Creating a vision by getting involved

The recurring theme of Monday night’s inaugural meeting on creating a vision for the future of Columbia was simple: Get the entire community involved.

How do you do that? Well, free food and entertainment go a long way.

In Springfield, they did it with hot dogs and soda. In Champaign County, Ill., they did it by “creating a buzz.” In Chattanooga, Tenn., they did it with a little bit of both.

Visioning, Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield said, has to be enjoyable.

“It has to be fun. It has to be animated. It has to be full of electricity,” he said.

Littlefield spoke by videoconference to a full house of about 350 people at the forum, held at Stephens College’s Lela Raney Wood Hall. He was one of several representatives of the three cities Columbia has chosen for inspiration as it decides whether to embark on a visioning process of its own.

Many of those in attendance were familiar faces in civic circles: past and present City Council members, city and county administrators, planning and zoning commissioners, neighborhood activists, the fire and police chiefs. But there was some diversity as well, from former city manager Ray Beck and major developer Jose Lindner to public housing resident Jerry Green and history teacher Elaine Blodgett.

The key to creating any successful community vision is to ensure there are as many participants as possible from every segment of the community. The public, said consultant Gianni Longo of ACP Visioning and Planning, drives visioning.

“The people who live here and experience the community in their daily lives all have a sense of what the community has the potential to become,” Longo said.

Visioning presents a collaborative model, “a three-legged stool” involving the public, private and civic sector, Longo said.

“Unless those three pieces come together, it’s very difficult to implement anything,” he said.

Mayor Darwin Hindman said before the meeting that he expected a big crowd. The city used a campaign of e-mails, fliers, news releases and postcard invitations to drum up interest.

“If people don’t know about it, their attention has definitely been diverted by something else,” he said.

The trick for the city will be keeping people’s attention now that it’s got it, and to spread the word.

Tom Finnie, who recently retired as city manager of Springfield, said his city made a serious effort to get the public to participate.

“Free hot dogs and Cokes appeal to a lot of people,” he said, noting that once Springfield divided visioning participants into groups, they became like families who enjoyed their get-togethers. “Have some fun. Have a birthday party; have some ice cream and cake. We had a lot of parties.”

But the rewards of visioning go beyond food and parties.

Finnie said that because participants don’t get paid, their real reward is the satisfaction that they contributed to community improvements. There’s evidence that Springfield citizens lead the city’s Vision 2020 process, he said. One example is the renovation of downtown. Finnie said members of the city staff thought a proposal for a massive, 350-acre redevelopment project would be impossible, but residents pushed the city to consider it. Now, Finnie said, the city is well on its way to finishing that project, known as Jordan Valley Park, which features an ice arena, baseball stadium, green space and other amenities. To fund the project, the city used a referendum that passed with 75 percent of the vote. It was the first referendum in the city that was approved in every voting precinct.

Another way Springfield got the average citizen to participate was by asking members of the City Council not to participate.

“Once you put a council member in the group, that group starts to defer to the council member,” Finnie said. “It’s a sign of respect for council members.”

Finnie said the City Council wasn’t cut out of the planning, as its approval was still the final authority. But, he said, letting the public work without its guidance made ideas more their own and made the process truly a grassroots project.

Champaign kept the community involved and worked to make visioning a grassroots process by “creating a buzz,” said John Dimit, chief executive officer of the Champaign County Regional Planning Commission.

Champaign Planning Director Bruce Knight said, “We worked very hard to engage people who don’t normally get engaged.”

He said the city used a Web site, direct mailings and ads in the local newspaper to attract attention. They consulted a small marketing firm to get attractive visual representation of the plan, he said.

Varying the location of meetings, which were all held at schools, also encouraged more residents to get involved, Knight said.

“There were so many people you would never expect to see at a half-day long meeting,” he said. “The level of energy was unbelievable.”

Champaign citizens generated 2,222 total ideas and, as the city promised, no idea was left out of the final report, Knight said.

Many of those ideas came from high school students, Dimit said. Champaign kicked off its visioning effort with a meeting limited to high school students. About 120 showed up, and there have been high school students present at every meeting since. Some high school students were even trained as facilitators of discussion.

“It’s really something to watch a high school student facilitate a meeting and tell the movers and shakers of the community when they can talk and when they can’t talk,” Dimit said.

Members of the public said involving students was a great suggestion.

“I like the idea of including high school-age people,” Columbia citizen John Young said. “We need more diverse representation than what is here tonight.”

City Manager Bill Watkins said he was pleased with the turnout.

“I see a good cross-section of the community,” Watkins said. “I see business owners, community activists, social service people and elected officials. A broad representation will make this work or not work.”

Rosie Gerding, who attended the forum, said it was definitely worthwhile, although she heard few good ideas. But she said she’s glad the city seems to understand it needs to involve more of the community.

“I like the idea that they all said ­— and this is so true — that it’s always the same few community leaders,” Gerding said. “It makes sense to get more people involved and limit the influence of single people.”

To get beyond the usual suspects, Young suggests the city contact other members of the community directly.

“Contact neighborhood churches,” he said. “A lot of poor people don’t feel like they are listened to.”

Each table of participants toward the end of the forum talked among themselves about whether visioning would be good for Columbia and what it might accomplish. The results of those discussions will be compiled and given to Longo, who will have 15 days to sort through them and give a written report to the city, Watkins said.

The forum will be rebroadcast on the Columbia Channel — Mediacom Channel 13 and Charter Communications Channel 2 — from Wednesday through Monday at 7 a.m., 11 a.m., 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. each day.