Anyone in the New Orleans City Council Chambers Thursday heard an unfortunate series of comments from Ron Forman of the Audubon Nature Institute.

Mr. Foreman suggested that citizens and organizations who want massive park projects subject to scrutiny by the Planning Commission and the public are somehow chronically opposed to progress of the aquarium and zoo and to other important accomplishments over the years.

This would be funny if it were not insulting.

I do not consider my four years serving for no pay on the Master Plan Advisory Committee, chairing its transportation subcommittee and producing a comprehensive Transportation Element to be an example of opposing progress.

I do not consider the League of Women Voters, the Preservation Resource Center, Vernon Palmer, Michael Duplantier and even Councilman Oliver Thomas, who voted for our request to defer the payment to the Audubon Nature Institute until its project passed muster with the Master Plan, to be moss-backed anachronisms.

I do not consider the thousands of petition signers coming from many blue-collar zip codes outside of traditional Uptown blue-blood neighborhoods to be smug, mindless opponents of change.

Nor is the Mid City Neighborhood Organization, which supported our request out of fear of what is in store for City Park.

What the Audubon Institute and some of its political supporters do not appreciate is that public opinion has shifted significantly over four years.

Many classes of people want public accountability and participation in the shaping of plans such as those for Audubon Park (as well as City Park and others) according to actual public needs rather than imagined ones that disguise plans by those who live in more rarefied air.

And these people will make this a political issue in the future.