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Home > Archive > Jul 19, 2007

The Vision Continues
By Cami Cox
Staff Writer
For 18 months, through Vision Dixie, discussions have taken place and data has been gathered from Washington County residents regarding growth and a future outlook for the county. At the St. George Holiday Inn, Assistant Executive Director and Planning Director for Envision Utah Ted Knowlton presented the findings of Vision Dixie before members of the St. George Chamber of Commerce, July 11.
“In a nutshell,” Knowlton said, “Vision Dixie is a process being led by the Washington County Commission that is exploring what actions we can take as a group of cities and the private sector now to ensure that Washington County is a great place to live over the very long term.”
In 2006, the process known as Vision Dixie was launched locally in response to the issue of growth and future planning in Washington County. An offshoot of Envision Utah, Vision Dixie was intended as a means of creating “a long-term vision that will ensure a high quality of life in Washington County for years to come,” according to the Vision Dixie Web site, www.visiondixie.org.
“Around 3,000 have participated in Vision Dixie,” Knowlton said, “and it's really a once-in-a-generation type of process. These things are very rare, and it's a rare moment in time for all of the cities in the county to get together and say, 'Let's take the pulse of our population and find out what planning ideas resonate with them.'”
Throughout the Vision Dixie process, a series of public dialogue meetings have taken place, during which citizens have been able to create maps depicting preferred future growth and development scenarios for the county and then, in a second round of meetings, vote on aspects of the condensed scenarios they liked best; 515 residents attended the nine “Dixie Dialogue” meetings. Data was also gathered through online polls, completed by 834 Washington County residents, and a Dan Jones poll gathered the opinions of 400 individuals.
Questions regarding matters such as housing and zoning, land conservation, public land usage and public transportation were posed to participants, as well as questions regarding the projected impacts of the different scenarios, such as traffic, air quality and water demand. The results of the data gathered were weighted based on age and length of residence in Washington County for those responding, Knowlton said.
Among impacts rated most important by citizens, maintaining water and air quality in Washington County ranked first; water conservation came in second. Other issues considered important by county residents, according to the data, were preservation of scenic beauty, reuse of underutilized buildings and land, alleviation of traffic congestion and enhancement of recreational opportunities and open space.
Results were scattered regarding housing, but one consistently popular idea among those polled was the creation of mixed-use centers, which are residential neighborhoods planned close to shopping and commerce to encourage foot traffic.
“Mixed-use is very popular in Washington County. Frankly, it's very popular everywhere,” Knowlton said. “People basically, universally like the idea of a walkable community.”
Findings regarding growth also indicated strong support for focusing inward and growing contiguously within communities, rather than sprawling outward. Increasing methods of public transportation was also favored.
“Basically, unorderly development and sprawling across the countryside has been pretty soundly rejected in the Vision Dixie process,” Knowlton said. “On average, there was strong support from the Vision Dixie process to say, 'Yeah, we're willing to step up and think about how we grow in order to support public transportation.’”
Regarding public lands development, the majority of opinion favored developing some public land, but only adjacent to the edge of existing development. No development of public lands at all was also highly favored.
“One of the messages there is people are more interested in exploring public land converging if it means that it helps to protect some of the lands that they care about that are in private ownership,” Knowlton said. “Generally, what you see is that people like the idea, even in a county where we have a lot of public lands, of doing what can be done to maintain open space or enhance it.”
Lin Alder, executive director of Citizens for Dixie's Future and a steering committee member for Vision Dixie, has been closely involved with the Vision Dixie process from its outset. He said he was surprised to see the change in public view regarding growth in Southern Utah.
“The people of Washington County have changed their attitude about growth,” he said. “We are no longer a 'growth at any cost' community. We are now a 'grow smarter' community.”
“I'm very supportive of our leaders for supporting Vision Dixie as they have,” he said. “I look forward to now making Vision Dixie real in our local community.”
Now that the gathering of public opinion regarding the Washington County growth scenarios has concluded, it's up to the Vision Dixie steering committee to further analyze and interpret the findings and create a final scenario, reflective of what Washington County citizens want concerning growth and the county's future, Knowlton said.
“The steering committee needs to decide what the key supported strategies are that came out of this process – that's going to happen in the very near future,” he said.
A mayors’ summit has been planned for late July, where local community leaders will gather to discuss the findings of Vision Dixie and decide how to use the results in future city planning.
“In 2008, the big question is how and if the vision will be carried forward,” Knowlton said. “That's a question that needs to be answered by lots of people.”
Vision Dixie results in their entirety are available on the Vision Dixie Web site, www.visiondixie.org, as is additional information about Vision Dixie.

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