Engage Winona shares results of Your Ideas, Winona's Future Engagement Phase 1
This fall, Engage Winona led the first phase of engagement for the City of Winona’s Comprehensive Plan Update, inviting residents to share their dreams and ideas for Winona’s future. The Comprehensive Plan Update will create specific, achievable goals that the city and community can work toward in a wide variety of topic areas, from land use to economic development to recreation and arts.
Engagement Phase 1, from October 2021 to January 2022, was designed to hear from a broad, representative cross-section of Winona. In this phase, we heard from over 2,000 community members using a variety of tools. We hosted community conversations, led targeted outreach to stakeholders and underserved populations, launched online survey tools, and hosted a pop-up booth at community gatherings. Find out what we heard.
In Phase 1, Engage Winona asked folks to share their values, issues, and dreams for Winona's future. Over the course of this engagement phase, we:
Connected with more than 2,000 people and collected more than 5,700 unique comments
Hosted 7 public community conversation events at a variety of locations across Winona, including in-person and virtual offerings
Hosted a pop-up booth with activities at 7 different community events
Held more than 55 small-group and individual conversations with key stakeholders including business, nonprofit, education, and healthcare leaders; property owners and developers; faith leaders and more
Provided a survey that collected more than 800 responses, with offerings both online and in print at community locations
Provided an online map where people left comments on physical locations that stand out or need to be worked on
Engaged marginalized and underserved voices through focused outreach to communities, including youth and older adults; refugees, immigrants, and people of color; people experiencing poverty and housing insecurity; people in addiction recovery, and more
Directly engaged the business community through multiple events and partnerships, with over 100 business leaders represented in survey and conversation participation
Reports and raw data are available at engagewinona.org, and we can provide printed copies on request. You can spend some time with the big picture in the summary report, dive deep into themes and values in the full report, and dream big with nearly 400 comments in the appendix. We’ve also included a spreadsheet with the full set of open-ended responses from all questions and engagement methods.
As the project continues, we are excited to build on this strong foundation. Engage Winona is leading public engagement on this project throughout 2022. We’re hosting a variety of activities to meet folks where they are and make sure we’re hearing from as many community members as possible. Engagement activities in the coming months will include listening sessions, pop-up engagement at community events, online surveys and activities, and more!