Six hundred people came to the Muncie Action Plan meetings this week to express their ideas for how to improve the Muncie community, but George Branam still isn't satisfied.
"I won't be satisfied until we get stuff done," he said. "My heart is with the people who think of themselves as an ordinary citizen. It's the duty of the citizens to pick up the torch."
Branam is the president of East Central Indiana Pathologists and co-chair of the steering committee. He said he's happy with the turnout for the meetings. On Tuesday there was standing room only at the meeting at Ball Memorial Hospital, he said.
Suzanne Nienaber, senior planner with ACP Visioning + Planning, a consultant firm working with the MAP project, said it's a community based action plan and community members will be involved at virtually every step of the way.
"We'll have a lot of synthesizing between now and January, February," she said.
The idea of creating a community action plan came from a collaborative effort between the mayor, community development, Ivy Tech and other community partners. The project will draw funding in part from a $2,000 fund from the United States Department of Housing and Development and a $50,000 grant from the Ball Brothers Foundation.
Muncie mayor Sharon McShurley said in a Muncie Star press release that the city will be holding itself back if it doesn't define goals for its limited resources.
Community members were given an overview of the project at the beginning of each meeting and then they broke into small groups of about a dozen people to discuss ways to improve the community. They were also asked to identify strong and weak areas of the city that have potential for improvement.
Branam said he recognized uniformity in identifying strong places, but there were different responses for identifying weak areas. Ball State University, he said, was named as a strong place because of "the wonderful stuff it brings to Muncie," and Minnetrista was named for its rich history.
Cheri Ellefson, communications specialist for the Ball State Alumni Association, said she would like to see more community services that benefit young professionals.
At Thursday night's meeting she said she considers the public transportation an asset to the city since she rides the MITS bus to and from work everyday.
"I'm going to make sure my age group [age 25-35] is well represented and Ball State is well represented," she said.
Juniors Hilarie Thomas and Rachel Baker came to Thursday's meeting as part of an immersive program for education.
Baker said the goal of their project is to find ways to help the community and they came to hear what people in the community had to say.
"I'd like to see more young people get involved," Thomas said.
A common theme from the meetings was the need for collaboration between Ball State and the "Muncie community."
Junior Heather Ervin, a social work major, came to the meeting to fulfill an assignment to attend a board or government meeting.
"I feel bad for people that have lived here so long," she said. "I don't want to see the university to take over the community. I want it to be an addition, not take over Muncie."
Community members voiced a variety of improvement goals, but there was some consistency: utilizing parks and downtown to their fullest potential, creating more employment opportunities while maintaining jobs in the community, creating more sidewalks, improving the school system and uniting the town under a common theme or goal. Another major concern was outreach for neighborhoods in Muncie's southside.
ACP will organize the information gathered from the planning meetings into a matrix so the consulting firm and the steering committee can visualize the data. There will be more community meetings in the coming months which will focus the ideas into more specific goals, said Jamie Green, an ACP consultant working on the MAP project.
Muncie Action Plan meetings-
- Who- Muncie citizens
- What- Meetings to discuss improvements in the Muncie community
- Why- To benefit Muncie citizens and to help government officials define specific city goals
- How- Through five planning meetings held across the community Dec. 1 to 3
Numbers-
- 600 people came to the meetings
- 30 members on the steering committee
- $125,000 contract with ACP Visioning + Planning
- $50,000 grant from the Ball Brothers for the project
- $2,000 from the HUD fund
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