Town to host Community Visioning Workshop
The Town of Fort Myers Beach along with Larue Planning & Management Services invite Beach residents, business owners, property owners and visitors to join in on a Community Visioning Workshop at Bay Oaks Recreational Campus at 2731 Oak St. on Thursday, June 2, at 5:30 p.m.
Entitled “Vision Our Town,” the workshop will provide information for evaluation and improvement to the Town’s Comprehensive Plan. -a blueprint for how development will occur in the future and what the community may look like in the next 10 to 25 years.
Attendees will review preliminary results of the public input surveys, identify community issues, develop alternatives and establish priorities in an effort to evaluate and improve the Beach Comp Plan. The workshop begins with refreshments at 5:30 p.m., followed by presentations at 6 p.m. and group sessions at 7 p.m.
“This is an incredibly important kickoff workshop to our evaluation of the Comprehensive Plan,” said Town Community Development Director Walter Fluegel. “The idea is to have community members sitting with us and planners in a round table setting and talk about their vision for the community. Jim Larue will be the facilitator for the meeting.”
Fluegel said the members of the planning service will give an overview of the comprehensive plan before everyone splits into small groups at the round tables.
“These small groups will work their way through the visioning process for the community by telling us what is important to them and where we are with our collective value systems for the community,” he said. “We are going to start the exercise by handing out surveys and have everybody fill it out while Jim Larue is giving the introduction, overview process and workshop expectations.”
Flegel will then tabulate the results of the survey to get initial impressions.
According to information provided on the town website, Community Development Department staff is kicking off the Evaluation and Appraisal Report process of its Comprehensive Plan. Over the course of the next year, with your assistance, the department will be evaluating the effectiveness of the Comprehensive Plan. Once the assessment of the Comprehensive Plan is complete, Town staff, with the community’s assistance will identify ways to make the plan more effective and to more accurately reflect the community members’ vision of the community.
The Community Visioning Workshop is the first of two such workshops to garner the community’s input. Fluegel encourages anyone and everyone to take the time to download the survey, which can be found by clicking on the “Vision Our Town” release on the front page of the town website.
“We are looking at evaluating the effectiveness of the Comprehensive Plan in achieving those results,” he said. “The more survey results we can get, the more statistical validity the sample will have. It is incredibly important for us to get that survey out to as many people as possible and get that response back.”
For more information, check the Town’s website at www.fortmyersbeachfl.gov or call Town Hall at 765-0202.