Imagine Sandpoint and ensure community follows vision

A year ago consultant Tom Hudson told a cautionary tale at a forum sponsored by the Sandpoint Gem Community planning team to solicit guidance from local organizations about how we could help the city of Sandpoint imagine its future.

I don't remember all the details but the ones that stick in my mind are of a community in Western Washington that had always been entered through a broad avenue flanked by lovely old trees. Nobody in town gave much thought to the trees; people just assumed they'd always be there. The trees, after all, were the town's signature landmark.

Then came the morning when the community woke up and found the trees had been cut down to make way for a building project. The townspeople were heartbroken but had only themselves to blame. They had failed to imagine what they wanted the city to look like five, ten, twenty years into the future. The trees and the community had fallen victim to the "accidental planning" that happens when core community values have not been identified and enshrined in the community's plans.

"Imagine Sandpoint!" is the Sandpoint Gem Community team's effort to help Sandpoint avoid "accidental planning" by identifying the issues and features that matter most to our community.

Gem Teams statewide are certified by Idaho to help communities meet the "economic development challenges they face in a changing economy." The Sandpoint Gem Team has chosen to fulfill this mission in part by acting as a conduit of information between citizens and elected officials about what the community values.

That's why "Imagine Sandpoint!"

Gem wants to find out what people who live or work in Sandpoint think about everything from air quality to dog parks, building heights to lake access. We will pass these findings on to the City Council, which underwrites these activities. We believe that if that Western Washington town had made a similar effort, those townspeople would still have their trees. We want to avoid a similar sad morning for our own city.

To make this happen, Sandpoint Gem began almost two years ago collecting and cataloguing all the values and priorities that any identifiable group in and around town had already established. We knew the Panida valued theater programming and the Downtown Sandpoint Business Association valued downtown, but what community values did dozens of other organizations reflect? And what were the common values that nobody was advocating in an organized way?

From these, this team of volunteers and their city liaison Stephen Drinkard put together the current survey. We admit it-we don't have the money, computers, training or expertise of the pollsters who said on election night 2004 that John Kerry would win. Our survey is not scientific. But we've worked hard to develop unbiased questions that will let people tell us what matters to them about Physical Sandpoint.

Right now, in locations throughout town and online at sandpointonline.com and sandpointchamber.com, you can take our first survey: "Physical Sandpoint"-the Sandpoint we see and touch every day. Please find the survey, fill it out, and turn it in. And, please, one per customer! Election irregularities undermine credibility.

In future months, we will distribute similar questionnaires about Social Sandpoint, Economic Sandpoint and Leadership Sandpoint.

This is our chance-as individuals and as a community to let our leaders know what we want Sandpoint to look like. A town hall meeting is scheduled Wed., Jan. 19, from 6-8 p.m. at the Sandpoint Community Hall to get more feedback and direction for the next three Imagine Sandpoint! surveys.

We hope you'll join us in imagining Sandpoint then and in the coming months.

Doris Fuller Sanger, chair

Sandpoint Gem Community team