La Veta’s twenty-year visioning process is ready for action

by Reed White
LA VETA — La Veta’s open Visioning Workshop of several weeks ago produced a detailed list of “visions” for La Veta. These results have been organized into categories, ranked in terms of impact and ease of implementation, and transferred to spreadsheets.
The resulting categories are listed below in order of most vision-items per category to fewest vision-items per category: local food, town infrastructure, youth, medical and communication, social and political, art and culture, economy and finance, energy, recycling, education, co-housing and elder living, water, healing and well-being. The order does not necessarily indicate order of importance. Rather, it tends to indicate the level of interest or the quantity of needs in a category, as was determined by attendees of the eight-hour visioning session.
All individuals who are interested in La Veta’s future are encouraged to look at the lists and identify action items they would volunteer to support. The lists will be available in the La Veta Public Library. On Monday, July 2, there will be a public meeting at the La Veta Library from 7 to 8:30 pm to present the action-items to interested persons. Those who attended the workshop may have already received the lists by email. Either way, you can send your preferences to Kristina Heim, kheim@visionarypartnership.com.
After initial volunteers have had a chance to sign up for action-groups, the results will be presented to the La Veta Town Board.
The next steps will continue according to a process that has been used in Dr. Matthew Heim’s visioning workshops in other small towns. Within the weeks that follow, volunteers will organize responses received from interested citizens, enabling additional action-groups to form. The objective is to move from talk to action expediently. Some actions will require coordination with the town board.