Citizen visioning opinions sought
Columbia Visioning Committee will hold an open house on Thursday.
Published Sept. 11, 2007
For the citizens of Columbia, the future is just around the corner.
Thursday evening, Columbia citizens will be given the opportunity to review and rank different goals and strategies presented by the city's Visioning Committee during the "Imagining Columbia's Future" Community Choices Open House.
"It will kick off at noon with a ribbon cutting ceremony and a little celebration," Columbia Public Communications Officer Renee Graham said.
The Columbia City Council organized the Visioning Committee in 2006.
The group was given the task of finding out what citizens desired for Columbia's future, along with devising plans to reach those goals.
In late 2006 and early 2007, Big Idea Gathering meetings were held by the committee to ask for citizens to share their own visions of Columbia's future.
Fifteen hundred ideas were compiled, according to the city of Columbia Web site.
"The original 1,500 ideas that were generated by the community have now been distilled into a plan that includes several topic goals and strategies," Graham said.
Thirteen Citizen Topic Groups have been working since January to turn the proposed ideas into plans of action. During August, the 13 groups collaborated to produce a "consistent and comprehensive Vision plan," according to the city of Columbia Web site.
On Thursday evening, 41 subtopic goals and 128 strategies devised by the Citizen Topic Groups will be viewed by the public.
"All of the strategies will be put on poster boards to allow individuals to go around and look at them," Visioning Committee Co-chairwoman Dianne Drainer said.
People who attend the open house will be given six dots to place by the strategies they believe are the most important.
"We're looking for all segments of the community to come and voice what they feel are the important issues and the collective aspirations for our future as a city," Graham said.
But the vote is not meant to rid the plan of any of the goals and strategies that are presented.
"Everything is kept in," Drainer said. "The Community Choices Open House will not result in any strategies being eliminated."
The ranking will help the Visioning Committee identify the goals and strategies the citizens of Columbia are most concerned with.
After the open house, the vision plan will be edited, polished and submitted to the group's Sponsor's Council.
The council will review the plan and eventually present it to the Columbia City Council.
"That's a couple months away," Drainer said.
The day to hold the Community Choices Open House was not picked at random.
"Thursday evening was picked because that is an evening where public transportation runs late," Graham said. "We also have shuttles running from Twilight Festival from 6 to 8 p.m., so that people can come to Twilight Festival, run over to Community Choices, and then come back and enjoy the Twilight Festival."
The goals presented by the Vision plan will not necessarily be reached within a couple of years, Drainer said.
"This is a vision for the next five, 10 or 20 years," she said. "It's going to be a long, long process."
The Community Choices Open House event will be held at Lela Raney Wood Hall at Stephens College.
Citizens are invited to stop by anytime between noon and 8 p.m.
