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For Folks Like Us...
"Folks Like Us" Assignment Set-up
Joe:
We have been exploring the Guiding Principles and practicing applying them to a Civic Village. Just as important, if not more so, there are infinite opportunities to apply the Guiding Principles to everyday issues and problems. As citizens and members of different community groups we can put these to use to improve Carlsbad starting right now.
In this room there are representatives from all kinds of different groups, social networks, organizations, agencies, and companies. Hopefully, you are asking yourself, "How can I apply these Guiding Principles in the group that I belong to? How can I use these with my church group, my business association, my Boy Scout troop, etc."
I'd like to get a list of the types of groups that are represented in this room today. I'll bet we have at least a dozen types, one for each table. In a few minutes you'll have the opportunity to talk with folks who have similar interests to yours about how the Guiding Principles can be applied to the issues and opportunities of specific importance to you.
Types of Folks in the Room Today:
- Youths
- Service Clubs
- Business Organization
- Education
- Residential Organizations
- Government
- Tourism/Destination
- Cultural
- Ecological Groups
- Civic Groups
- Real Estate/Development
- Partnerships
Joe:
Great. Your assignment is to:
spend the next half hour talking about how to apply the Guiding Principles in situations you all share. In particular I'm interested in finding ways you might be able to collaborate with like-minded folks.
Small Group Report Outs
About the Report Outs:
The text below is what each team said and is in addition to the chart pages that each team showed when they presented.
As the reports were being made, our graphic facilitator was synthesizing each report out into icons and graphics. These can be viewed by clicking here.
Joe:
Wonderful work. Let's hear from each table. For folks like you, what do the Guiding Principles suggest?
Report Outs from Each Table
Education
Charts: 1
> 2
- Education is a lifelong leaning process. We talked about our Citizens Academy and educating children.
- We offer 57 classes throughout three school districts. We're educating our children to understand what government is all about.
- If we add a school component, we could have volunteers in the schools. How can we volunteer in different organization?
- Kids can partner with business and government, this is especially important for those who aren't on a college track. Do this on the high school level. Energize young people about what they want to be as adults.
- How do we stay competitive in the world today? It's not just about our city stays competitive, but how our nation stays competitive.
- Arts are a key component as well.
- Parents are important to the education and success of children. It is our role as parents to make children the best they can be.
- We see joint use of facilities as a key point of collaboration. Preschool should be a must in this nation.
Businesses
Charts: 1
> 2
> 3
> 4
> 5
- We talked about the importance of the Guiding Principles and we can go back into our organization, the Chamber of Commerce, with these ideas.
- At our table are the City of Carlsbad and the school district.
- We do buy into these Guiding Principles.
- This image refers to the idea of "Civic Architecture". It was presented to us by Ray Patchett, City Manager of Carlsbad. It's about taking different organizations, non-profits, government, etc and arranging them all as equal forces in the civic dynamic. They all have a stake at the table. And all stakeholders have an influence over the total quality of life in the city. If they collaborate the quality of life is higher.
- As the Chamber, we try to work with all these entities and facilitate a higher quality of life. We will be working more closely with these organizations. We will be discussing how to make them stronger. We focus on partnerships, connection, and community.
Residents
Charts: 1
- Entertainment, information, transportation are important to us.
- We need to get more information out to more residents.
- We want gathering places and events, a sense of belonging for all generations.
- We can see more collaboration with all the groups in Carlsbad, because, after all, we are the people.
Government
Charts: 1
- Part of our role in community is concerned with infrastructure and where to set up more roads, etc.
- When planning out our community we try to connect people with others, and roads to other roads.
- We serve as role models for carrying out the Guiding Principles.
- We do unto others and hope for the same in return.
- We want to be good environmental stewards.
- We support the service clusters.
- We have a great volunteer program in Carlsbad.
Tourism
Charts: 1 > 2 > 3 > 4
- We have unique assets: Legoland, Museum of Music, Beach, Flower Fields, and can leverage other attractions in surrounding areas.
- We have access to recreation and good products.
- In our industry we depend on volunteer services. We feel we already have a connection in that way.
- We have Art Splash, Legoland fireworks and trick or treat, plus great landscaping (back to nature).
- There is a lot of pride in Carlsbad and in who we are as community leaders. We have a passion and excitement for Carlsbad.
- We have a synergy between attractions and properties through memberships. We are working to cross-promote and sell each other's assets.
- The Business Improvement District is another example of collaboration. This is an example where it is not the government's dollars making improvements but business itself funding the effort.
- We can work on developing a connecting service. A shuttle that moves people throughout the community.
- Member satellite.
- Signage issue is universal. Visitors and residents need ways to find points of interest.
Youth
Charts: 1
- We talked about a collage of ideas.
- Carlsbad is already doing well in such areas as parks and recreation. We talked about getting better still in that department.
- Youth are not a definable resource but it is critical that we work to improve things for that part of the community. You have to deal with the health of our children.
- Maybe service opportunities exist for children and their families. Perhaps the City can help with this.
- Connecting families with other families gives everyone opportunity to improve.
- Kids could connect with a mentor. Someone could learn how to cross-stitch or build furniture.
- Connecting people one at a time. Providing a young person with someone they can look up to is a huge service. When they are in trouble they'd ask themselves, "What would my mentor do?"
- How does the city help families before they get into trouble?
- Perhaps resources could be found for family therapy?
Civic Groups:
Charts: 1
- We are concerned that the Flower Fields remain growing fields. If we don't have any growing fields left in Carlsbad how will we secure our access to food in case of an emergency?
- The higher price of fuel and the many threats to our environment, make us want to keep growing fields in Carlsbad.
- The Flower Fields of Carlsbad are part of our agricultural heritage and we want to make sure we have a say in the future of those fields.
Real Estate & Developers
Charts: 1 > 2 > 3
- It takes real political courage to move from the type of building we are doing now to the kind we are suggesting here. We're going from suburban to a more urban form.
- We fear that there will be higher fees. This translates to higher home prices.
- We do see more desirable communities out of this CCPS process.
- Higher density and multi-use will mean more variety of housing. This does however translate to more risk to the developer because people are actually buying detached homes.
- But overall, we see it as a positive change.
- Sustainable design will become more and more common.
- There will be higher demand for this in Carlsbad.
- The future looks good for Real Estate.
Partnering
Charts: 1 > 2
- There are certain goods and services that are needed in the community that have traditionally been provided by City government. Water is one of them.
- We found certain sustainable ways of providing services. Shared responsibility and risk will be required. Joint problem solving and joint information sharing will as well.
- Partnerships will help the City do what it does best. In partnerships we can bring in outside capital to address more pressing needs.
- Provided more involvement community wide.
- Through outsourcing some of the City services, the government frees up people to work on other initiatives.
- This also does what's called "risk allocation" which reduces overall risk to the City.
Environment
Charts: 1 > 2 > 3
- In our image here we have a little bunny. This represents the nature that we have here and that we need to take care of including water quality, and watersheds. Whatever development needs to be built needs to be environmentally sensitive. This is very complicated. It gets to the relationship of nature and man. The relationship we have with nature.
- These blobs represent energy efficiency, waterways, all need to be developed around the relationship between man and nature.
- Here we have a symbolic representation of the Guiding Principles.
- Stewardship runs through all of the categories here. If we don't take care of what we have in Carlsbad, we might as well live in Bakersfield.
- It's all about sustainability. This forest image represents that what we have created a future that is better than what we have today.
Culture & Arts
Charts: 1 > 2
- What is culture? Accessibility and exposure to the arts for all ages.
- Crafts and gallery art.
- Mixed-use spaces are very important. Improved quality of life will result.
- Film festivals for instance, could be done today. We have a lot of theaters.
- Creating banners for promoting arts in our community would do a lot. There are aesthetic enhancements that could be made to the City.
- Scale appropriately for each of the venues. Keep the spaces adaptable and clustered.
- An amphitheatre would be valuable. It would be good to talk with our theatre folks about the design.
- Combining events provides opportunity for synergies with tourism entities.
- Doing an art walk for example that coincides with other art events.
- With creative financing, grants and the support of foundations all kinds of things are possible.
- The City government's flexibility in creating signage around the City would be helpful.
- We wouldn't need to travel other places for the cultural experiences that are happening right in Carlsbad.
Transition to the Next Activity: Closing Dialogue
The next activity gave participants an opportunity to reflect on what they had done for the day. They talked about how they felt about the day, and it's implications for the future including decisions they made on their own during the day.
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