Town visioning workshop seeks participation
Officials planning part two of a Community Visioning Workshop are looking for participation inside Bay Oaks Gymnasium next Wednesday (July 20) at 6 p.m. Members of the Town of Fort Myers Beach and Larue Planning & Management Services are hosting the event.
The workshop will be the second phase of evaluating and improving the Town’s Comprehensive Plan. 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 Town’s development process
“What we are hoping to do is take the priorities that people established in the first workshop and narrow them down into more distinctive priorities,” said Town Planning Coordinator Tina Ekblad. “For example what exactly does ‘Keep it Funky’ mean. Hopefully we can take that and make some language, policy and direction from that for the future.
“This entire process is based on community participation and their ideas. There is nothing that is too crazy or outlandish. If we don’t hear it, we don’t know that they are open to it. That’s the reality. We can guide them, but the fix and solution has to come from them. We want this workshop input to be reflective of the community.”
Participation is the key word to any visioning workshop, especially when it is reflective of the Town’s Comp Plan, a blueprint for how development will occur in the future and what the Beach community may look like in the next 10 to 25 years. Roughly 40 people attended the first workshop.
“Participation is very important, I don’t know if people recognize that yet,” said Ekblad. “We’re sending invitations to the chamber for their members and other mailings to residents. If you’re not here and somebody is willing to go for you, send them over.”
The format of the second workshop is still undecided, but one can expect a review of the survey results.
“Right now I am envisioning it will start out with sort of a review of the last workshop and survey results in the small classroom and breaking out into groups. I’m hoping to get a little more movement among the people between the groups if we have enough time,” said Ekblad. “We want to keep it moving so that participants are still energized and engaged.”
Survey results are being broken down and responses on the surveys are being evaluated.
“I try to take the broad topic of what there opinion is. If it’s traffic, is it specifically a pedestrian crossover or a traffic light or roundabout that people want,” said Ekblad
According to the planning coordinator, Larue aids the Town in the open process format by filtering down survey results and possibly identifying parts of the Beach Comprehensive Plan that need updating,
“Larue has the facilitation experience, which enables us to focus on the detail of the subject matter. They handle how we present it in a way to the public that’s clear, not confusing, so that participants can grasp it and comment back,” said Ekblad. “You always want to make sure the public knows it is an open process, so they are definitely helping us with that.
“They are also helping us identify some things that maybe we did not expect and how to handle that. For example, when I was initially reviewing the survey results in the first two weeks, we had a lot of response from people who owned multiple properties. I didn’t catch that at first, Larue caught that for us and told us not to forget to market to maybe the condo associations and do a mailer through the utility bill. We want to make sure you are getting a well-rounded response.”
Once the second workshop is in the books, Town staff will review the community’s prioritization and send a letter to the Department of Economic opportunity for stature requirement.
“That letter will highlight the community-identified issues and the process we will go through to address them,” she said. “We will ID the elements of the comp plan that the issues relate to, then we’ll start working on editing language.”
Once that process is complete, another set of public meetings can be expected.
“We’ll present all the information to the Local Planning Agency and Town Council and do a series of public meetings to show the people the results and ask if we got it right or wrong and their general feelings about the process,” said Ekblad.
Workshop officials are still urging people to fill out the public input survey, which can be found online by clicking on the “Vision Our Town” release on the home page of the Town’s website at www.fortmyersbeachfl.gov or by picking one up at Town Hall. More than 120 surveys have been filled out so far.
“Keep an eye out for the second survey. Even if you responded to the first one, we would love your input on the second one,” said Ekblad.
For more information, call 765-0202.