For the week of November 4 thru November 10, 1998  

WwRAP survey results headed for mailboxes


By ALYSON WILSON
Express Staff Writer

Residents would be wrong to expect the results from questionnaires the Big and Little Wood River Action Plan group collected last winter will be the last they hear from that group.

Analyses of the 1,300 Community Survey questionnaires will land at every local mailing address sometime next week, WwRAP coordinator Theresa Comber said last Wednesday at a meeting.

The survey polled locals on how they want the valley to look in the future, and what they like, value and despise about its present.

The survey results summary will go to post office box holders—a much longer analysis one will be available in local libraries. It identifies major issues respondents said the valley faces as well as community assets and weaknesses.

Growth management, the environment and open space, community character, transportation and the economy ranked as the top-five matters needing attention, according the survey.

North- and south-valley presentations of the WwRAP survey are scheduled to explain the results to interested residents. On Nov. 17, there will be a meeting at 7 p.m. at the old county courthouse in Hailey. The next day, there will be a meeting at Ketchum City Hall, also at 7 p.m.

However, sending off these results by no means marks the end of WwRAP’s project, Comber said.

One thing those attending these meetings will learn is that the questionnaire is only one of the first steps toward gathering information for a larger plan to create land-use policy for the valley.

Following the presentations, WwRAP will assemble some 70 "stakeholders"—a group intended to represent a cross-section of Blaine County residents—to talk about which land-planning goals should be implemented and how they should be implemented, Comber said.

A list of local stakeholders includes a range of representatives from various professional fields, many types of interest groups and political municipalities.

According to Blaine County Commissioner Len Harlig, who has been involved in WwRAP’s survey project, the stakeholders meetings will try to extend local long-range planning goals.

"We are advancing what we already have," Harlig said of WwRAP’s intended impact on community planning.

 

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