Land of Hope and Dreams

Last Thursday night, the Village held the first "Community Conversation" around the future vision for our town. We had a decent turnout of over 100 people who initially met in the Little Theater of South Orange Middle School for an overview of the process from the Cecil Group - the Boston-based planning and design firm hired to facilitate and design the vision. After describing the overall process, everyone assembled broke off into 6 smaller groups in separate classrooms, each with a facilitator. In the room I was in, we went around the room introduced ourselves and stated our "vision" for the town, which was recorded on flip-charts by the facilitator. After everyone was done, each person was given 4 colored stickers and told to place the stickers on the flipcharts next to the idea(s) they liked the best. Finally, the votes were tallied and the 4 or 5 highest vote getters were named the winners. All groups then reconvened in the Theater where the "winning" ideas in each group were revealed to everyone.

Mark your calendars now for the next session on December 2, 2008 at 7:30pm in the SOPAC loft.

The objective of the next session will be to "Review the alternatives raised and discuss the different concepts and the opportunities and challenges they pose."

As new information is collected, it will be posted on the Village website at www.southorange.org/vision.

If you want to be added to the email list for notification of upcoming meetings, send an email to vision@southorange.org