High-level visioning” is, apparently, the latest in chic new government speak. It evokes experts dreaming up plans beyond our pedestrian imaginations.

It sounds swell, unless you’ve been visioned before. And Tacomans have been visioned plenty.

They laughed down a proposal to spend $1 million-plus on a spire an out-of-town architect visioned as an icon for downtown. They called foul when a private school visioned playfields for its use in Franklin Park.

By necessity, Tacomans have organized themselves into a vigilant, vision-wary citizenry.

So when word leaked that two groups were doing high-level visioning in the parks, activist e-mails went on alert.

Metro Parks Tacoma had recruited 16 business and government leaders to a Revenue Task Force to avert a $4.7 million deficit in 2009 and 2010. Task force members pursued revenue in government partnerships, park fees, programs, concessions, marketing and – here’s the hot button – property. They piled into a bus and toured Metro Parks’ 83 properties, looking for development opportunities.

They saw two locations ripe for revisioning: A chunk of Point Defiance Park near the waterfront, and the city, county, parks and school district-owned land around Heidelberg Park.

At just about the same time, members of the Joint Municipal Action Committee also were having visions of Heidelberg. That committee includes members from the Pierce County and City of Tacoma councils, Tacoma School District and Metro Parks.

The next thing we knew, leaders were talking up plans for a high-concept sports-oriented development with retail, homes and recreation surrounding Heidelberg Park.

It’s high-level visioning, and it’s snakebit from the start.

Dee Margeson was surprised when Jason Hagey’s story on the project ran on The News Tribune’s front page Feb. 2. A regular at community meetings, she’d heard nothing of it. That an idea so fully formed was gaining traction without community input shocked her.

Conservationist Maureen Loop looked into public records and found a proposal to put a swimming pool on a rise created by glacial activity. That drumlin is one of the last surviving in the area and, on a stroll, Loop pointed out at least 60 madrona trees crucial to wild birds’ winter survival.

In a widely-distributed e-mail, activist Jeanie Peterson voiced concern that, once public officials start talking about master plans and paying for conceptual plans, bulldozers are just beyond the horizon.

Metro Parks Commissioner Ryan Mello responded that those concerns were baseless and out of context. He later apologized.

On Monday, Loop, Margeson, Peterson and Howard Anderson went to a Park Board committee meeting on the Revenue Task Force’s ideas. There was no formal public comment, but, as the meeting broke up people from both sides agreed to stay and talk.

The process, they agreed, had deteriorated into an atmosphere of mistrust. They need to fix it.

“I got a better appreciation for what they’ve seen happen in the past and why they jumped to the other side,” Metro Parks Board President Victoria Woodards said the next day. “We have work to do with them trusting us.”

When there’s high-level visioning going on, she said, the board’s goal should be getting the public involved at the beginning of the process.

But, she asked, how do you determine where the beginning is?

Here’s some ground-level visioning on that:

Feel free to appoint a busload of great thinkers to set on a problem.

At the same time, use the government agency’s Web site to let people know what’s going on. Introduce the brains on the bus and outline their task. Then create a blog for ground-level dreamers to share their ideas. Let them say what they cherish about, say, Swan Creek Park, and what they’d like to see there.

They know better than any planner the assets and opportunities it offers.

They know its secrets, its problems, its delights. They can envision its potential.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com