Live chats to be held in Huntingburg tonight

Tonight citizens of Huntingburg will have the opportunity to shape their city’s future as a series of “Reviving the Pride” listening sessions starts.

Mayor Denny Spinner announced his intentions to use these sessions to reshape the city’s Comprehensive Plan earlier this month.

“This council has expressed its commitment to improve the quality of life in the City of Huntingburg by developing and implementing policies based on community engagement and leadership that will provide 21st Century responses to our city’s challenges and opportunities, Mayor Denny Spinner said. “But this is not a path we can chart on our own. It takes the community. It takes you. These facilitated sessions will help us prioritize our efforts and move forward the ideas our citizens see as most crucial to our city’s success, and will lead to a revision of the City of Huntingburg’s Comprehensive plan which was completed in 2007.”

Besides tonight’s session at 5:30 p.m. at the Teen Outback, sessions are scheduled for 6:30 p.m., August 14, at the Southwest Dubois County Schools Office in Maple Park School and 5:30 p.m., August 16 at the Huntingburg Event Center.

The times and locations were chosen to give all citizens a number of opportunities to join in the conversation.

The sessions will be facilitated by Tonya Brothers-Bridge of The Transformation Team, who recently located their offices in Huntingburg. Brothers-Bridge recently facilitated a similar program held in Washington, IN that was highly successful. Mayor Spinner stated due to Brothers-Bridge’s experience and the success of the sessions in Washington the city decided to facilitate her business services. “Plus she is a local business now and we want to support local businesses,” he said.

The sessions are designed to hear citizens’ concerns and then to identify those concerns that are most important to the citizens. Brothers-Bridge uses a process that is comfortable and allows for constructive commentary to occur.

The Mayor and Council will be in attendance to listen to the citizens’ concerns and Ms. Brothers-Bridge will provide a report of the results of the sessions to them afterwards. “Then, it will be our task to prioritize those issues surfaced and use them to create an action plan for the future,” Spinner stated in the press release.