Strategy emerges for Warwick Visioning projects

WARWICK — The first two community projects that were launched in May as part of the recently completed town-wide, Community2gether Visioning are off and running.
Both the 3 Lakes Festival and the Wawayanda Creek project have gotten off to strong starts, so much so that the Community2gether organizers have adjusted their strategy and timeline to reflect this successful approach to introducing new projects.
The first step in this new approach involves selecting a small number of projects, all of which were high priority ideas in the Visioning process. This means that there will be a core group of advocates for these projects, people who want to see them realized.
The next step is a "Community Action Fair” (CA Fair) where these projects are officially presented to the people present and Community Action Teams (CA Teams) are formed on the spot to begin to exchange ideas about the project that most interests them.
“We learned from the successful May meeting in Town Hall,” said Geoff Howard, one of the Vision organizers, "that it is in these initial, 15-minute, stand-up gatherings of people keenly interested in the germ of an idea that energy and momentum start to build.”
The next CA Fair will be held Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 7 p.m., in the Elks Lodge in Greenwood Lake.
Possible projectsAt this meeting, two or three new projects will be presented to the Warwick community and CA Teams will be formed on the spot. People will know well in advance what these projects are as they will have been widely publicized in this paper, on social media and on the community2gether.org website.
Final selections haven’t been made yet, but strong contenders are:
• Biking/hiking trails to connect the entire town;
• Improved handicapped accessibility for all public recreation areas;
• A wider range of community-wide wellness activities and opportunities, including the possibility of a public swimming pool; and
• The feasibility of “starter housing” to make it possible for younger people to move to or remain in Warwick.
NextThere will be future CA Fairs in Florida and Pine Island in 2019 where the third and fourth wave of projects will be introduced. This is part of a conscious Community2gether strategy of launching town-wide projects in all parts of the Town.
“There were so many great ideas that came out of the Visioning,” Howard said, “and with this new Community2gether plan for rolling them out a few at a time, we hope to see them all successfully launched and turned into community realities.”