NEWS & EVENTS

Johnson: CVP must make consistent progress
By Mike Christopherson, Managing Editor
Crookston Daily Times

April 23, 2004 - Although the Crookston Vitality Project committee has never operated under a very formal arrangement…no Robert’s Rules of Order, no structured hierarchy, with officers, etc., Joy Johnson has long been considered the co-chair of the group, along with Kari Thompson, executive director of the Crookston Development Authority.

Some type of leadership role in the CVP initiative makes sense for Johnson, who is not only vice president of one of Crookston’s most vital and leading-edge employers, RiverView Health, she’s also chairperson of the Crookston Area Chamber of Commerce in 2004.

So if Johnson is optimistic about where CVP is now, and where it could be by year’s end, then there must be some real reason to be upbeat.

“I think we’re finally starting to move, which is significant,” she said. “That’s not to say we haven’t been moving forward, but decisions are now being made and a plan to get something done seems to be taking shape.”

Getting moving, as Johnson puts it, is the biggest challenge she feels is facing the Crookston Vitality Project leaders.
“By nature, people get involved in things they care about and hold close to their hearts, and there are a lot of people in this community who are closely involved in things that they care very much about,” Johnson explained. “So, naturally, they love to tell others about the things that they care so much about, and that is what CVP has done a lot of so far…bring a variety of people to the table to tell everyone what they’re passionate about.”

But talking is easy, even fun. It’s also easy to get lulled into an endless pattern of meetings that don’t go beyond much more than just talking. The CVP committee has meshed so well and genuinely enjoys being around each other so much that at times the meetings have strayed from their intended purpose. Johnson, for one, believes things have been stepped up a notch of late. The hiring of a project coordinator and the planning for a community CVP event have kept the committee on task.

“We’ve been fortunate enough to get some funds from the CDA, and we’re going to be applying for more, from the Northwest Minnesota Foundation and also Bremer, because we don’t want CVP to be a financial burden to the community,” she explained. “I think seeking those funds makes us more official and if we can get some funds to make our efforts more self-sufficient, I think it will legitimize us in the eyes of the community.”

Johnson is a believer in where CVP has been, where it is now, and where it intends on going.

“Rural communities, even if they’ve had some successes, cannot sit back and wait for things to happen,” she said. “This community took on a major and necessary undertaking with Project 2000 almost 20 years ago, and we need to keep moving ahead. And I think when you do that, you have to have something official tied to it; you can’t just wing it as you go along.”

An initiative like Project 2000, which literally peered 15 years into the future as it laid out a blueprint of sorts of what Crookston should and/or could look like by the time the new millennium rolled around, really isn’t possible anymore. Computer technology, the Internet, economies that can change overnight, and even terrorism have altered the landscape so much that conventional wisdom says that a community of any size can’t plan in any great detail beyond three years.

“The Vitality Project is not an update of Project 2000 by any stretch, but it is a visioning process trying to gauge what our community is, what it isn’t, and what we think it could be,” Johnson said. “We need to do something like this; we need to be proactive, and we need a global perspective as we seek to control our own destiny.”

Hiring Carrie Bang
Johnson believes CVP can only get stronger and gain more momentum now that Carrie Bang has been hired to coordinate major aspects of the project.

“I think it’s a step in the right direction, and I don’t think that everyone is heaping all these huge expectations on her; she’s Carrie Bang, people know her and people know what she excels at doing,” Johnson said. “To have someone who’s main focus will be this project will take a little bit of the load off everyone else, who are all holding down full-time careers. I think Carrie will really dive into this.”

And, in doing such, Bang will definitely take some of the burden off Johnson’s fellow co-chair, Thompson.
“From my perspective, I think Kari’s job is pretty broad; she has so many things on her plate and I think you could argue that almost every one of them is considered high priority,” Johnson said. “Even if Carrie won’t be doing the Vitality Project full time, I think it helps just to know that we have someone tackling this with us.”

Just the perception that there’s someone coordinating things and someone crossing tasks off a to-do list is a morale boost for those who have been closely involved with CVP for many, many months, Johnson believes.
“What I see is a sort of outcome, a plan of some sort that actually launches other things, not something that says, ‘OK, CVP is finished now,’” she explained. “I see it as being something multi-faceted, with different work groups or task forces coming together to work on different aspects and facets of the community, and they will be able to plan for their thing, whatever that thing may be.”

Johnson is hoping that the outcome will involve those various groups that result from CVP taking ownership of their cause or initiative.

“I think we have a good cross section of people involved in this, but you could take almost any group at all and find that they feel ownership in something that’s very near and dear to them,” Johnson said. “Whether it’s healthcare, education, recreation, health and fitness, natural resources, community services, young people, each of those areas would have their own action plan. We would want those people in those areas to walk away from this process not just saying that these are the things that they care about, but also that they are willing to make a commitment to work toward making them happen in this community. I think of it as a segmented action plan for the community.

“I don’t see the Vitality Project being officially done anytime soon,” she continued. “I see us getting buy-in from the community and then working from there on a well-rounded set of priorities and initiatives.”