Consultant Hired To Formulate County Visioning Action Plan As expected, the Jefferson County Commission last week approved the contract for CPI Consulting to formulate an action plan that sets down practical steps for the realization of some of the goals identified in two earlier community-visioning initiatives. A Community Visioning Initiative (CVI) is an organized and comprehensive effort to identify problems and establish goals in terms of where a community wants to be so many years ahead and how it plans to get there. CVIs involve a series of community gatherings where citizens and elected officials brainstorm ideas, identify resources, and set priorities via a process often facilitated by a consultant. Unless specific, doable steps are identified, funding sources identified, and timelines set for accomplishment of the goals, however, the voluminous reports generated by these initiatives frequently end up gathering dust on a shelf. Which is largely what happened with the two earlier visioning initiatives here, although a few select components of the original Monticello initiative of the early 2000s have since been implemented. County officials expect CPI to produce a doable plan with definitive steps for the accomplishment of certain of the identified goals in the initiatives, particularly in the areas of agriculture and eco-tourism. Some, however, question the limited scope of the earlier initiatives, which form the template for the present effort and which largely focused on agriculture and ecotourism, to the exclusion of manufacturing, the interchanges, compressed natural gas and other important considerations. “My concern is that we’re replaying the same field and we will get the same result,” Phil Calandra, a citizen, said. “I would like to see a more specific road map and for it to be more inclusive.” Commissioner Hines Boyd expressed a similar desire. “One of my concerns is that we take the next step in the FSU study (one of the two visioning initiatives) and do it in a way that there are things we can get our teeth into, not pie-in-the-sky goals,” Boyd said. Everyone, in fact, appears to be in agreement that no more pie-in-the-sky visioning efforts are needed, including the consultant, who produced the first Monticello visioning initiative. CPI Director Marcia Elder assured the commission that the plan her firm proposes to produce will cover the desired scope of work and will provide detailed and specific steps for achievement of the identified goals. No plan, of course, can guarantee community consensus or the political willpower to carry out the goals, no matter how clearly or specifically the steps are identified. But that’s another matter. The task for CPI presently is to produce a document that not only identifies doable steps for the implementation of the goals but that also includes such elements as a Webinar, an online clearinghouse and consideration about what it will take to bring compressed natural gas to the industrial park. The cost of the project is coming from a $35,000 grant secured from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. LAZARO ALEMAN ECB Publishing Senior Staff Writer
Posted on: Thu, 12 Sep 2013 17:34:53 +0000
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