Six key areas emerged when 4,500 Tri-Citians shared

their priorities for the region’s future.

The top focus areas — education, prosperity, inclusion,

agriculture, thriving life and energy — were unveiled last month after nearly a

year of working to better understand what citizens want to see develop in

Tri-Cities over the next decade.

Dubbed MyTri2030, the visioning project’s survey results

were unveiled Feb. 27 during a Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon

at the Pasco Red Lion Hotel and Convention Center.

Paula Linnen, chair of the Regional Affairs Committee,

said the MyTri2030 team noticed two central themes: immense pride in the

region’s achievements over the past decade and a noticeable fever from

community members and leaders to define new goals and opportunities for

regional collaboration.

“With a better understanding of our region’s strengths,

challenges and desires, the MyTri2030 team is proud to present a set of six

opportunity areas that will serve as a framework for the next phase of our

journey. It’s a journey we will continue to inform and implement together,”

Linnen said.

Here’s a closer look at the six big opportunity areas:

• Education: improving continuity between primary,

secondary and higher education, providing more resources for students and

encouraging them and their families to want to stay in the community.

• Prosperity: cultivating and promoting career

opportunities to link employer needs with talent already within the community,

including youths newly entering the workforce.

• Inclusion: drawing on the Tri-Cities’ uniquely diverse

population to unify the community via common values such as these six

opportunity areas to open the door to building more authentic connections

between community members.

• Agriculture: continuing to integrate the abundant

agricultural resources that first established the region into the economic and

social fabric of the region’s future and empower the growers who cultivate

them.

• Thriving life: overall enhancing the quality of life

of citizens, which will encourage them to want to remain a part of the Tri-City

community and continue to contribute to it and help it grow.

• Energy: capitalizing on the plethora of alternative

energy sources available in the region and drawing on the flourishing

technologic, scientific and higher education research communities to develop

those sources to build a firm foundation for an evolving energy future.

These opportunity areas were finalized after more than

100 hours of research, which included the review of successful community

visioning exercises conducted in similar communities across the country, as

well as past regional development reports, strategic plans and global and

national trends.

More than 4,500 responses were reviewed from the

bilingual, online survey launched last March. They were individually reviewed,

analyzed and discussed.

Following the survey period, one-on-one interviews were

conducted with about 30 community leaders by NewEdge Consulting, a

Richland-based firm that has assisted in the project, as it has with Fortune

500 companies across the nation who have reinvented themselves by identifying

specific opportunity areas to target for advancement.

After that, organizers convened a two-day “big vision

workshop” with more than 40 community stakeholders to specifically identify and

hone the opportunity list.

One big theme that seemed to underlie the six areas was

the desire to keep Tri-City youths in the community and attract more young

people and families to the area by improving and fine-tuning existing amenities

and infrastructure. As many of the community experts who spoke at the event

noted, if people can’t find what they need and want in their current community,

they will look for it elsewhere and eventually move on.

Linnen said about a quarter of the survey respondents

were youths, which emphasized the necessity of making this concern a

consideration in all action plans.

Rather than be intimidated by the task before them, the

Regional Affairs Committee has embraced the challenge of helping set in motion

what will shape Tri-Cities’ next 10 years and beyond.

“I love a big, hairy audacious goal,” Linnen said. “I

love something that is bold and compelling, that creates a little bit of

tension, a little bit of angst. Something that is big. Something that is

transformational. I think that it has motivated people around the world.”

Mike Schwenk, former chair of the Three Rivers Community

Roundtable, added that there are a lot of things that have occurred in our

community because we chose for them to occur.

Seeming to reinforce the words of these community

leaders, the event included a performance by Tri-City Youth Choir’s Forte!

group. They sang Pink’s “A Million Dreams,” from “The Greatest Showman” movie.

The

next step for MyTri2030?

“The

next phase is getting to a greater level of specificity,” Linnen said.

To

get there, the MyTri2030 project has reopened its survey, this time seeking

help from Tri-Citians to identify local people, organizations and projects

currently underway that fall under the six key opportunity areas.

“It

is critical that we get the right people in the room to decide, then prioritize

specific initiatives for the future,” said Stephanie Swanberg, government and

regional affairs director for the Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The

online survey can be completed at mytri2030.com/survey and will be open for

about a month and a half.

Additionally,

those who couldn’t make it to the luncheon may attend one of three MyTri2030

public information sessions in March.

Here’s

the schedule:

•

March 16: 11 a.m. to noon at Mid-Columbia Libraries’ Pasco branch.

•

March 21: 7 to 8 p.m. at Mid-Columbia Libraries’ Keewaydin branch.

•

March 28: 7 to 8 p.m. at the Richland Public Library.

By

the end of 2019, the Regional Affairs Committee aims to have a final vision

plan fully outlined and ready to be share with the public.

MyTri2030 Regional Vision Project: mytri2030.com; Facebook.