At the Collinsville Economic Development Corporation (EDC) monthly meeting on Tuesday, June 24, urban planning company Civic Connection Group (CCG) presented their final report on a contract they started with the city earlier this year. And “grit” was a very important word in that report.
During a special EDC “Stakeholder Meeting” called in January, two CCG principals described their company’s mission to draft growth strategies for small towns, and asked Collinsville “stakeholders” to answer questions about what they want to happen in their hometown’s future. (I reviewed that meeting in my first Whitesboro News-Record column titled “Taxpayer Dollars on Display.”)
Stakeholders (trendy term!) attending that first event were mainly from city organizations, but an open invitation had been extended to all who might be interested. That turned out to be 15 people, in my experience a good number for a meeting of this type in Collinsville. Later meetings’ attendance on city growth got even better.
The January Stakeholder group spent almost three hours talking about priorities for Collinsville with CCG, and the two execs wrote it all down and filled in with their own experiences working with other client towns in the middle of growth.
A second Stakeholder Meeting (different from regular EDC monthly meetings) was held June 7 at the new Apologetics Coffee & Coin House, previously helped in startup by EDC funding! Coffee, tea and breakfast was served to 22 attendees while EDC Chair Joseph Cartwright and board members recapped topics from January and posed three new questions to participants, who were then asked to forward to five other residents for additional input.
All those Collinsville thoughts were summarized by EDC Project Manager Sheryl Reed, posted online, and pitched into the hat for CCG as content for their study. Everyone had a chance to speak their piece on it, so when you see the report—any EDC member will share it— you have to know Collinsville people and ideas were heard.
I’m giving my review (I’ve attended all the meetings mentioned) but I think everybody should read it for themselves.
First, the report is quite generic. Not a criticism, because Collinsville is not, on its face, very much different from any other Texas town of similar size. Working with small towns trying to manage growth is what CCG does, so our answers were probably plugged into a standard formula document they’ve developed. Other than town name, I would speculate our document doesn’t have 10 words different from the packet for Howe, Dorchester, or any of their other clients.
Not a criticism of CCG’s process, it’s just that this town is not all that special, although one of the initial assignments given to us was, “What unique thing does Collinsville want to be known for?” I don’t remember if anyone ever answered that.
I don’t know what CCG was paid for their work but, looking at the report, I’m wondering about the value. Because value will be if and when the report will be used in drafting a doable growth plan.
And that’s the main thing, the thing I didn’t fully grasp until I read the entire packet, all 20 pages, front and back, to the end. It’s not a plan, it’s a suggested outline of a plan that EDC will need to make. And while the outline may be helpful, keywords aside, it’s going to be difficult.
Somehow, any plan has to align opposing objectives: keeping Collinsville small (which so many say they want) while attracting amenities (for example, a grocery store) that by metrics it’s probably ineligible for. Spoiler alert: our grocery store will need to be a Dollar Store.
Looking through the pages, just like the first meeting handouts, last week’s packet was attractive. On slick paper, we got 20 colorful pages, two-sided, with copy and photo images that suggested Collinsville. A generic water tower with Collinsville lettering behind a generic downtown, and a different generic downtown in front of a generic water tower labeled Collinsville, and so on.
But, there was a photo of the actual 15 Collinsville-ites at the January meeting. It showed us seated at Community Center tables where we filled out answers to questions about visions and values and priorities.
Most of the rest was simple and colorful graphs. A bar chart showed we prefer in-person meetings to remote meetings and we like “hybrid” meetings the most. (I missed the definition of a hybrid meeting, but I don’t think we had one Tuesday.)
We learned that “Words coming to mind about Collinsville” produced a cute graphic with words upside down and sideways: home, community, small, family, quaint, warm, proactive, quiet and grit, among 15 others.
“Grit” was actually the third most-frequent term written by Collinsville about Collinsville. It was beneath “community” and “home” followed by “family” and “heart.” Who all said “grit?” And what did you mean by that? I really want to know.
And there’s “Tagline.” In the January meeting, it was stressed that Collinsville needs a “Tagline,” a phrase to go under the town name in all the online promotions trying to attract grocery stores and such. The final report listed five Tagline choices (I don’t remember voting for any of them).
A strong Tagline first: Rooted in Tradition, Growing Toward Tomorrow (not exactly easy to say), second: Small Town, Big Heart (copyright problem?), third: Big Dreams in a Small Texas Town (really?), fourth: Charming, Connected and Collinsville Proud (wordy?) and fifth: The Heart of Texas Hospitality (where are the motels and Airbnbs?).
But a generic boilerplate is good enough for the purpose, which is to help EDC create its own comprehensive plan with more specifics, names, titles and dollar signs.
And, we have more plans coming. No doubt there’ll be a plan-for-a-plan, or perhaps just a “plan” from the UTA organization contracted by City Council, which can then be compared side-by-side with the EDC’s. A good civic exercise will be to see how much in common the two plans have and how much cooperation can make good plans better.
Reaching any of the plan goals could take 10 years or more, but with everyone working together, we’ll see benchmarks happening along the way. Because Collinsville’s got grit.
Marilyn Stokes was a public school teacher in Fort Worth for 15 years and subsequently worked at KERA public television for four years. She retired after 15 years at Ford Motor Company, Southwest Region.