SH invited to Livability Share Fair on Tuesday

Scott Swanson

Ready to talk about what would make Sweet Home a better place to live?

Sweet Home residents will get a chance next week to respond to the Livability Assessment created last fall in an effort to improve living conditions in the local community, local organizers of the study say.

A “Share Fair” and all-day workshop will give citizens a chance to provide feedback on the study, which has been led by Katie Allen and Kendra Briechle of the Conservation Leadership Network, and Gye Aung of the Federal Highway Administration.

The three visited Sweet Home for several days in December 2013 to kick off the two-year Livability Initiative effort led by their agencies to help Sweet Home, as a “gateway community” to the Willamette National Forest. Sweet Home was one of our communities nationally selected to participate in the study, which is seen as a steppingstone to eligibility for grants and other aid from the federal government.

The assessment team produced a 160-page report that assesses Sweet Home’s economic, transportation, housing, health and employment situation and makes numerous recommendations of actions community residents could take to improve things.

The report, released late last fall, can be viewed at http://www.sweet-home.or.us/DocumentCenter/View/2617.

“We really want to push, to have a lot of representation from the community,” said city Planning Director Laura LaRoque, who has been involved in the Livability Initiative since its start in the summer of 2013.

The Share Fair, from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 3, at the Jim Riggs Community Center, 880 18th Ave., will feature a wide range of organizations that work in and around Sweet Home in various facets addressed by the livability study. Representatives will be available to discuss what their agencies are doing in the Sweet Home area, answer questions and take feedback from the public.

Organizations committed to participate include South Santiam All Lands Collaborative, Santiam Spokes, Linn County Parks, Linn County roads division, Sweet Home Parks, Sweet Home Trails, Linn-Benton Housing Authority, Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services, Linn Benton Health Equity Alliance, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, Santiam Watershed Council, College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific, Northwest, Oregon Department of Transportation, Sweet Home Active Revitalization Effort, Oregon State Parks and the Community Services Consortium.

“All of these representatives will be very informal,” said LaRoque. “Folks can have one-on-one conversations. It’s a great opportunity.”

The evening will also include a presentation by livability team members on their findings and a chance for the public to weigh in.

Sweet Home District Ranger Cindy Glick, another member of the local organizing team, urged residents to review the report and attend the Share Fair.

“It’s long but just breeze through it,” she said of the report. “Look at the cool boxes that tell about other communities just like us, how they leveraged and changed the livability of their own communities, how they did it.”

Both she and LaRoque emphasized that the purpose of the Share Fair and an all-day planning workshop on Wednesday, March 4, also at the Community Center, will be to focus on what Sweet Home residents want to do with the report.

“There’s a lot of detail in there, a lot of things we can do,” LaRoque said of the report. “But this is kind of about how we can get focused. This is the time to come talk about it.”

The workshop will bring together between 60 and 90 people involved in the livability team’s first visit to Sweet Home to discuss where to go next.

LaRoque said she expects the initial focus to be on economic development because “economic development is the driver. If people don’t have good-paying jobs, they can’t increase the quality of the housing they live in, they can’t afford the car that gets you to your job. These go hand in hand.”

Glick said the goal over the two days is to come up with a plan of action.

“We’re going to take the ideas that we’ve vetted around and work with a core group of people to see what really fits Sweet Home, what Sweet Home wants, then create an action plan to make those happen in the six areas of livability.” Those principles promote improved transportation options, affordable and equitable housing and lodging, economic competitiveness linked to the natural and other assets the community enjoys, sustaining the community’s unique character and heritage, and coordinating its efforts with those controlling neighboring lands and communities.

Glick said the public should participate “so they can find out what’s going on and have the voice, so we can hear what they think of this effort.

“We don’t want to not include them.”

Total
0
Share