Heartland Visioning revises “harsh” language in the Draft Plan

Today, the Heartland Visioning Steering Committee revised the “Call to Action” section of the Heartland Visioning Draft Plan due to remarks made by some elected officials that the language was too harsh and too negative (see CJOnline Article for further details).  I am personally saddened by this move because I feel that it to truly fix a problem; you have to come to terms with the problem itself.  It is like an addict admitting they have an addiction, and only then rehabilitation can begin.  Yes, the tone in that section was harsh, but that is what is needed in a “Call to Action”.  When writing any paper or presentation, you need to make a statement that grabs attention.  With a “Call to Action” you must take it a few steps further: you have to convince people that there is a problem, persuade them that you can provide a solution to the problem, and compel them to take action to help solve the problem.  If you weaken the language, you loose the ability to persuade and compel.

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Heartland Visioning - Review Part 3

Today I am going to outline how the Heartland Visioning Draft Plan addresses the problems facing Topeka/Shawnee County concerning education. This is located on pages 16-17 of the Heartland Visioning Draft Plan. “Shawnee County will promote development of broad based skills to prepare students for lifelong learning that is globally competitive: intellectually, socially, economically and personally. I, as already stated by others, do not feel that this section is an all or nothing list of solutions. I do believe that there are some solutions presented in this section that provide reasonable means to achieve the goal stated above.

Five highest priority strategies emerged from balloting by the Vision Task Force and are as follows:

  1. Provide skills training required to increase employee and management productivity and meet the needs of our employers and employees that must compete in a global business market for high paying jobs. For employers considering relocation, retention or expansion of high paying jobs in Shawnee County, this would include competitive skills training for their new employees. Expand and improve Kaw Tech and collaboration with other schools to ensure a qualified, well educated workforce that meets specific trade skills needed by employers and eliminates the skilled workforce gap.
  2. Expect every student to graduate from high school with the skills required to immediately go to work, go to technical school or a university. Increase proficiency expectations for all students. Read the rest of this entry »

Heartland Visioning - Part 2

I have taken a close look at the Long Term Strategic Plan, page 15 (Click here for the PDF), in the draft vision. This one page is the overall summary and broad goals for the process: the core values, vision, and key benchmarks.

I found the Core Values to be very powerful. Being a member of the Task Force I was able to vote on these, and I hope they are representative of what the community would want it’s values to be: Trust, Innovation, Positive Attitude, Integrity, and Faith in God. I found it very interesting that Trust every week that we voted was always the number one value. It is something that we are very much missing in this community and if we can repair the trust within the community, I think this would be a successful process. If we use these five values to guide the decisions of the community, hopefully in the future we can use these to actually describe our community. I would love to one day say that Topeka is an innovative city with people that have a lot of integrity.

The Vision is really the very broad framework to guide our efforts and hopefully get all of the community, government and organizations working towards the same goal. In theory I think it is hard to argue with any of the Vision points. Who wouldn’t want to live in a city that did all of these. How we get these accomplished is the tough question, but I think the importance is that we all buy into these, even if some parts seem almost unattainable. We have to start believing that we can make this city better. It will be a long process and we may never make all parts of the Vision come true, but isn’t it worth a try? Read the rest of this entry »

Heartland Visioning - Review Pt 1

Over the next few weeks we will be slowly going through the Heartland Visioning draft. Page 3 of the draft has a Comments and Input Form, this is a great way to send in your thoughts on some of the points and ideas in the plan.

Let me say up front that this plan does not appear to me to be a “take all or leave it” situation. There are good ideas laid out just as there are (in my opinion) bad ideas. One of the wonderful things about America, that I sometimes think we forget, is that we can disagree while still appreciating each others differences of opinion. Respect is the name of the game. If you disagree with someone, that’s ok, just explain your reasoning and don’t belittle. The way you treat others is a great reflection of how you feel about yourself.

I’m going to start with the Call to Action (page 4), going kind of point by point of some of the items I see that stand out.

1. “…1,500 citizens…” - A personal thanks to all who got involved. Everyone has a sphere of influence, it is great to see people trying to expand their spheres.

2. “We are in a downward spiral. Our population is growing older. Not enough skilled young workers are available to replace those who will be retiring. The tax base is shrinking. Those left are paying more, yer services are decreasing. Our quality of life is diminishing. We are slowly dying on the vine.” - Reading this gave me a positive first impression of the draft. We can’t fix the problem if we aren’t dealing in reality. Many of us see this with our own eyes (and pocketbooks) and understand the situation. I think this pretty much nails the situation on the head.

3. “…increase the size of its available workforce…retain existing workforce…making our community attractive to young workers…grow business and our economy…expand our tax base” - This is the crux of it all, summed up. Businesses create jobs, jobs need workers, attractive community will bring the workers in, tax base expands (Topeka expands possibly), economy increases, cost per citizen goes down, quality of life increases. It is all interconnected.

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  • Travis Gooden
  • September 25th, 2008
  • 1 Comment    
  • Topeka News, Vision
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Visioning group finds it difficult to focus

Visioning group finds it difficult to focus

 

Task force goes over priorities set forth in last month’s meetings

By Trista Freed

The Capital-Journal

Published Friday, July 11, 2008

In a series of stop and start votes marked by chaos and confusion, the Heartland Visioning Task Force on Thursday rehashed a “to-do” list approved at community meetings last month.

Members of a newly selected, 196-person task force made plans to vote next week on potential changes to the top 10 list of priorities created in June at three community meetings. Read the rest of this entry »

Heartland Visioning Task Force to Meet for First Time

Heartland Visioning Task Force to Meet for First Time

WIBW.Com (http://www.wibw.com/localnews/headlines/24275114.html)

TOPEKA, Kan. - The Heartland Visioining Task Force will hold its first meeting Thursday, July 10th at the Ramada Hotel, 420 SE 6th St., Topekea, at 8:00 a.m.

Nearly 200 Shawnee County citizens make up the Vision Task Force. Task Force members were selected from more than 890 Applications for Involvement received by the Heartland Visioning office. Read the rest of this entry »