NEWS & EVENTS

Citizen involvement key to CVP success; kickoff Monday
By Mike Christopherson, Managing Editor
Crookston Daily Times

September 2004 - Three years after a few people sat around a table to talk about issues and challenges facing their little corners of the community, the Crookston Vitality Project is ready for its coming-out party.

Monday from 6 to 9 p.m. at Crookston High School, citizens are invited to come and hear what the initiative is all about, taste some of Crookston’s finest cuisine, and enjoy some local entertainment. Those who attend will be able to participate in various “break-out sessions” to discuss in a casual setting several topics important to Crookston’s vitality, and will also have an opportunity to sign up to participate in future discussion groups.

A little history
Back in 2001, that initial meeting took place because the Minnesota chapter of the League of Women Voters awarded grants to communities across the state to partake in an initiative known as “Toward Better Mental Health in the Community.” The initiative was supposed to last one year, and at the conclusion of that year representatives of the communities that received grants met to show how they’d spent the money. While many communities spent their grant on events similar to a “Mental Health Awareness Day,” Dan Wilson, leader of Crookston’s initiative, didn’t have a video or PowerPoint to show off. But what he did have was a mandate from the initial group that met monthly throughout that year to expand the initiative in Crookston to include facets of the community beyond mental health.

Meanwhile, city officials were looking to delve into a new millennium version of Project 2000, which was completed in the late 1980s and targeted several initiatives for the community to pursue by the year 2000. Soon, the Crookston Vitality Project was born, with Kari Thompson, executive director of the Crookston Development Authority, sharing leadership duties with other members of the CVP committee. In addition to mental health issues, the Vitality Project came to encompass issues covering economic development, education, natural resources, tourism, diversity, just to name a few.

A CVP retreat in November of 2002 brought together approximately 40 citizens who were involved in various efforts and initiatives to enhance Crookston’s future, some of which were highlighted in the April 2004 Crookston Daily Times Progress Edition.

Planning for Monday’s kickoff has been underway for several months, with the Crookston Development Authority providing financing, pending the outcome of a grant application to the Northwest Minnesota Foundation.

As the CVP promotion, awareness and education campaign got going full steam, the CVP committee hired Carrie Bang to serve as coordinator of the project until year’s end. In recent months, Bang has told the CVP story to numerous civic, community and employee groups and has catalogued a list of Crookston’s assets as well as the many challenges facing the community that she’s heard in her many discussions. Those items will drive much of the discussion at Monday’s kickoff.

In addition to hoping for a big turnout Monday, CVP committee members also hope to, at the kickoff’s conclusion, have many citizens signed up to continue discussions on specific issues in the future.