Voices of the Valley (VoV) members, a citizen group formed in 2010 to facilitate community dialogue, met at Saratoga Town Hall Saturday to discuss the group’s past, present and future role in the Valley.
Significant projects came out of the first couple of years of VoV’s existence, including the Saratoga Community Garden, the Platte Valley Habitat Partnership, and the North Platte River restoration project.
In spite of those initiatives, VoV’s name is not behind its achievements.
“VoV is not in the room yet,” Jessica Clement, facilitator for the Platte Valley Mule Deer Initiative, said. “The larger world is not familiar with its claim to (these achievements) – that story needs to get out there.”
Clement was on hand to help the group redefine itself and outline a strategy for the coming months.
Members of the group felt some people had been turned off by perceptions that VoV itself was environmentalist, pro-wind, anti-wind or otherwise agenda-driven.
The group coalesced around an aim to provide a neutral forum for community discussion. As Valley resident Stan Brooks put it, they wanted to “Facilitate learning as the necessary means to determine what basis there may be for collaboration and achieving shared goals”.
VoV members at the meeting want to ensure people in the Valley take control of their destiny instead of remaining mute and passive to the designs of large energy companies or natural disasters like floods and drought.
“With the mill coming, gas, wind, coal-to-gas, transmission lines coming in, (the Platte Valley) will be rock-and-roll central,” Clement said.
Individuals at the meeting were not opposed to energy development, but wanted to find ways to ensure communities in the Valley have a seat at the table to help determine how development happens.
Clement said people in Sublette County had a wealth of experience dealing with energy development on the Pinedale anticline, as did communities impacted by the Bakken play in North Dakota.
“Get them over here (to speak to this community),” Clement said.
At this month’s meeting, VoV will review and finalize its newly-revised mission statement and use it to begin planning ways to involve the public on the “next” energy developments and possible scenarios to minimize the effects of drought.
Anyone interested in attending a VoV meeting can call the group’s coordinator, KayCee Alameda, at 307-710-8646
Reader Comments(0)