Sisters Country survey launches Thursday

The local visioning project, Sisters Country Horizons, will launch a regional online survey — a key step in its community outreach work — at 7 a.m. Thursday.

The survey will gauge what respondents value most about Sisters Country and what they envision for the community in the future. The survey will be available online on the initiative’s new website at https://sistershorizons.org/ .

Sisters Country is being defined as the City of Sisters and surrounding unincorporated communities and residential areas, ranches and farms.

Both residents and visitors are encouraged to take the online survey.

Sisters Country Horizons is led by the City of Sisters, Deschutes County and the Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council. The project is following a values-based collaborative approach. By analyzing what residents value about their community, and where they want it to head in coming years, a community can set realistic strategies and actions to reach those goals and be confident that people who live there are supportive of these directions.

Survey findings will be unveiled by the project team at four community forums planned for June. They also will form the foundation of a Vision Action Plan to be released in late 2018 or early 2019. Once completed, the Vision Action Plan will help guide government agencies, nonprofit groups and the private sector in planning and projects.

In addition to the survey, the project is interviewing opinion leaders throughout the area and is holding a series of community meetings in April and May to gather input from residents. Residents also will be invited to conduct their own “kitchen table” conversations. And Sisters Country Horizons will have a booth at community events during the summer months.

The last visioning and planning effort in Sisters was completed in 2007. The city and the surrounding unincorporated community has grown significantly since then. The project will revisit the earlier plan to assess what has been accomplished and what remains unaddressed.

NXT Consulting Group of Portland and Bend will oversee the project’s scope of work. The City of Sisters, Deschutes County and Central Oregon Intergovernmental Council are providing funding and staff support. Oregon’s Kitchen Table, a program at Portland State University, will help with community outreach work. Sisters’ Citizens4Community already has assisted the project, asking visitors to its Values & Visioning events on March 9-10 and March 16-17 to fill out a Horizons questionnaire.