Austintown Growth Foundation News

What’s "20/20 - Austintown"? A "working name" for a comprehensive community planning project undertaken by Austintown residents.

Who’s doing this? Austintown. The Austintown Growth Foundation is leading the way, but all Austintown stakeholders who participate will create the vision. There’s room for everyone - to contribute ideas, to help organize, and to help sponsor.

Is it part of Youngstown’s new city planning project? No. Youngstown’s project aims to help Youngstown; "2020 - Austintown" aims to help Austintown. But obviously the two communities share a common boundary as well as a regional economy.

Things seem pretty good as they are. Why bother? Good for some doesn’t mean good for all. Good now doesn’t mean good tomorrow. Effective communities work together to anticipate change and use resources carefully. They make smart choices. Don’t forget, nobody bothered to plan when the valley’s steel mills were running.

Any other reasons? We plan our family’s vacation, our children’s education, and our retirements because important things shouldn’t be left to chance or to other people. Planning helps us deal with change, which is constant and inevitable. Planning helps us do first things first. Planning helps us come up with ways to deal with growth and decline. Planning helps to coordinate development projects, such as making sure adequate roads and utilities are in place before a new factory or retail center or subdivision is opened.

Public and private grants are available to support community projects which are based on community plans. And planning involves and informs stakeholders -- strong communities have people who care and whose eyes are open.

Who’s in charge? The Steering Committee comprising some two dozen Austintown stakeholders are coordinating the project. The committee is broadly representative of Austintown - from union leaders to educators, from builders to clergy, from retirees to students. The process will be run by James Segedy and the Community Based Projects program at Ball State University. Segedy is Professor of Urban Planning and head of the American Planning Association’s Small Town & Rural Planning Division. The Ball State team will rely on YSU’s Center for Urban Studies for additional support.

Students? Why students? Today’s students will inherit the fruits of this planning. They have good ideas and a can-do energy. Austintown won’t thrive long if young people decide that their futures are better sought elsewhere.

What’s the cost? The budget is $25,000. Contributions can be made directly to the AGF, which is a 501c4 nonprofit organization.

How will this work? A series of Community Meetings will bring to the surface a consensus inventory of Austintown’s strengths and weaknesses, along with a vision of what residents would like Austintown to become. Simultaneously, the Ball State team will analyze various data about Austintown such as housing patterns, educational trends, and employment breakdowns. The Ball State team will present their findings to a Town Meeting in April, where residents again will be asked to provide feedback. Then the Ball State staff will develop action plans and present a final report to Austintown in August.

When it’s done, it’s done? No. If you do planning right, once you start, you never stop.

Will this actually result in improvements? Planning efforts where stakeholders don’t participate, where there’s no consensus of vision, and where action plans are vague or impractical often fail to improve things. But "20/20 - Austintown" enjoys the support of all township and school officials, will be guided by stakeholders, and will involve the community widely at all stages. Also, the plan itself will take a step-by-step form for each planning issue or theme: first do this, then do this, and then do that.

Is there a conceptual framework behind all of this? Yes. It’s called the Oregon Model of Community Planning, and it comprises four steps. First, collect lots of data about the current state of affairs: income, housing, employment, education, business starts, traffic flow, zoning ordinances, etc., to answer the question, "where are we?" Second, look backward a few years and project to the future. That helps answer the question, "where are we going right now"? Third, conduct community meetings to explore the question, "where would we prefer to go"? And finally, create management plans that answer the question, "what do we have to do to get where we want to go?"

Have the Ball State people done this elsewhere? Yes, in the Mahoning Valley, in fact. Read a selection of their community planning reports at http://www.bsu.edu/web/CBP/ .