Easley Chamber of Commerce

Pickens County Vision 2025, Draft Plan To Be Shared With Citizens

The Pickens County Vision 2025 Plan in draft form will be available for county citizens to learn about at a final town hall meeting on Tuesday, May 22nd at Liberty High School cafeteria, from 6 pm to 8 pm. Citizens are invited to attend, and will have an opportunity to comment on the plan and ask questions. The draft plan will also be available on the website for Pickens County Vision 2025 by May 18th. Citizen comments on the draft will also be sought through an input form on the website, at www.pickensvision2025.org. Following four community wide town hall meetings, twelve focus groups dealing with different aspects of community themes, eighteen individual interviews, and scores of input forms submitted through the website, the vision process is culminating in the draft plan. Community visioning is a process that engages large numbers of citizens in thinking about and planning for their community’s future. In doing so, visioning helps create consensus, opens the doors to new ideas and strengthens citizen support for action.

Public involvement and inclusiveness is a key element in the process. Following the citizen review of the draft through May, refinements will be incorporated in the final draft going to the steering committee for approval. The approved plan will be presented to the public in September, followed by a community wide celebration. The steering committee is preparing for the implementation phase, which will involve community collaboration and encourage long-term community change. A new leadership team will be assembled in the coming months to lead the implementation phase.

According to the Co-Chairs Dr. David Spittal, President of Southern Wesleyan University, and Gerald Sweitzer, a semi-retired nonprofit consultant, “The visioning process has already paid dividends in bringing citizens together to look at our future.”