Forum Connects Kindred Goals To Create Outline Of Area’s Future

About 370 people gathered in downtown Spokane Friday, agreeing that the region needs to tackle its problems but unsure of the best way to find solutions.

Before Spokane residents mount strategies against rising crime, economic stagnation or teen violence, a Colorado planning consultant urged the group to spend more time getting more people involved.

“If you bring together the appropriate people in a constructive way, and let them act on good information, you will get authentic visions of how to deal with those problems,” said David Chrislip, a Boulder, Colo., consultant who served as discussion leader.

The clearest conclusion from the seven-hour Leadership Forum was recognizing that too many groups in the community are trying to do the same thing.

The forum was hosted by Leadership Spokane, a training and service organization formerly run by the Chamber of Commerce.

The event’s guiding goal was bringing together people now part of several community planning efforts going on simultaneously.

All those efforts recognize that the area’s quality of life is jeopardized by distrust of government, economic stagnation and growing concerns over safety.

Groups discussing those problems include New Century Plan, which hopes to form a regional economic strategy; Spokane Horizons, a planning effort required by the state that will assist city growth management; and Health Improvement Partnership, a coalition of medical leaders trying to define ways to improve the health of county residents.

“I have to warn you that more often than not, these community collaborations fail,” said Chrislip.

But Chrislip applauded the forum for trying to put the various groups into one room and explain to one other their goals.

“We need to get together or we’ll burn people out with all this (planning),” said Paul Clay, chairman of Community Prevention, a non-profit project to strengthen area families.

Clay and others agreed that coalitions of groups now working in the same area would make more sense.

Community Prevention might fit within Health Improvement Partnership, he said.

“Whatever it takes, we need to make our goals and aims simple and well understood, or people in the community will be very confused by all this,” said Clay, a Spokane attorney.

Chrislip summarized how other communities have managed widespread planning efforts, concluding they have common features.

Chrislip insisted that inclusion was more than a buzzword in such efforts. “If you have to err, make sure you err by having more people involved in the process than too few,” he said.

He said the best way to defuse tensions and conflicts is accurate information that’s used “for the broadest social good.”

“When done right, this also means people use experts to help the effort, but not drive it,” he said.

He doesn’t believe Spokane needs a coordinating agency to pull all the planning under one umbrella.

“What you do need to realize is that the decisions you make are less important than the process you take to reach those decisions.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: COMMUNITY ‘KEY FACTS’ A panel of community members offered a summary of “key facts” affecting Spokane and North Idaho during Friday’s Leadership Forum. Among them were: Spokane County is expected to grow between 100,000 and 150,000 people in the next 20 years. In the past six years, 60 percent of Spokane County’s new residential housing was built in rural areas where services are most expensive to provide. Removing health-care workers, the average income of Spokane County’s retail and service-industry jobs is about $14,000 a year. Again excluding health-care workers, service sector jobs now make up 45 percent of the county’s work force - the fastest growing sector of the economy here. According to residents in a recent survey, their chief concern for the next 10 years is preserving Spokane’s small-town feeling while enjoying more urban cultural and social advantages. -Tom Sowa