Agenda - Council - 12/09/2008 - Laserfiche WebLink

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RAMSEY3 A small, aging brick building stands like a question mark between aday-care center and a bank. A weathered sign identifies it as the Ramsey Town Hall. Although no longer used, this structure personifies Ramsey today. It asserts the key issue is not if Ramsey should grow, but how it will it develop. _ To address this issue, a group of residents, some of whom were already active on City commissions, committees and the Council, worked with city. staff and Council to conceptualize a McKnight Foundation grant, which the City received in 2006. The project was named Ramsey3 because it consisted of a three-part planning process.. During Ramseyl nationally-renowned experts led a series of four public forums and staff/council workshops organized around four critical issues facing metropolitan communities: transportation, innovative zoning, regional intersections, and community ecology. Ramsey2 used the innovative technique of Open Space Technology to allow participants to create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around central themes of strategic importance_ The final stage--Ramsey3--used facilitation tools not commonly used by cities to develop a shared vision and explore unique and cutting-edge tools to implement that vision. Thus, Ramsey3 provided the community, which has long-valued citizen participation, a process that went far beyond the traditional public hearings and other methods used in the past. In the end, the process yielded a vision, value statements and checklist, and a land use map all created by citizens and arrived at by consensus. The vision, values, and land use map are incorporated in subsequent sections of this Comprehensive Plan and provide the overall guiding framework with which all,land~use decisions should be consistent. Ramsey3 represents astill-in-process dramatic change in our community that moved us from a place where there was suspicion and even hostility to city government, to a place where, as along-time resident put it, "This is the most together I have seen this city and I have lived here since 1944." Just as Ramsey3 received high marks of approval from residents; its approach also has. been validated by outside experts: A recent report of the finding from McKnight Foundation's work with communities on the urban/suburban edge, notes, "Proactive. .communities provide residents with educational workshops that give them the framework .for growth and planning.... As they learn what is happening elsewhere and what is possible, a city's leaders and staff, local residents, and businesspeople can gear up to have productive conservations about their visions for the future." Ramsey believes this Comprehensive Plan and its methodology offer a positive vision for our community and a model for fostering citizen involvement in comprehensive planning for the greater Twin Cities area. -201-