Vision team produces draft of plan

Sisters City Council reviewed the draft of the Sisters Vision Action Plan as presented at their November 28 workshop by NXT Consultants Steven Ames and Ruth Williamson, with assistance from the four Vision Action Team (VAT) leaders.

Many hours of work by 32 VAT community members have produced a document rich with possibilities for the future of Sisters. The Council will provide feedback on what they saw and heard in the workshop. The draft plan is available on the Vision website at https://sistershorizons.org. for the next two weeks, allowing for feedback from Sisters Country residents.

The Vision Statement is supported by the Vision Plan, which consists of four focus areas, each with five strategies identified by the community and refined by the VAT. For each strategy there are a number of action plans to support implementation. The teams also identified milestones to measure the progress of the actions, as well as suggested partners to carry out the actions. Each milestone is tied to an implementation timeline that ranges from less than a year to five-plus years.

An example of how the plan is structured can be illustrated by looking at one of the strategies for the focus area "Resilient Sisters." One of the five strategies is to pursue establishment of a comprehensive urgent care facility in Sisters, providing walk-in and related ambulatory care and medical services for a rapidly growing population and increasing number of tourists.

The three actions to support the urgent care strategy include a needs analysis to analyze the need for an urgent care facility, identifying and analyzing gaps and barriers such as availability and cost of real estate, and finally, completing steps necessary to close identified gaps and eliminate barriers to the establishment of an urgent care facility. A number of suggested partners and milestones are identified for the actions.

There is already activity going on in pursuit of this strategy, which is also true for several other strategies.

To review all the strategies for the four focus areas - prosperous, livable, connected, and resilient Sisters - and provide input, visit https://sistershorizons.org. Comments from the Council and those left on the website will be reviewed with possible revisions to the plan during January 2019.

At the February 13 Council meeting, the finalized Vision Plan will be presented for adoption. A Vision Implementation team will be named to oversee management of the plan going forward.