Tony Filipovitch, an urban studies professor at Minnesota State University, called the merger issue an “elephant in the middle of this region’s table” in a Free Press column on Feb. 11.

The key, he said, in resolving this issue and others is to convince everyone that they’ve been heard and that the solutions are agreeable to everyone.

Put another way, it’s about “trying to find what is common that underlies what appear to be our differences,” Filipovitch says. “Some circles you can’t square, but when it comes to that I think you find a way to keep the circle and the square, but most of the time it turns into a polygon.”

So far

Most participants in the first three Envision 2020 have been sincerely participating in the process, said Mary Lou Kudela, who was on the committee that drafted the vision statement. She says there’s some skepticism, though, a sense of “who’s going to pay for it” and “it’s nice for them, but what about me.”

As for that vision statement, Kudela said there was a “fuzzy, but a general sense of where the community should be.” The vision statement was written with the help of about 700 Post-it notes after the first meeting.

Okubo says communities tend to have less trouble at this stage of the process, though that wasn’t the case in Sioux Falls, where participants in Sioux Fall Tomorrow II reported that they never found a consensus on a vision statement.

The stumbling block there was a definition of Sioux Falls: Was it just the city or did it include outlying towns?

But that city, which was undergoing its second planning process with Okubo, said there were very few problems, the vision issue notwithstanding.

“There was very little disagreement when it came to final consensus,” said Candy Hanson, who was on the steering committee for the Sioux Falls effort.

Envision’s future

Divided into three parts, Envision 2020 is about initiation, planning and implementation. The process is now moving into its second stage, when five or six groups will meet, each with a “key performance area.”

It’s not yet clear what the areas will be, though several have emerged as having the most traction among attendees.

They include downtown revitalization, development of an arts center, transportation, government collaboration, economic development, retaining youth and involving seniors.

The project’s progress can be tracked at www.envision-2020.com, where updates are posted, along with presentations and a calendar of events.