Visioning report to be delayed

By Robby Lewis

Published Nov. 30, 2007

Disagreement over the implementation process will delay the final draft of the "Imagine Columbia's Future" visioning report.

At the Columbia Visioning Committee's meeting Tuesday, the committee ratified the report without the "Implementation" section.

At the meeting, the committee did not agree with the implementation process written by the consultant in the report and decided to table discussions on the process until Dec. 18.

According to the report, the implementation process would have included presenting the vision to the city for adoption, establishing an Imagine Columbia's Future Implementation Committee and creating a Vision Management and Oversight Entity.

Visioning Committee Co-chairwoman Dianne Drainer said the committee wanted more time to work on the implementation plan.

"We read through the final report, and we ratified 95 percent of the document with some changes," Drainer said. "For the implementation plan, the consultants suggested a process that the vision committee didn't agree with. The vision committee then suggested a final writing of the implementation plan outside of the final report. They would like more time to work on that themselves."

Drainer said once a process has been agreed on, it will be sent to the Vision Sponsors Council.

"We ratified the final report and decided to meet on Dec. 18," Drainer said. "Following the meeting, the vision committee will draft a document on the implementation plan. We will give the report to the Sponsor Council. Then, based on their direction, we will set up a meeting with City Council if we are asked to do so."

Drainer said it is important that the process makes sense because it focuses on citizens.

"The goal in the beginning was to ask Columbia where they'd like to be in five, 10 even 20 years," Drainer said. "And out of that came 13 topic groups and the strategy of making Columbia better. This was a very citizen-driven process."

Lynda Baumgartner, the facilitator of the Downtown Citizen Topic Group, said it is very difficult to get so many people to agree on one process.

"The mass amount of the report was submitted months ago," Baumgartner said. "Our job was to verify what was being presented. It's a very hard thing to do, to get everyone to agree on a process. We want to be as sure as possible that the process of implementation makes sense."

Baumgartner said the committee wants to take more time to choose the process that makes the most sense for Columbia residents.

"This group knows some things about a lot of things, but there are some people who know more," Baumgartner said. "It's good to put all of the heads together to choose the best solution."