After just about exactly four months of traveling all over the Lakes to Land region to speak with every community member who’d agree to join us, the Visioning portion of the initiative has come to a close. Over the next week, our wrap-up here includes the results from the Bear Lake Village, Bear Lake Township, and Pleasanton Township makeup session that was held on August 16 (that’s what’s below), the results from the Manistee Township session that was held on August 22, and hopefully even a compiled document or two bringing together the results from all TEN COMMUNITIES which held a session.

Now – Bear Lake, Bear Lake, and Pleasanton!

The August 16 session was the first since the addition of the Village of Bear Lake to the Initiative. Six Village residents attended, along with 8 Pleasanton residents and 22 from Bear Lake Township for at total of 36 citizens. If you have been reading the results as they’ve been posted, this set may be a bit of a departure, which we’ll try to explain as clearly as possible…

• The Bear Lake Township results are the most typical – each table’s responses are combined and tallied, followed by a collective prioritization of actions to be accomplished.
• Results from the Village of Bear Lake are presented the same way with the exception of the collective prioritization – since there was only one table to submit priorities, there was no “collective” to reorder them!
• Responses from residents of Pleasanton Township were folded with the larger set of results gathered from the first Visioning Session in Pleasanton Township, held way back in June. This was done in order to keep each community’s responses together, as we did with Arcadia, Blaine, and Crystal Lake from the previous makeup session. The new Pleasanton Township responses are denoted as “Table M.”

Each community’s results are posted on their individual pages, and that’s also a good place to keep an eye out for milestones and communication opportunities as we move into the work of writing individual master plans. For example, a work session for Crystal Lake Township’s planning commission is coming right up on August 29 – you’re invited to see it in action!