Seize the Future

[EWerb at aol.com]

There is a major, six-month long community-wide effort to develop a long range
vision for how Ventura will be some 10, 20 and forty years down the road,
called Seize the Future. See and respond to the site at www.seizethefuture.com

A group of citizens representing various sectors of the community have been
trained to go around and conduct small workshops to gather input to guide our
visioning for the future. There will also be four large community meetings on
major sub-topics to provide more specificity for the vision. 

The 4 communitywide workshops will be at public schools - but the specific
sites are yet to be decided. The workshops are:
 Environmental Resources: Thursday, March 18, 6:30 pm
 Economic Activities: Tuesday, March 30, 6:30 pm
 Community services, programs, and facilities: Saturday, April 10, 1 pm
 Community design principles and prototypes: Saturday, April 17, 9 am.

The end result of this input process will be a set of policies and major goals
to guide community development for years to come, as well set some ground work
for the general plan update process which is due every ten years and kicks off
this summer.

Since environmental quality looms large in Ventura's future, it would be good
to hold a meeting of environmental groups to receive your ideas and brainstorm
for the future.  We will discuss what we like and don't like about Ventura,
ways we'd like to see it grow and change, and what should not change. Then
we'd focus in on what specific environmental resource issues we would like to
see addressed in the future, for example in the area of transportation, water,
air quality, sustainablity questions, business development scenarios and so
on.

We could hold a meeting sometime after work on a week day or on the weekend,
whichever folks found more convenient. By a show of hands how many folks think
they'd be interested in participating a session like this?

We will submit our eco-proceedings to be added to the mix of other input
documents in the process, and just as importantly if not more so, we will be
better prepared to participate in the larger forums with better articulation
of   future sustainablity scenarios to be set as policy. Let's get ahead of
the game on this.

eric werbalowsky