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Moving Forward wants 'bottom-up' decision-making

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By Samantha Sommer, Staff Writer Updated 8:49 AM Monday, May 17, 2010

SPRINGFIELD — Communities can make decisions in two ways — from the top down or from the bottom up.

In the top-down approach, political and civic leaders make decisions among themselves and regular citizens might believe they don’t have a stake in it, explained Rob Baker, a Wittenberg University political science professor.

“There’s a level of frustration there,” he said.

In the bottom-up approach, residents are involved in making decisions, a process Baker said can lead to better buy in.

So the Greater Springfield Moving Forward initiative is an attempt to get that direct input into the region’s future.

“It pulls the community together in a better way,” Baker said.

The initiative aims to get residents to fill out questionnaires about what they value in the Greater Springfield area and what they suggest to make the community better. Their suggestions will then go into developing achievable goals for the next five years.

The surveys are intentionally open-ended, but also ask participants to consider five key areas — economic development, education and workforce development, enhancing the area’s internal and external image, revitalizing strategic community areas, and strengthening local resources and leadership.

“We need to have community involvement in order for it be truly representative of where the community wants to go,” said James Peifer, Greater Springfield chairman.

Genesis

The Greater Springfield project started as a way to update one of the last major community goal-setting projects, Vision 20/20.

That project, led by the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce, is about 10 years old. A lot has been accomplished and much has changed since then, said Mike McDorman, chamber president.

“It’s time to take a fresh look at these positive changes that are taking place in Springfield and help the community leadership determine what’s next,” he said.

Vision 20/20 covered multiple counties and listed many goals for 20 years. That meant it also lacked focus.

“It was a catch-all for just about everything,” Peifer said.

That process also didn’t include much community input, said Mayor Warren Copeland, who is also serving as the Greater Springfield vice chairman.

That led to little community buy-in and participation, Peifer said.

Rather the Greater Springfield effort is seeking a way for everyone to participate.

“This will be an opportunity for anyone to say what they think is good or bad about Springfield and what we should be working on ... There are folks who haven’t been involved in the process so far who have ideas that are good ones,” Copeland said.

Several cities have used community visioning projects to improve themselves, McDorman said, such as Nashville, Tenn., and Waco, Texas.

Waco is a community similar to Springfield, McDorman said, facing some of the same challenges and opportunities.

A visioning process sets a dashboard of where a community has been, he said, and where it could go.

“It will help us build a better vision of what a more vibrant Springfield-Clark County could look like,” McDorman said.

The visioning projects those cities used typically cost about $125,000, he said. Rather Springfield modeled its process on Waco’s and has a budget of about $10,000 to $15,000 and a lot of volunteers.

The sponsors are the city, county, chamber, Cox Media Group, and the Springfield and Turner foundations. Fred Bartenstein, an organizational consultant, will oversee the project.

“We’re doing this at a much lower cost than many other communities,” Copeland said.

Broad-based input

As national elections have shown, every vote — or in this case, every questionnaire — counts and makes a difference, McDorman said.

“Thirty-two people on a steering committee aren’t going to be as smart as the whole of Springfield,” he said.

The surveys will be available from now until July 11 in several locations, such as public libraries, and salons and barber shops.

It also will be online at SpringfieldNewsSun.com/go/movingforward.

Surveyors also will go out to any group, club, neighborhood association or place of worship that wants to participate, and make presentations and pass out questionnaires.

It isn’t limited to city residents or even just Clark County. Anyone who considers themselves as part of Greater Springfield can and should participate, Bartenstein said.

As the information is coming in, Bartenstein and interns from the Wittenberg Center for Civic and Urban Engagement will analyze the data to see if there are areas or populations that aren’t represented in the responses. They will then go out to those areas, much like census workers.

“We want to get as broad-based a set of input as we possibly can,” Bartenstein said.

The surveys ask what people treasure most about Greater Springfield and what are their recommendations for making it a more vibrant community. It also seeks to know why those recommendations are important and how they suggest accomplishing it.

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