Do you have five minutes for the future of Lincoln?
Strategic Plan process begins with a public survey

[January 20, 2015]  LINCOLN - On Tuesday evening, at the committee of the whole meeting of the Lincoln City Council, city administrator Clay Johnson introduced the topic of creating a strategic plan for the city of Lincoln. Johnson noted that having a specific plan for the future is an integral part of keeping the city moving forward and in the right direction.

As a part of this process, Johnson said a very important first step is to gather information from Lincoln residents and stakeholders. To that end, the city now has on its website a community survey. Johnson is hopeful the survey will get a great deal of response from local constituents as well as business and industry owners and others who have a vested interest in the future of the city.

Johnson said, “This is the most exciting thing that local government can do. Strategic planning is a contract that you make as a council with your residents. It is an important tool to help focus everybody on a particular goal or goals and will provide action steps for staff to achieve, and it is a good way to proceed. I am excited that we are getting this underway.”

The survey will remain online from now through February 6th.

Johnson said that it was extremely important that the community participate in the survey as it gives citizens an opportunity to shape the future goals of the city through their input. “The best way this survey functions is through broad participation and letting people who don’t typically think they have a voice, to have input into what the future looks like,” he said.

Once the survey period is closed, the information gained will be compiled into a results study by Northern Illinois University Center for Government Studies. Northern has a very reputable program that utilizes expert staff and students to put together information for a municipality to guide the planning process.

Johnson said the next step would be for aldermen to participate in a strategic planning workshop. He said in that workshop, the goal would be to create a mission, set goals, and outline the action steps to achieve the goals.

He said the workshop will be conducted on Friday, March 6th in the evening and continue on Saturday March 7th taking up the majority of that day. NIU will be the facilitators for the workshop with NIU employee Katie Davison taking the lead.

The survey is online now on the city website, and LDN will provide a quick link to the survey in its top stories section throughout this week.

Johnson referred to the survey campaign as “Do you have 5 minutes for the future of Lincoln.”

On the website, the first page of the survey says that at the most, it should take approximately 15 minutes to complete the survey. The survey is 36 questions and begins with a statement of why the survey is being taken, as well as an invitation to contact Davison with any questions about the survey.

The survey questions address a few key topics. The first questions pertain to the city website. From there it moves on to questions about public safety, police presence, and fire department performance. The next group of questions pertains to city events and what you would like to see offered such as parades and festivals.

Key to the survey may be the questions regarding the downtown area and the condition of streets and roadways in the entire city. These questions ask your opinion on sidewalk conditions downtown, shopping opportunities and more. Then it moves into the conditions of city streets, and the neighborhood problems such as parking conditions and conditions of the road surfaces.

The survey then wraps up with questions that can be used to outline the demographic of Lincoln residents. Examples of these questions are how long have you lived in Lincoln, do you work in Lincoln, are there children in your home, and what age bracket do you fall in?

Nowhere on the survey does it ask you to give your name or your income level, though there is one question that asks you to identify the street intersection closest to your home.

Once the survey is taken on a particular computer, attempting to take it again will result in a message that you’ve already taken it and cannot do so again. Therefore, using public access computers (at the library or colleges for example) may not work after that first person has done so.

During discussion, Marty Neitzel asked if the survey could also be made available on paper. Johnson said he would make a limited number of the surveys available at city hall, specifically for those who do not have home computers.

Quick line to city survey:
Do you have five minutes for the future of Lincoln?
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Lincoln_IL 

[Nila Smith]