Get involved with a vision for the future

Cory and I want to update our entire community on the progress and key next steps of our extensive Sisters Country Vision project.

Why a vision now? As most of you know, visioning is a medium- to long-range plan (five to 10 years) for our community. The City’s population growth exploded 112 percent from 2000 to 2010 and is up 32 percent from 2010 to 2018. That rapid growth can affect many aspects of our quality of life, especially if we are not planning and working together accordingly. Without being proactive, we will most assuredly under-manage that growth and that could lead to issues that affect all of us, given our small and unique community. We take this very seriously and started the visioning effort in early 2018.

We jumped at the chance to make this a broad, community-wide vision and concluded our input phase with over 2,000 participants, garnering thousands of individual comments and bold ideas. This input led to the finalization of 20 top strategies across four key themes (not in order) for Sisters: Prosperous, Livable, Resilient, and Connected. Each of these 20 strategies has sub-strategies, action items, and suggested lead/supporting partners. The full plan document can be found at http://www.sistersvision.org, and I encourage you to read it because this is your plan! Keep in mind that this is a “living” document that will require updates as we move forward.

There are too many people and organizations to thank for helping us get to this point, and we have created a summary Sisters Country Vision brochure that is available at City Hall, the Chamber of Commerce, and other areas around our community, as well as available to view on the Vision website. The booklet gives credit to many of the key participants in this project in addition to the entire public.

Where are we heading from here? We have formed a vision implementation team consisting of key public entities across the community.

The team of 12-14 local leaders will navigate and oversee the execution phase going forward.

This group cannot possibly execute these 20 strategies on its own – the goal is to branch off and recruit sub-teams that have a passion and expertise in a particular strategy and can help get things done.

This effort going forward cannot be under-estimated; we will need many resources — both people and financial — to be successful.

Realistically, some of the strategies may be deferred from a timing and priority standpoint as to not derail overall success by tackling too much at one time.

We have already achieved significant progress in certain strategies. You will be kept informed through the Vision website, public gatherings, potential town halls, and (like this column) periodic print updates.

Cory and I would like to leave you with the most important message: Please get involved in this effort! We need your help and support, and you can truly make a difference to our community’s future. All of us have unique skills and abilities that can assist with successful execution of the various strategies. I am amazed at the level of talent and diversity we have in this small community. Many of you live here because of the unique nature of Sisters Country, and with your help we truly want to preserve that together.

How do you get involved? The easiest way is to go to http://www.sistersvision.org and click on the contact link. You can also send an email to myself or Cory and express your interest. Our email addresses are on the City website: http://www.ci.sisters.or.us.

Thanks again to the Sisters City Council for kicking off the visioning process and everyone involved to this point, and we look forward to executing the Sisters Country Vision with your help.