THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 31, 1996 TAG: 9605310485
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ALEX MARSHALL, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 77 lines
The city is inviting its citizens to come out Saturday morning and say what's worth fighting for in the place they call home.
The idea is to get as many citizens as possible - right now the city expects about 500 - to talk to each other and officials about what's good about Norfolk and what deserves work.
City officials hope this morning workshop will kick off an ongoing process where citizens will help officials establish goals and priorities.
``It's an opportunity for any citizen to put their opinions, dreams, visions and ideas about the city on the table,'' said City Clerk Breck Daughtrey, who helped organize the meeting.
``In my 10 years on council, we've never really asked the citizens to give us their vision of where the city should be going,'' said Mayor Paul D. Fraim, who has pushed for the project. ``There will be a lot of listening going on.''
``Neighbors All,'' as the half-day workshop is called, is patterned roughly after similar ``visioning'' workshops, which other cities around the country have held during the past decade.
Norfolk's workshop happens Saturday at 8.30 a.m. to 12.30 p.m. at Lake Taylor High School. A free picnic will be held afterward for participants.
In this state, Winchester, Roanoke, Fredericksburg and Richmond have all held such workshops, Daughtrey said.
In Hampton Roads, several cities have worked at talking more with their citizens.
Portsmouth has been conducting Vision 2005, an ongoing series of conversations, to design economic and community development strategies for downtown and nearby areas.
In Virginia Beach, the city is conducting a series of public hearings to help rewrite its long-range comprehensive plan. Suffolk, also rewriting its comprehensive plan, is preparing a similar process this summer.
On a national level, Chattanooga is often referred to as the model for such efforts. In 1984, its leaders organized ``Vision 2000,'' a series of workshops and discussions funded by a grant from the local Lyndhurst Foundation.
It eventually involved about 1,700 citizens, who agreed on a list of 40 goals to be reached by the year 2000, ranging from cleaning up specific environmental problems to eliminating all sub-standard private housing.
``Chattanooga was a dying city,'' said Missy Crutchfield, the executive director of Chattanooga Ventures, the organization which ran the initial workshops. ``The vision process helped facilitate what the city could do to make itself great.''
In the early 1980s, Chattanooga had high umemployment, heavy pollution, a dying downtown and heavy population loss.
A decade later, the city's older neighborhoods and its downtown have revived, and the region has low unemployment.
The vision process sparked a number of projects in Chattanooga, participants said, including preserving an historic bridge, and creating a new riverside park, a downtown aquarium, a neighborhood housing group, an urban design center and an environmental business center.
Chattanooga's vision process initially involved the entire region and continued for almost a year. It continues now with regular reviews of the goals and initiatives.
Norfolk, by its own admission, is starting small.
``Let's walk before we run,'' said Richard McCaffery, a Northern Virginia consultant that is helping run Saturday's half-day meeting, for which the city is paying $40,000. ``Can we at least get a lot of people to come together and talk to each other?''
Once the workshop is through, the city can better decide what the next step should be, McCaffery said.
The key segment of Saturday's workshop will be a 1 1/2-hour, mid-morning session where numerous groups of 10 people each will discuss three general questions: What about the city needs to be preserved? What needs to be done better? What should the city's priorities be for the future?
Depending on how many people attend, as many as 60 or 70 small groups may be formed. The city has already published general invitations, and roughly 400 people had accepted by Thursday, Daughtrey said.
At the close of the workshop, the mayor and council will speak. MEMO: Although anyone may attend Neighbors All, city officials say they
would appreciate it if those who know they will attend would call the
city clerk's office at 664-4253. by CNB