Metro Pulse/Insights/9C1V

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by Joe Sullivan

This month marks the fourth anniversary of the launch of Nine Counties. One Vision. So the question arises: What have we got to show for the most extensive public goal-setting process this area has ever seen?

The answer is that while progress has been made toward achieving some goals, the input up to this point far exceeds the output.

More than 3,600 residents participated in goal-setting during the first half of 2000. Their myriad ideas were distilled by volunteers into 28 action plans. And to oversee the implementation of each action plan a task force was appointed, supported by Nine Counties. One Vision's full-time staff of three. As set forth in a summation on the organization's website:

"Nine Counties. One Vision has given the region (Anderson, Blount, Grainger, Jefferson, Knox, Loudon, Roane, Sevier, and Union Counties) a clear agenda for its future. This agenda—reached through a meticulously designed participatory process where residents suggested ideas, developed goals, and set priorities—spells out what is important for the future of this region. It provides a snapshot of needs and desires that must be addressed expeditiously. Two characteristics stand out.

"First, the Nine Counties. One Vision agenda is holistic. It addresses issues that go beyond the four categories that have received the most support: education, environment, transportation, and downtowns. It includes goals and strategies for growth management and rural preservation, culture and arts, community places, human relations and quality of life, to list a few.

"Second, the Nine Counties. One Vision agenda is clearly regional in scope. Its goals and strategies cross professional, institutional and jurisdictional lines. Its regional emphasis ranges from creating a regional education foundation, to developing a regional trail and greenway system; from developing a regional light rail system, to firmly establishing downtown Knoxville as the region's hub; from protecting the region's natural areas, to establishing a regionwide annual arts event that focuses on the region's rich heritage; from protecting the welfare of animals, to recruiting businesses through a regionally coordinated effort."

Just getting hundreds of people engaged on an ongoing basis by serving on the task forces that are charged with making good on such a diverse agenda represents a meaningful accomplishment in its own right. And even if tangible results are lacking, their pursuit of lofty goals is laudable. Moreover, purely framing them in public consciousness, as the Nine Counties. One Vision process has served to do, has no doubt contributed to their fulfillment in some longer run.

But expeditious is hardly the word to characterize accomplishments to date. At least, that's the conclusion I would draw from the following look at the four categories singled out for having received the most support in the summation above. Consider:

* Education—Short of establishing a regional education foundation, a Public School Forum of East Tennessee has been formed with Gordon Fee, retired president of Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, as its chairman. According to Chrisi Haretos, who is providing staff support from her post at the Cornerstone Foundation, the forum is "in the process of developing its first initiative." Most likely, she says, it will take the form of "brokering relationships between principals of schools that are struggling with principals of successful schools who can serve as mentors."

* Environment—An action plan called for the creation and funding, with a full-time staff of three, of a regional coordinating board that would "identify values and strategies for environmental preservation and sustainable development" and "develop mechanisms for their implementation and monitoring." But this ambitious undertaking has been pigeonholed.

* Transportation—Per its action plan, the transportation task force's first task is the formation of a Regional Transportation Authority. The task force's chairman, City Councilman Joe Hultquist, is optimistic about getting enabling legislation needed from the state legislature, patterned after the Nashville area's RTA. He's also been beating a path to Washington in a quest for a $500,000 federal grant for start-up funds. While rail transportation is the long-term goal, Hultquist says the RTA is more likely to start with bus service. Several possible routes are being discussed, but their feasibility has yet to be determined.

* Downtown—Nine Counties. One Vision's boldest initiative has been the comprehensive plan for downtown development it has fostered. Portland-based consultant Crandall Arambula, with public input at several forums, has produced a sweeping plan that encompasses every facet of development in every block of the downtown area. Locations for offices, residential, and retail growth are intertwined with plans for streetscapes, public transit and parking to support it—all within a framework of exemplary urban design standards.

Yet the totality of what's envisioned seems overwhelming in a city that's strapped for resources to make good on much more limited redevelopment plans that have already been set in motion. Indeed, if Crandall Arambula's involvement had just been a onetime planning exercise, there's a good chance its grand design would end up gathering dust or at best serving as a conceptual frame of reference for the distant future.

But the terms of the firm's engagement charge it with producing implementation strategies for "catalyst" projects. So Crandall Arambula will be returning to Knoxville next month fortified with data compiled by yet another consultant, Economic Research Associates, assessing downtown's retail potential. The focus will be on jumpstarting development along a four-block stretch of Gay Street that the consultant's have identified as downtown's primary shopping district.

Nine Counties. One Vision's executive director, Lynne Fugate, points to steps taken to foster more regional collaboration or orientation in other spheres as well. Among them:

* Formation of an East Tennessee Regional Arts and Cultural Coalition with representatives from 18 counties. But there are no plans as yet for a region-wide arts event that's been a major goal.

* Creation of the Race Relations Center of East Tennessee that represents an extension of the mission of what had been Knoxville-focused Project Change. The center pulls together interracial groups for facilitated discussions aimed at dispelling prejudices.

Beyond the tangible, Fugate believes that Nine Counties. One Vision has made its mark intangibly as well. "I believe we've grown into thinking of ourselves more as a region. There's been a mind-shift toward more acceptance that regional cooperation is good for us," Fugate claims.