March 24, 2005

One year later, round table progressing on forum goals

By Diane Chiddister

It’s been a year since more than 70 local leaders met to discuss the future of Yellow Springs at the March 2004 economic and planning forum, sponsored by the Yellow Springs Men’s Group. The forum’s organizers wanted the event to produce not only talk but actions, and to oversee those actions, forum participants chose nine people to serve on a Community Round Table.

A year later, members of the CRT say that the group has largely fulfilled its initial charge. While there have been some false starts, CRT members say the group has worked to keep the forum’s goals alive in the community.

“Anything that gathers leaders of a community together to work at improving life in the village is a successful thing,” said CRT member Karen Wintrow. “There has been lots of energy, lots of conversation back and forth.”

The second annual Community Forum will take place this Saturday, March 26, at Wright State. Forum organizers this year are the Men’s Group, Community Resources and the Yellow Springs Chamber of Commerce.

Community Round Table members are Wintrow, Village Council president Tony Arnett, Yellow Springs School Superintendent Tony Armocida, Miami Township trustee Mark Crockett, Bruce Rickenbach, Mary Kay Smith, Sharen Neuhardt, Richard Lapedes and Ron Schmidt, who served as the group’s chair until December 2004. One CRT member was chosen by each of the economic forum’s five discussion groups, and representatives from each local governing body were also included.

Since last March, the group has met nine times, according to meeting minutes, which are posted on www.45387.org. The group met monthly from last March to May, took a two-month break, then met again August through November. The group has not met since November, according to Arnett, who said the group’s recent efforts have focused on planning the 2005 Community Forum.

The CRT’s purpose was not so much to initiate actions as to coordinate the efforts of smaller working groups, Arnett said.

“The key thing people were feeling is that we had a number of groups working on a bunch of related topics, and we needed to create a place where those people came together who had a shared sense of goals from last year’s forum,” he said. “In that sense it has been successful.”

According to Arnett, CRT members came out of last year’s forum with “three key focal points” of activity: the local economy, housing issues and education. The CRT then oversaw subgroups that addressed goals in each of those areas.

The most productive subgroup was the education committee, according to Arnett. Participants in last year’s forum identified local educational institutions as important attributes of the community and sought to promote Yellow Springs as the “Education Village.” As an initial step toward this vision, forum participants encouraged the CRT to improve communication among local educational institutions.

That step has been taken with the formation of the Education Alliance, which Armocida has led. The group brings together leaders from Yellow Springs educational institutions, including the Antioch School, the public schools, Community Children’s Center, Antioch College and Antioch University McGregor.

The group has met three times since September, according to Armocida, who said those gatherings have been valuable opportunities for school leaders to share information and to discuss common needs.

“It has enhanced communication and given educational leaders a chance to meet and get to know each other,” he said.

The CRT also formed an ad hoc housing committee, composed of Arnett, Wintrow and Rickenbach. The group focused on ways to reach the forum’s goal of increasing housing so that the local population, in the next 8 to 10 years, would reach its 1970 level of about 4,500 people.

To work toward that goal, the housing committee gathered information about available properties for residential development, Arnett said. The group also wanted to create a brochure to send to area developers and planned to sponsor a tour of available properties for developers.

While the committee has now packaged the information about available properties, the brochure has not yet been sent to developers nor did the tour take place, said Arnett. The committee decided to put its actions on hold temporarily due to the recent community dialogue on growth, he said.

Arnett said that he will present the housing information he has gathered at the March 26 forum, and after that event the group will reconvene and “reassess” its goals and strategies, based on that forum’s results.

The Community Round Table did not focus on the forum’s economic goal of increasing jobs in Yellow Springs because that effort is being handled by Community Resources, which is spearheading the development of the Center for Business and Education, Arnett said.

A third CRT subgroup is the Men’s Group Public Information Project, also known as the image project, which seeks to correct what its members believe is the village’s negative image in surrounding areas. That group has been led by Schmidt and Jim Albright, who took over for Schmidt when he was out of town for three months this winter.

According to minutes from the CRT’s November meeting, the image project has identified 11 community members who will serve on its committee. Earlier meeting accounts reported that over the summer and fall organizers had raised the $100,000 needed for the three-year project, from a combination of local foundations, business organizations, the Village and Miami Township.

Another subgroup headed by Schmidt, the Research Task Force, never got off the ground, said Schmidt, who by November had identified one member of the group. The group’s purpose, he said, is to gather together information about the community that will assist growth efforts. The group, for instance, could create a housing profile of the village, he said.

“We understand what the housing median is here, but we don’t understand what the mix is. What does the housing profile look like? That’s a question that needs to be answered to know what sort of housing we need,” Schmidt said.

Another subgroup, the Communications Task Group, did complete a yearlong project, the creation of a PowerPoint presentation of last year’s forum, which was overseen by group member Ven Adkins. Other group members were Bruce Bradtmiller, Barbara Krabec, Tim Rogers, Jean Payne, Lauren Heaton and Melina Elum. The group was originally chaired by Lapedes, but he resigned from the subgroup after several months, and was replaced by Adkins. Another group member, Evan Scott, also resigned within the first several months.

While the communications group started out with plans to communicate to the community the CRT’s efforts, it finished the year with only the PowerPoint presentation. Some group members said that they had hoped the group, which was discontinued in March, would be more productive.

“It was not as successful as I would have liked it to be,” said Bradtmiller. “If I would give advice to the task force this year, I would say the work of this group is critically important, and communicating the results is a critical piece” of the forum process.

The main challenge the CRT faced is that the people involved had to add one more meeting to their already full schedules, Arnett said.

“Everybody is a busy person,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hard to get everyone together with the frequency we would like.”

When asked to comment for this article, Schmidt said that he was not up to date on CRT activities since he had been out of town for three months, and that Neuhardt had taken his place as chair of the group.

Neuhardt and Bruce Rickenbach did not respond to e-mail messages seeking information about the group. Lapedes declined to comment on the round table because his current efforts are focused on organizing this weekend’s forum.

At this weekend’s forum, participants will elect three people to join current CRT members.