Welcome to my first ever Create the Vision monthly newspaper column. I am the Project Manager for Create the Vision and I will be your guide today. In this column you will find out who we are, what we’ve accomplished, what we’ll be working on and how you can get involved.

First you may be asking yourself, why should I read this and why should I care? If you live in a community that 30 to 40 years ago used to be primarily farmland, then you should read this. If it is important to you that your government not only respond to, but also prepare for rapid growth, then you will care about this.

Create the Vision is the new Comprehensive Plan for Centerville and Washington Township. It was adopted in June of 2004 by the City Council and the Township Trustees as a guide for development in the community over the next 20 years. A Comprehensive Plan is a guiding policy document for all land use and development regulations in a community. It provides long-term direction about how and where growth should occur.

Practically every city, county and township has a Comprehensive Plan and the good ones make periodic updates to their plan. A community cannot be successful if its plan just sits upon a shelf. The plan must be followed, implemented, and updated when needed.

So how do you know when your Comprehensive Plan needs to be updated? Some ways to tell are by all the rezoning your planning or zoning commissioners may be granting to developers. These most often are cases where landowners or developers have asked government to allow new development to occur that deviates from the existing land use plan. Another way to tell is if your community is constantly amending their zoning or subdivision codes. And lastly, your comp plan is outdated when the community simply stops referring to it. When any of these become alarming trends it is time to update your Comprehensive Plan.

And that is exactly how Create the Vision came to be in the fall of 2002. The city and township both felt the need to update their Comprehensive Plans and decided it would make perfect sense to combine this effort in a joint plan.

Washington Township Trustee Joyce Young and Centerville’s Deputy Mayor Doug Cline were appointed as Co-Chairs of the Create the Vision Steering Committee. This committee consisted of 34 individuals, of which many represented organizations or neighborhood districts. They held frequent meetings in various locations around the community, seeking input from the public. They accumulated over 800 ideas in more than 50 meetings over an 18-month period. These ideas were crafted into the Create the Vision Comprehensive Plan that contains eight goals, nine study areas, 51 objectives and 198 strategies.

Create the Vision is a unique Comprehensive Plan that includes elements most other plans do not have, such as community appearance, education, and learning. It also includes nine Key Study Areas identified by community leaders as areas of importance because of their impacts on economics, land use, transportation and community appearance. These key areas were given a thorough study that resulted in recommendations for each area.

Create the Vision is also unique because it is not just one government’s plan. It is a joint plan, paid for and embraced by Centerville and Washington Township, with input also provided by the Centerville City School District, the Centerville-Washington Park District, the Washington-Centerville Public Library, the Centerville-Washington Township Historical Society and Hithergreen Senior Center.

Once this plan was adopted, the work of the Steering Committee was complete. New co-chairs and a board were appointed as the Implementation Task Force. Leading this Task Force are Brooks Compton, Centerville City Councilmember and Tom Zobrist, the Fiscal Officer for Washington Township. The members of this Task Force are Jane Beach, Richard Carr, Paul Clark, Bob Daley, Harry Drain, Carol Fischer, Cynthia Fraley, Joe Harmon, Jon Hazelton, Carol Kennard, Cynthia Klinck, Carolyn Meininger, Gary Smiga, and Ralph Stahl. This Task Force acts as an advisory board, making recommendations to the city and township in implementing the 198 Create the Vision strategies.

Soon, I entered the picture. The Task Force recommended that the city and township create a new joint-position, a Project Manager, as a point of contact within both governments.

The city and the township take seriously the advice of the Task Force and in this instance they created, funded, interviewed many candidates, and then hired me as their project manager. I began this position in May of last year and am proud to tell you about some of our accomplishments.

We were instrumental in bringing together on a regular basis, the leaders of the city and township, in which other committees have been formed to seek out economic efficiencies.

We received a proclamation from the Montgomery County Commissioners and we most recently earned an award of excellence from the Ohio City/County Management Association (OCMA).

The OCMA statewide award of excellence was earned for Intergovernmental Cooperation in that no other governments around here have ever jointly updated their Comprehensive Plan. This award is meaningful because it sets a standard for the rest of the state and has the potential to become a model program for the rest of the country.

And this is what I’d like to leave you with – that cooperation is key to success. Those who stand alone may never reach as high as those who stand together. In every instance of success, you will find that cooperation has been the foundation.

I thank you for joining me today as I guided you a little through Create the Vision. Please join me again next month when I bring you another update in this newspaper. If you would like to learn more or get involved, please visit our website at www.createthevision.org