Luke Planning: April 1999 Newsletter

Luke Vision-COLLABORATIVE IMPLEMENTATION- Report-April 19, 1999

MINOT, ND-in a March 23^rd City election, ninety percent of voters supported a twelve-year one cent sales tax used to pay for the Northwest Area Water Supply project (NAWS). The NAWS project would bring Missouri River water to Minot that is essential to the continued growth of the Minot region. Congratulations to Bob Schepp who led the campaign to pass the sales tax.

VIRGINIA'S TECHNOLOGY CORRIDOR-BLACKSBURG/ROANOKE, VA-Volvo trucks announced a $148 million expansion. Capacity will increase from 30,000 to 50,000 trucks a year and generate 1,277 jobs. Volvo received a $54.2 million state incentive package.

LEXINGTON, KY-Lexington will make their 60^th consecutive annual city visit to Portland, OR on May 18-21. They believe this is a US record for number and at 175 participants, a record attendance. The single room participant cost is $1295. Lexington visited Mobile, AL in 1998, Richmond, VA in 1996 and Greenville, SC in 1995. Lexington and Portland are among a limited number of cities in the US with an Urban Service Area Boundary Line that separates urban and rural development. Bob Douglass, President of the Lexington Chamber of Commerce, reports that after the 2000 census, the Lexington MSA will include ten counties including Frankfort, the state capital. Also the Louisville, Lexington and Northern Kentucky MSAs will be contiguous along I-75 and I-64. The Portland visit will focus on regionalism ideas…first on Lexington's immediate adjacent counties and then on the three contiguous MSAs. The Kentucky contiguous MSA counties will have a population of over 1.9 million.

RAPID CITY, SD-Jeff Haverly has been elected to the Board of the National Childcare Association. Jeff served on the Black Hills Vision Task Force where childcare was a major priority in 1997. His childcare provider "Kids Kastle" endorsed the Vision and adopted the child care strategy. His Action Steps included forming a Black Hills Childcare Association and joining the Nation Association. Mission accomplished!! Also, "Kids Kastle" is opening a 2^nd location with more to follow.

HAMPTON ROADS, VA-In a March 14, 1999 editorial, The Virginia-Pilot, said about increasing incomes, "Hampton Roads needs to increase wages from top to bottom if it wants even approach the national average…of the workers here, the ones making $8/hour need to make $10/hour. People making $16/hour need to make $18/hour." The editorial was based in part on a presentation by economist, John Whaley of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission. After multiple simulations, John made several recommendations or conclusions about increasing incomes.

1. Recruit new and nourish existing high wage paying companies.

2. Grow the economy faster.

3. Fill jobs with local workers

4. Encourage personal saving and investment.

5. Increase productivity.

6. Increasing our incomes will be slow and difficult.

7. We need to work on multiple fronts to raise our incomes.

WORLD CLASS-We are constantly being asked, "What is World Class?" Here are two examples.

The first example is Industry Week Magazine- December 7, 1998 provided "Performance Metric's and Initiatives" that indicates World Class performance for manufactures. You can review this data at www.industryweek.com in the "IW communities" section.

The second example is the Finance and Operations Division of the Milton-Hershey School in Hershey. Lawrence Davenport, VP of Finance and Operations has used Arthur Andersen's Global Best Practices for benchmark data from individual companies rated best in the world for specific functions. For example, for payment by Electric Fund transfer, PPG Industries is rated best in the world at 95% and MHS is tied at 95%.

Many communities are content to seek incremental improvement based on their historical database. Organizations throughout the world have proven that focusing on World Class best practices can result in dramatic improvements. This will also work in visionary communities.

TYLER, TX-The University of Texas at Tyler began freshman and sophomore classes and an engineering school in 1998. This addition was a major priority in the 1994 Tyler Vision Process. Tom Mullins reports that Tyler will have a five-year review of the Vision progress in August 1999.

SCHUYLKILL, PA-The Schuylkill Career Link Center opened in January. Eight Partners created the First Pennsylvania "One-Stop" Center to be used by employers, job seekers and incumbent workers. Dave Donlan of the Schuylkill Chamber and others have visited cities in several states to determine the "best practices" in employment placement and workforce development.

Schuylkill set up a Workforce development System with 82 partners that provide programs to facilitate service providers meeting employer's needs. These systems and others added in the last year are proving their worth as Schuylkill has recently lost multiple textile operations. Career Link had a transition team ready to assist these displaced workers into new opportunities. At an April 15 statewide opening for Career Link, the following story was broadcast. "A Schuylkill welfare recipient was recently assisted by Career Link in finding a $9.00/hour per job and within 30 days got a raise to $13/hour. He was able to get off food stamps and out of public housing." Congratulations Schuylkill Career Link and Work Force Development.

UPCOMING IMPLEMENTATION MEETINGS-Pensacola, Fl, May 27, 1999.."Envision EscaRosa's" first annual meeting; Minot, ND-May 20, 1999 and Lakeland, FL-May 25, 1999, both are celebrating meeting their Vision Partner goals.

PENSACOLA, FL-Pensacola area leaders made a city visit to Richmond, VA on April 9-10, 1999. Participants were interested in finding out how the 1991 Vision Process worked out in Richmond, developing ideas on attracting a new microchip manufacturing plant, downtown redevelopment and involvement of the university with the community in economic development.

SCHUYLKILL, PA-Following is an excerpt from Pottsville REPUBLICAN editor, Jim Kevlin's monthly e-mail newsletter. This is an excellent example of a newspaper serving their very diverse community and seeking a profit. Jim's e-mail address is kevlin@pottsville.net.

In the newsroom, beginning last summer, we spun off News Editor Andy Heintzelman and our excellent graphic artist, Melinda Pritiskutch, to develop "community pages" -- 176 by the time they were done, each with space for a sponsor -- for the phone book.

The resulting 1,346-page volume, distributed door-to-door by volunteer firefighters in early March, contained information on everything from school boards to hunting and fishing to the Schuylkill Symphony Orchestra to maps of Tamaqua and Tower City.

Meanwhile, Interactive Content Manager Chris Courogen and Carl Hughes, the NHT Web guru, figured out how to move the community pages onto the Web and make them "clickable." Click, and you can retrieve all the articles with the word "Shenandoah" or "Orwigsburg" published in today's newspaper. There is also a seven-day search engine and an archive, plus local links and other attractions.

On the business end, a corporate-wide task force was developing a "marketplace" concept to reorganize the Yellow Pages on the Web.

The resulting "Auto Marketplace" contains not only links to new- and used-car dealers, but also to financing, auto reviews and other auto-related information on the Web. "Real Estate Marketplace", "Employment Marketplace" and "Merchandise Marketplace" provide similar services for home buyers, job seekers and shoppers.

Andy and Melinda have also developed templates and a how-to guide so that other newspapers can do -- simply by plugging our disk into their Macs -- what we've done with a good deal of, not blood or tears, but quite a bit of perspiration, over the past year.

To me, the beauty of "Schuylkill OnLine & The World," launched March 27, is its simplicity. The print ETR Telephone Directoryª provided new revenues to make the effort profitable from the start; news -- already collected at great expense -- is re-used at almost no expense; a sales force can continue to add to the online Yellow Pages and "marketplaces" year around, generating new revenues between once-a-year print directories.

The REPUBLICAN & Herald now has one foot firmly in print and the other firmly in the future.

If the Web continues to grow, as anticipated, and ad revenues shift from print to cyberspace, as anticipated, we can shift smoothly from one communication vehicle to the next and still afford to serve our Schuylkill County the way we have for the past 115 years.

VISION LANGUAGE-Updated Version of Vision language from March 16^th newsletter. Any thoughts…

VISION Language

Below is a glossary of terms used in the Vision Process

Setting up the Process and gathering public input

1. Founding Vision Partners	Organizations who agree to provide funding for Vision Development and Process administration during Collaborative Implementation.
2. Steering Committee	A diverse and representative 20-35 member team of community members appointed to lead the Vision Process.
3. Focus Group Interviews	Interviews with ten groups of 10-15 people to provide background on the community and to provide notes on strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities for the Vision Task Force.
4. Stakeholders Summit	A meeting where the public is invited to develop the 10 most important issues to be addressed by the Vision Task Force. Each of the ten issues will be addressed by one or more strategies in the appropriate foundation in the Vision document. One person from each break-out group is elected by the group to represent the group on the Vision Task Force.

Developing the Vision document..first in draft, then after public input.. the final document

5. Vision Task Force	150-200 individuals who are responsible for developing the draft Vision document, helping present it to the community for input and recruiting Vision Partners. Members include the Steering Committee, 10-15 members elected at the Stakeholders Summit and the rest selected from individuals nominated or applying to be involved. The Vision Task Force will be representative of the community so it can become the "mind" of the community.
6. Foundations	Interdependent areas that will provide a comprehensive Vision for the community: Education, Quality of Life, Infrastructure, Economic Development, Government, and Private Sector Leadership.
7. Vision Document	The Vision document will have 5 Core Values, 5 Key Benchmarks, a Vision statement for each foundation, 110 strategies, 30 priority strategies and a description of the Collaborative Implementation process. The Vision document is not a prediction of the future, but is the community envisioning the future that the people want and a commitment to set about making it happen.
8. Vision	A Vision defines what the community wants to be in the future in each foundation area. There will be a Vision for each foundation area. Each Vision begins with "We will be…" or "We will have…"
9. Strategy	A verbal picture of the future in a specific part of a particular foundation. Twenty to thirty strategies in each foundation will provide a more detailed definition of each foundation Vision. There will be five priority strategies for each foundation. Each strategy will begin with a word like "Create, maintain, develop, increase…". An example strategy is "Increase the graduation rate." The annual numeric amount of increase is the Strategy Benchmark that will be set by Vision Partners during Collaborative Implementation.
10. Core Values	Character traits that guide daily decisions
11. Key Benchmarks	Three to five annual measurements of the community's progress that requires positive results from the interdependent foundations and provides accountability for the process.
12. Town Hall Meeting	Meeting with the public invited to provide input on the draft Vision document. Each year thereafter, there will be a Town Hall meeting to review the benchmarks and progress on strategies.

Collaborative Implementation

13. Collaborative Implementation	The process of making the Vision a reality by collaboration and action of Vision Partners.
14. Vision Partner	Any organization, business, civic group, government entity, church, etc. who has decided to collaborate with other community members to make the Vision reality. Vision Partners are the organizations who are responsible for making individual strategies reality.
15. Strategy Adoption	A Vision Partner selects a strategy for development of Action Steps for implementation and Strategy Benchmarks for accountability.
16. Action Steps	What the Vision Partner is going to do, a series of projects or events developed to make a strategy reality.
17. Strategy Benchmark	Annual measurement of the progress of a specific strategy that provides accountability for the process. Example: Increase the graduation rate 2% per year for 10 years.
18. Strategic Alliance	A group of Vision Partners who work together collaboratively to develop Action Steps for implementation of a specific strategy.
19. Foundation Team	One team for each foundation, responsible for helping develop Strategic Alliances and recruiting new Vision Partners as needed for implementation.
20. Benchmark Task Force	Responsible for helping develop the Strategy Benchmarks and updating the Key and Strategy Benchmarks annually.
21. Strategy Adoption Review	A review process to ensure that the most crucial strategies are being implemented by Vision Partners each year.