Heart & Soul

Community Planning
Conference Call Notes

Wednesday, December 15, 2010, 4-5pm EST

We used a live version of this document to collaboratively add questions, collect

thoughts, transcribe important talking points, before, during and after the Heart & Soul
Community Planning conference call. You can access this document via this link:
http://bit.ly/eOXyGU    

Attending
Many thanks to the nearly 50 people who were listening in and participating on the call.
Your insight and feedback was invaluable.

Moderating
• Bonnie Shaw, Partner, BYO Consulting, LLC

Speaking
• Betsy Rosenbluth, Northeast Director of Projects, Orton Family Foundation
• Jane Lafleur, Executive Director of Friends of Midcoast Maine and
Damariscotta’s Heart & Soul Project Coordinator
o e-mail: info@friendsmidcoast.org; tel: 207 237-1077
 
Agenda
• 15mins – Introduction to Heart & Soul Community Planning, call protocol, etc.
• 35mins – Open for questions/discussion
• 10mins – How can CommunityMatters continue to support this conversation?

Questions

• How do you see applying this kind of approach to different communities

around the country?

• Are there key results that Heart & Soul program want to see? What are the
outcomes of H&S planning?

• How does a community articulate its heart and soul?

• What are some specific examples of how the values of a community can
influence the physical place?

www.communitymatters.org Heart & Soul Community Planning Conference Call Notes 12/15/10
 o Architecture and streetscape design are some of the easiest places to
find examples. If a community values its historic roots, that can be
implemented through policies protecting historic buildings or codes that
require building design to fit in with the surrounding aesthetics. If a
community values something like friendliness and small-town feel, that
can be influenced by things like moving storefronts up close to sidewalks
and placing parking lots behind them, development codes that reduce lot
sizes and encourage front porches, etc. - all choices that facilitate
community interaction.

• How do you gain acceptance/engagement in a H and S approach if there

are large portions of the community who perceive it as antithetical to their
land rights values?

• How do you plan with a core values approach?

• Have you identified any community sizes (smallest/largest) where this

approach works well? (Arthur/Craigslist Foundation)
o Jane: FMM works with towns up to the 10,000 +/- population range, but
the tools we use work with any size town. “It’s bottom-up planning.” Sticky
notes are a great example of a tool that can be used anywhere.
Damariscotta could not have accomplished what it did without a very
active committee.
 Speaking of sticky notes - check out the CEOs for Cities project:
Give A Minute: http://giveaminute.info/ - great way of sourcing
community input on issues.
o Betsy: At the neighborhood level in cities, these tools and this
methodology would work well. It’s a broad range of values that are
worked on, so it can be applied in most places. We find that smallest
communities (under 2,000 pop.) with limited staff have a hard time
maintaining projects like this. Our Golden and Biddeford projects are
closer to 20,000. Damariscotta has done well through regional
partnerships. We’re very interested in whether there is an ideal size or
community readiness factor, but there is a minimum capacity.

• Will there be a change of direction for next round of H&S grants? If so,
why? And how will it build on what you’ve learned in this round?
o Betsy: We are definitely tweaking the program based on what we have
learned and the feedback from our partner communities. The next RFP
will call for a similar 2 year process but provide clearer steps along the
way, a sample timeline and budget, required trainings to build local
capacity. We will be offering more resources on Heart&Soul Community
Planning through our website and some possible workshops or webinars.
The application process itself will require stronger partnership building
and communications and public outreach planning.

• When will RFP come out from Orton for next round of H&S grants?
o Around April 2011 and due back around August. Stay in touch through
our website for details this winter

www.communitymatters.org Heart & Soul Community Planning Conference Call Notes 12/15/10
 • Are there other communities out there (on the call today or not) doing this
sort of work under a different name? (Rebecca/Orton)
o Jane: sees this as community building - it could happen around any
issue, like farms to schools or other issues. It’s really just about getting
people involved and participating.
o Betsy: We’ve looked for best practices from community development and
land use planning, but we’ve also looked at some very different fields like
storytelling, arts. We’re trying to just adapt and re-adapt.
o Irvington : Sustainability project working with local leaders, training
community groups and civic leaders to address sustainability issues from
food to water, etc.
o Jan Blaire: Holding roundtable disucssions and inviting neighboring
communities to participate. Started as a small project and now expanding
to include people from far away.
o Lane McLelland: They are in partnership with 2-3 groups already doing
community histories with high school students and elders. They are trying
to work with a deliberative democracy program to combine, so they’re
watching this process.

• The next round of Orton H&S RFP projects will include a more significant
youth engagement component. Are there people on the call who have
experience in that area?
o Tony DeLucia: Found that working with college and graduate students in
public health and urban planning helps them really go beyond classes
and allow them to see how this will play out in the future. They see a
great future around active transportation arena, greenways and trails.
o Jane: Damariscotta has had a great experience in this area. In working
with high school students they developed a list of needs and priorities,
including finding that students want a place to be downtown where they
are welcomed to hang out with a youth friendly menu. A local restuarant
jumped this opportunity.
o Betsy: Biddeford and UNE have been part of the Downtown planning in
Biddeford. The students were trained to facilitate some of the community
conversation groups and to collect community stories. UNE is looking to
contribute to downtown vitality with greater University programming in the
historic theater and gallery space.

• Huge amount of work - cost and what resource help available to towns? -
and partnerships?
o Betsy: Important to see what stake local organizations have in projects.
When projects are collaborative, it invites people to participate and “co-
create.” Partners have stayed at the table because they have a stake in
the outcome. The Foundation also offers training and funding for this
process through our RFP, which will be issued late spring 2011. The
Foundation is also drafting a Handbook which will allow people to pick
and choose pieces that would work best for them.
o Jane: Damariscotta did a very extensive project with the Foundation, but
that level may not be necessary for every town. The important thing is just
to get people involved. “The people know best and they know what they
want for their community.”

www.communitymatters.org Heart & Soul Community Planning Conference Call Notes 12/15/10
 • What action do you want community members to take? How do you refresh
the resilience of the community?
o Betsy: Important to let people enter and leave projects as their interest
dictates. Some people will be in it for the long haul and have more
capacity to help while others might want to work on a single project. Key
question is whether there is a core that can fill in when there is turnover in
volunteers. We’re looking at ways to keep people informed, online
communication vehicles like i-neighbors.org, school newsletters and an
array of tools, along with an open opportunity for people to join at any
point. “If you implement as you go, people can see that all the talk really
does lead to action.”
o Jane: Damariscotta and all towns need to celebrate more. It always feels
like one is in the thick of the project but we should pause to celebrate all
the accomplishments. “We need every single person who has something
to give to the process.” and celebration often helps keep people involved.

• Don’t legitimate comments become cheapened because they are combined

with the fringe or extreme comments in an open/social networking
environment?
o We have not found to be the case. We have found that extreme or fringe
comments are sometimes a silent majority that is heard only at the last
minute so it is better to know these early. The people need to know all
the comments and we find ways to test whether there is support for a
comment such as through dot-voting or key pad polling.

• Is there are a list of other organizations offering grants for this sort of
community building work? (Paul Fixx, Hardwick, VT pfixx@pfixx.net)
o Betsy: We don’t have a list but have had great interest from many
Community Foundations.

• Listening to Betsy & Jane I am wondering how involved Orton is in the

management of the grant’s scope of work.
o In Damariscotta’s case, we worked closely with the foundation at the
beginning to identify needs, ideas, etc and they offered a great array of
assistance. We had weekly calls just to stay connected.

• Does it work that when you apply for a grant you have to know that Orton
directly participates in management for success … or does Orton provide
TA upon request, etc.?
o Betsy: As an operating Foundation we function as active advisors in all
the projects. We also provide yearly training around key steps and issues
(like facilitation, stoytelling, communication, etc), and we often provide TA
in unique situations, such as the integration of CViz Visualization tools
and the Design Charrette in Damariscotta.

• What tools were you able to use to bring together with conscious intention
people who didn’t agree with each other for the purpose of bridging
“divides”?
o In Damariscotta’s case we got people out to meeting or we went to them
and it was the committee’s job to make sure a range of opinions was part
of the mix.

www.communitymatters.org Heart & Soul Community Planning Conference Call Notes 12/15/10
 o Betsy: Most of the “Community Conversations” were based on bridging
these various viewpoints - bringing conversations to the neighborhood
level, hosting in familiar gathering places, sometimes using story circles
or interviewing. The neighborhood and individual conversations then
culminated in larger community forums where people could see their
opinions feeder into a larger effort. I think all projects found individual
phone calls the most effective for a diverse turn out, so the composition of
your citizen advisory committee is key.

• I joined the call late, but it seems that the sort of thing being discussed is
very similar to what we’ve been discussing in our Hardwick, VT area
transition town planning. Do you have any experience with how the H&S
projects could fit in with reaching the sort of goals identified in transition
town planning? (Paul Fixx, Hardwick, VT pfixx@pfixx.net)
o Betsy: I think these processes are very complementary with the
community articulating what’s most important and catalyzing both
partnerships and individual action to make it happen
 
 
Resources: Projects, additional reading, great examples, links that you recommend...

• Start with this blog post: Communities nationwide are recognizing that
planning processes need to change. It’s no longer enough for a few people to
create a plan that sits on a shelf and gathers dust. If we want to live in unique
places full of local character and spirit, places with strong economies and vibrant
streets, places where we know our neighbors and have a say in governance,
then we need a better system. Heart & Soul Community Planning is one way
forward.
o http://communitymatters.posterous.com/bringing-heart-soul-community-
planning-to-you

• The Damariscotta Heart & Soul final report is available at

http://www.friendsmidcoast.org/towns/documents/DamariscottaHeartandSoul.pdf

• Read about more of the Orton Family Foundation’s Heart & Soul Community
Planning Projects at http://www.orton.org/projects/current

• Read about the Heart & Soul Planning Initiative at the Foundation:
http://www.orton.org/sites/default/files/resource/919/H&S%20Approach%20White
%20Paper%202%2012%2009%20Final.pdf

• Check out the Planning Tools Exchange database

(http://www.planningtoolsexchange.org) for lots of great tools, project examples,
resources and organizations related to Heart & Soul Community Planning. And
please feel free to add your own!
 
 
Notes/Concepts from Call
 
Betsy Rosenbluth:

www.communitymatters.org Heart & Soul Community Planning Conference Call Notes 12/15/10
 • Heart and soul community planning is wider and deeper than traditional planning
• begin with connections with community - why you live here, why you stay here,
whats important - helps to get to the heart of whats important to the community.
• storytelling - using local language that’s familiar, using multimedia approaches to
share stories in different ways - this should be a fun way to express community
pride.
• social aspects getting elevated. the process of telling and sharing stories builds
connections across groups
• tools allow us a wider distribution of process
 
Jane Lafleur:
• Damariscotta, ME: first step was storytelling and listening to people.
• They then started to pull out themes and values that resulted in a values
statement, which they validated with citizens (values included working locally,
living locally, a high level of community involvement, etc.)
• They’ve used a wide range of methods: Neighbor to Neighbor Chats, community
potluck dinners, etc. Many methods to get feedback as well, including newspaper
and paper survey, interviews with high school students, 4-day planning charrette.
• So many groups should/can be involved in planning, from students to
snowmobile club....
• Damariscotta now looking at Form-based codes, with a big series of very
interactive workshops, now that they are starting to implement their planning  

Lyman Orton:
• This is indeed a bottom-up process, but elected officials have to be highly
involved and have buy-in because they will be able to turn the H&S into code and
town plans.
• The more communities can do this process with greater specificity, the easier it
will be for communities to act on it.
• Would like to see towns make a stronger commitment to retain coordinator
because it can’t stop 2-3 years after the initial process. There is a need for a paid
position to help volunteers keep going.
o Jane: In response to Lyman’s suggestion for making this long term
commitment to community values, Damariscotta Board of Selectmen is
considering a resolution of endorsement of the community values as a
way of doing future business, measuring future town decisions and is
considering having these values a part of the update of the
Comprehensive Plan.

www.communitymatters.org Heart & Soul Community Planning Conference Call Notes 12/15/10