-Visioning Program For 2020-
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION

Over the past three years, the City of West Covina has been faced with the difficult question of how best to plan for the long-term future of our community. We now live in an era where the pace and scale of change creates both opportunities and uncertainties. This often makes it difficult to decide upon a course of action that will best ensure our continued health and prosperity as a city. What is required is a shared vision of our preferred future that can be used to help guide our community and its leaders over the next two decades.

In response to this need, the City of West Covina and the Chamber of Commerce initiated the West Covina Visioning 2020 Program as a unique opportunity for residents and community leaders to come together and engage in a serious dialogue about the future of our community. The purpose of this process was to create a vision for the future of West Covina that reflects the hopes and dreams of the residents based on a realistic understanding of existing conditions and opportunities that face our city today. A clear vision of what the community aspires to achieve is the first and most important step in charting a path through the thicket of complex decisions that we will face in the future. Rather than simply reacting to events as they unfold around us, a shared vision will enable us to develop a pro-active plan for how best to achieve the ideal future we have imagined together as a community.

Overview of the Vision Process

The West Covina Visioning 2020 Program has been an eight-month process involving over 336 residents and other community stakeholders who represent the diversity of the community as well as its core leadership (Please refer to Appendix B for a map of the city highlighting the many different areas of the city in which Vision 2020 participants live). Guiding this process has been a Vision Planning Committee (VPC) made up of community leaders, activists, and committed citizens who have worked with City staff and the consultant hired to implement the process. The purpose of the VPC was to establish goals and expectations for the visioning process as well as to monitor its implementation and review progress. The first phase of this effort began in March 2001 with a review of planning documents and other information provided by the City and the Chamber of Commerce. This information served as the basis for the publication this July of "This is West Covina," an at-a-glance profile of our city, as it is today, that has provided a context for the community dialogue and visioning effort.

The second phase of the process was devoted to creating the vision. It consisted of two separate but related programs designed to encourage a conversation among citizens regarding the future of West Covina. One of these efforts involved over 40 citizen volunteers who were trained as Visioneers to facilitate meetings among their friends and neighbors to gather input for the visioning process. During these meetings, they led their neighbors through a series of open-ended questions designed to elicit their hopes and concerns about the future of West Covina:

• What do you like best about your neighborhood?
• What would you like to improve about your neighborhood?
• When I think about West Covina's future, I am most optimistic about...
• When I think about West Covina's future, I am most worried about...
• What are the two most important issues facing the City of West Covina? Why?

At these small group meetings, each participant recorded his or her thoughts on Idea Cards that were submitted to the City and the consultant team to serve as one of the primary sources for development of the 2020 Vision Document.

The principal event of the visioning process was the Citizens Congress, a day-long event held at City Hall on July 21st. During this Saturday forum, residents from throughout the community were invited to come together to explore a variety of topics identified by the Vision Planning Committee based on the input provided by the various local community meetings facilitated by the Visioneers. These topics included:

• My Neighborhood: Where We Live
• Our Kids: How We Serve Our Youth
• My Community: Where We Gather, Work, & Play
• My City: How We Govern
• My Money: How We Get It, How We Spend It

In each of these topic areas, participants expressed their thoughts and ideas concerning the future of the city. In doing so they were asked to consider the following questions:

• What do you believe are the major assets of West Covina and how should we build upon them to create the future we desire?
• What do you believe are the major challenges and issues facing the community and how should we deal with them?
• What opportunities exist that we should be pursuing to ensure our continued success as a city?
• Most importantly, what kind of future do we want for our city?

These community dialogues were graphically recorded and the information compiled, together with the earlier Visioneer input, to help create the West Covina 2020 Vision Document which was presented to the City Council on February 5, 2002.

Additional outreach efforts that were a part of the visioning process included the following:

• Web page - Survey questions were placed on the City's web page, which allowed residents to send responses directly to the City.
• Telephone Message - The City's "on-hold" telephone message described the visioning process and encourages all residents to provide input.
• Discover West Covina - Surveys were handed out at a number of community events, including the July 4th Celebration, which is one of the City's largest community events.

previous page

table of contents

next page

- back to top -


Community Events | Visit City Hall | Meet Your City Council
Kids Stuff | West Covina Loves Your Business | Home
Phone Directory | Site Map | Contact Us