Livingston man seeks to build community dialogue

By DAVE RICHARDSON Chronicle Staff Writer

Everyone has ideas about how to make their community better. But getting people together to articulate those ideas and make concrete plans for the future can be challenging.

That’s why Jim Barrett, director of the Park County Environmental Council, is putting together a project aimed at doing just that, hopefully with the help of a hefty grant from the Case Foundation and a flood of online voters.

The foundation has invited groups and individuals around the nation to submit proposals spelling out how they would tackle social problems in positive ways that promote dialogue and empower people and the communities they live in.

Barrett’s project, titled “In Search of the Commons,” has already been awarded a little more than $10,000 from the foundation.

Now, it’s one of 20 top finalists in the running for another $25,000 grant, called “Make it Your Own,” to be decided by an online vote on the foundation’s Web site, www.casefoundation.com.

The Commons project is “about trying to find out within our community what the positive core values are that people share, what they appreciate about living here,” Barrett said this week. “And this will help lay the foundation for creating a collective vision for what we want Livingston to look like in the future.”

Barrett, 57, has spent months meeting with individuals and community groups to spark discussions on the issue, and gathering feedback. Getting out and hearing ideas first-hand from locals is key to the project’s success, he said.

“We all have these common values, but we want to discuss what they are, not assume we know what they are,” Barrett said. “We’ve had people tell us no one has ever bothered to ask them these kinds of questions before.”

Soon the preliminary results will be posted on an interactive, community Web site for people to review and continue to discuss, he said. That effort will be greatly aided if the project is one of four chosen by the foundation’s online vote.

Rich D’Amato, spokesman for the foundation, said voting for projects ends at 1 p.m. (Montana time) April 22, and the winners will be announced around May 1.

Direct community input is a refreshing n and often more honest and useful n way for these kinds of projects to make real headway than relying on think tanks and experts, D’Amato said.

“We wanted to leave aside the experts and institutions that we are so often asked to plug ourselves into, and to put citizens at the center, to tell us what matters to them, tell us their stories and tell others their stories,” D’Amato said.

The foundation was established in 1997 by AOL founder Steve Case and his wife, Jean.

Barrett said he’s hopeful his project will be among the winners.

“I’ve been trying to get everyone I know to go online and vote,” Barrett said.

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