my beautiful Florida.

I was called a “generator” recently, and I think that about sums me up. So come along with me as I generate 52 topics through the eyes of a learn on the job single mother, strategic land development licensed planner, former real estate broker, B2B software sales person, story telling grant writer, advocate, soccer coach, ocean lover, utilitarian, who loves to travel, enjoys sipping beverages, a good sunrise, long walks to write reports, bird enthusiast, basketball, anything in the ocean, and all kinds of music, type of chic.

Below is my list of things I will do more this year, and I encourage you to do MORE too.

~Heather Lane

2023 M.O.R.E

• Meaningful

• Organized

• Respite

• Energy

Stretch, nature, plants, hugs, adventures, breathes, volunteer, snail mail, steps, water, travel, recipes, entertain, fishing, surfing, reading, love, sunrises, rest

An open letter to my local neighbors…

A letter to my fellow St. Augustinians…. MEDIA Click Here for Op Ed Length and full script for press

Why there’s seemingly no improvements on Anastasia Boulevard in the last 20 years, how road planning and transportation projects are like Halloween, and what you can do now to be part of the solution …

As a northeast Floridian, born and raised in Jacksonville and Jacksonville Beach, who’s called St. Augustine home for more than 15 years, I expressly request you take the time to read my little story. I enjoy the proverbial metaphor, especially to relay complex issues. I find it helpful also with extremely difficult topics exacerbated by grief from death and destruction. You don’t need an open mind, heck, you can have a closed mind, but read top to bots.  With the recent annual passing of Halloween, and yet another fatality on Anastasia Boulevard, it seems like a good time to highlight why seemingly nothing has happened on State Road A1A from the Bridge of Lions to SR 312 in the historic city in nearly 20 years. 

My professional career in land planning started in 2003. I’m nearing 14 years in advocacy, more than 10 years as a transportation planner targeting strategic funding, I attained approval from the national board and passed the exams to attain a planning license, and business partner with an engineering license. I don’t pretend to know everything however, (with a small proud grin on my face also wet from tears) I feel that at least I can scratch the surface on this nebulous referred to as transportation, network, and traffic management.

But enough with what makes me somewhat qualified to write this. I’m equally pissed off, sad, and frustrated with this beloved area. Friends, family, family friends, area business staff, visitors, I know the carnage of Anastasia Boulevard. All of it. Every hit, every fatality. I’ve lost friends, erected ghost bikes, attended wakes, orchestrated meetings, delivered events that closed roads as examples of how we can move together safely. I’ve been threatened with a gun if I “dare close a lane” and had to have police presence at a public meeting on this stretch for my personal safety. I'm invested beyond a Facebook post and affected deeply. As a professional who has committed my personal time to making our public roads and infrastructure better for the human metric, I hear you, I am you, and I ask you, please read. 

Let’s go back to Halloween. Let’s go back one more day to Sunday, October 30, location Instagram.  I was tagged no less than 30 times by various people in the community on a social media post from our favorite grilled cheese and bacon basket restaurant in town, Sarbez. Another pedestrian killed crossing the Blvd. Many friends witnessed or are one degree of separation from the victim.  I accept that my life is affected day-to-day by the death and destruction that occurs on the roads in Florida. I spent last week alone analyzing a driver being killed on impact by a train and reviewing crash data for another town to justify a new road design. At least once a month over the last 12 years I’m contacted or connected with the survivors. This past Sunday, I was playing mini golf with my son on a Sunday. When Jay was killed, I was driving and saw the skateboard and received a text moments later that no one wants “It’s Jay”. “Where’s the guys?” a text from another regarding my at that time husband and his buddies, only to discover it was Bryan. Ring ring, while walking into my parents house after seeing the red lights of an ambulance just passed the turn to go to my childhood home, I answer, “it’s my brother, is he dead?”

It’s my burden I’ve accepted, and every single time it hurts. I’ve also committed to try and determine, however incremental, a way to a better world. My son, after hearing a call with a local news reporter this week said “wow you’re going to be on the news!! For what!” I explained to him for the first time at ten years old,this part of my job. His reply “I wouldn’t want to be the person that gets called when someone dies.” I feel for those who are shocked and saddened by these events. I understand the frustration and I read the emotion of each post. I have never become hardened, tough or deterred after all this time. I do have hope and see incremental wins towards a better boulevard and greater St. Augustine. If I can get you to stop thinking for a moment about roads, safety, lights, benches, speed bumps, and arguing about speed limits and cut troughs and one way versus divided (and on and on and on for 500 comments) and how little or how much media coverage is for every collision, and flashbacks as witnesses to such horrors, and think about Halloween, it might help you help each other. And maybe, help me and other professionals like me, move the mark. 

Halloween. Every year isles at local grocery stores are filled with lots of options for trick or treaters. I know I personally enjoy Nerds, Reese’s peanut butter cups, and Peanut M&M’s, not necessarily in that order. Other people like Mounds, Twix, Milky Way, Starburst, Skittles, you get my point. 

The options available appeal to people's personal preference. We like to have choices. When it’s our image on the line, to give choice, to look and feel good that we were the good house on the block. But what about allergies? Teal pumpkins? Sensory concerns? Kids who can’t have candy? Do we have Toys? Rolls of pennies (does anyone do that anymore?) You could go broke trying to ensure every single person’s preference is met or even further, if every kid’s technical need is met so that all can participate in Halloween.

We could really get into the details of why kids hit the houses with large full-size bars, versus economical (financial and health) trial size, but for the sake of keeping you on task and focus, we will leave economics, health, and inclusion out of things for right now.

Next, let’s talk about where you trick-or-treat. Are you on a public street? Are you in a gated neighborhood? Do you live in a condo, thus trick-or-treat somewhere else? Did you go to a friend's house for a killer monster mash bash? What about the house when you were little and trick-or-treating that you avoided because there was an old grumpy man Withers or the creepy lady who only opened her door to let her many cats out? Or the neighborhoods you avoided because you get an uneasy feeling. 

What about conflicts? What about if it was your best friend's birthday but everybody else is trick-or-treating what are you doing then? What if there was a death in the family and that became priority? Or what if you had a really cool video game that you wanted to purchase when you were a kid and had to make a decision between spending your allowance on an amazing costume or buying that game? 

Now, think of all the levels of decisions to make or dictate options for Halloween. Pile on the memes mocking teal pumpkins, the debate of chocolate versus fruity treats, is your costume going to be accepted by your peers and how that affected your individual decision. Did you trick or treat from home, leave the bowl out for people to self-select, or turn your lights off and drive to another neighborhood? And that’s just Halloween, a frivolous, supposed to be fun, and silly holiday where you dress up, knock on strangers' doors, eat candy, and have a good time. 

“Ok Heather, thanks for the Halloween decision tree, what does that have to do with Anastasia Boulevard, or any other place?” Everything. Halloween is every single public project where everyone wants what they want, all at once, all the time. The elements of Halloween are the same for public projects and have everything to do with how decisions are made or not made with a major difference. Public projects must do the most for the most with fixed resources, in the public eye, and require significant tradeoffs. Everyone still wants their perfect costume, full size Kit-kat bar, ideal neighborhood but replace those items with keep my commute times, street fights over parking spaces, and general lack of understanding of how the government runs day to day or projects are paid for.

Timing is everything

#WeAreTheProblem

#WeAreTheSolution

#WeOweItToOurselve

There were over 500 comments on Sunday. Some arguments on what to do, most demanding something be done, and for me, add memories surfacing from years of public meetings with locals attending derailing efforts through selfish arguments. It highlights how emotions can ignite a reaction but, without something to work towards combined with the unwillingness to accept tradeoffs, nothing changes. Instead of salty versus sweet, avoiding Mr. Withers or deciding between personal purchases, it’s a commentary on the greater needs of a public system and the tradeoffs that must occur and what happens when a plan can’t be adopted. Nothing, nothing happens. Major efforts to work on a better boulevard have been lost to personal and political dialogue because of an unwillingness to accept that our public property IS NOT ONLY ABOUT YOU. Yes, all CAPS, read that again, IT IS NOT ONLY ABOUT YOU.  It’s also not  “them” or “they”. You are them so we have to find a way.

500 comments for one location on a state road, in an agency (FDOT District 2) that manages 18 counties and approximately 12,000 square miles every day. Commenters pointing fingers at this agency over that (which for me is kind of funny when an agency that doesn’t exist gets called out, there is not in fact a St. Johns County Department of Transportation, #factcheck.) Add on that we don’t have enough money to pay for our own needs locally, the political commentary around financing of projects (yes this is a nod at the sales tax), and then everything else in front of officials and community leaders (who are not transportation planners or engineers) including homelessness, electricity, flooding, what do you think happens? Nothing. 

This expensive project, think $15 - $20 million per mile to fix, gets put to the sideline time and time again. There are so many needs in our community pulling on staff and leadership, city, county and state, it just gets tabled. It’s no one entity or agency’s fault, we all have a role to play. Sure, public projects take a long time, as a professional planner, we have dialogue about process improvement everyday. But checks and balances of procurement and policy is not the culprit, its us and we need to plan to address the issues.

“Dear lord Heather, are you saying there’s nothing that can be done?” I’m saying exactly the opposite. I personally love all the input, the data points, the debate, the desire, the passion. KEEP IT GOING! Halloween is over, I bet many of you are thinking about how next year will be even better, analyzing location, type of candy, costume choices. So why not commit part of your daily life to making our community better? Scathing emails to staff, pointing fingers at politicians, accusing your neighbor of being myopic for wanting to ride their bike but your idea of streetlights is better, just cut it out. It’s about as useful as yelling at the cashier for the price of meat. You’re not wrong, they’re not right. We are in this together, a bowl of mixed-up candy, toys, rolled pennies, that need to be provided for. 

I have seen many wonderful public projects achieved once a plan is conceived, the community can rally behind, and the agencies can identify funding for. Locally think about the fact that we have the Amphitheater, the recent King Street Mobility plan with the state, the St. Johns River to Sea Loop, West King area Habitat Housing neighborhood, the MOD for US1 and King Street!!! It takes public private partnership across many agencies to make these happen. A crosswalk improvement on Anastasia Blvd is eminent that was born of a request almost decade ago I was part of, supported by surveys executed by the business association I partook in, and then kept following up on since. Imagine if we had a corridor plan at the same time? Where could we be in the next ten years if we build a plan? It isn’t easy, trade offs occur, it's worth the work, and the wait.

What can you do? 

Decide. Decide to show up to more than one meeting or Facebook post. Write a letter with why you want what you want without target practice against someone else’s request. Take the surveys! Watch the public agency social media as much as you watch TikTok’s of chinchillas wearing scarves and comment on Pete Melfi’s mustache choices. Learn about how projects are funded, voted in, zoned, constructed. It’s interesting stuff. But its up to you to decide to stick with it.

Commit. Commit to reading more than one bullet point, more than the headline, more than the comments, and learn. Everything is public record but requires you to learn more. Do not look for data that only supports your position, rather research what goes into the entire decision for something you think might work. Be ready to commit to tradeoffs, ITS NOT ABOUT YOU, remember? Commit to getting less than meeting in the middle sometimes. Commit to losing selfish objectives with a few minutes of delay to create more safety and comfort. Commit to the human metric and not yourself as the only priority. A commitment to this will see communities thrive economically too.

Succeed. Find satisfaction in incremental successes. A public meeting is had, awesome! A planning study is underway…. Woohoo. A project is on the budget, send it. A project is completed, have a ribbon cutting! Then show up again. Momentum begins somewhere. The more mass, the more momentum, the higher the probability something will happen. But instead of being against something, putting so much energy into being against a project, a place, an idea, we must decide what we are for, and work towards that to make a change. 

As for Anastasia Boulevard, it’s again a haunted house. Someone is dead. People are angry and afraid. Letters will be sent, Facebook wars will be waged, tears will flow, and then on to the next thing. A crosswalk project for Zorayda and Anastasia is imminent, scheduled to be built in the beginning of the year. But what about the rest of the boulevard? The connectivity, the lighting, access, parking, landscaping?

Decide, commit, succeed. It’s the only way. Or decide to let professionals do their job. Admit that you know you want (insert feature, gondolas? Electric automated transit?) put it in the record, and then admit to yourself you have no idea how that happens, you aren’t going to invest time into it for whatever reason, and go live your life. Please don’t show up to blast a mobility project because YOU don’t like it for your personal commute. Accept change. No one is eliminating cars, period, at least not in my lifetime. Commit to reading the study findings and adopting recommendations in the WE. And please, show up when we succeed. Otherwise, it will be another 20 years before anything on this public road changes.

Only one small box of Nerds….. sigh

For me, I will champion increasing the volume of Nerds per household at Halloween (only one trial size box!!). I have decided to continue to work towards a more mobile community, sacrificing commute times for quality of life and safety. I will commit to educating whoever I can about how this works, why it’s important, what are the options, the tradeoffs, the costs, the funding strategies, the policy needs, and how this creates a thriving, lovely place to live, work and play. And do I love a good party! Let’s succeed because at the end of the day, fun is fun, and we haven’t had a ribbon cutting east of the Matanzas since Pax and Pele were unveiled (east side Lions) in 2016, its time. My business partner and I have committed to reengaging the Anastasia Boulevard business efforts altruistically as we continue our professional projects in St. Johns County.  The question is, who’s coming with me? #LetsGO

Sincerely,

Heather Lane Neville, AICP

Mom, strategic planner, soccer coach, ocean lover, runner, 

Heather is an advocate for safer and healthier communities, owner of W.e. Are Planning and Director of the boutique Planning and Engineering firm, DDEC, with an office in the Historic City of St. Augustine on the square. She and her fellow passionate professionals in planning and engineering are dedicated to improving the way the world moves. We are proud to work across the state of Florida in coastal communities and use the transportation network to elevate areas through safety, resiliency, economic development, and thoughtful design. More at www.ddec.com.

In the beginning….

W.e. Are Planning is up to big things to empower women entrepreneurs, professionals and those who believe in more women in technical professional and advisory roles across the US. W.e. aren’t only for women but we are committed to setting examples to create a more diverse professional environment. For now, we are busy building content for our official launch in 2023. Check in to see how W.e. plan to make a difference.