A growing city signals time for enhanced community engagement

The name of this column says it all ... I believe with great passion that community matters.

And that’s why I’m so happy to be back at the Council of Neighbors and Organizations — you probably know us simply as CONO — doing the work I love: strengthening our community by building up neighborhoods across the Pikes Peak region by showing them how to work together, get engaged in the political process and maybe even make new friends with the people where they live.

My recent appointment as executive director of CONO is a homecoming for me. I worked at CONO from 2015-19 before stepping away to do community development and engagement work for the community of Pueblo West.

What I learned there and what I continue to learn being a neighbor in Colorado Springs has been invaluable.

Working in Pueblo West for 18 months or so, I saw the ways local governments work to create a safe community, paved roads, connected parks and trails, doing more with less and informing residents along the way.

I saw servant leadership at all levels and many successes. I also saw the challenge in informing the public at all of the steps along the way. Perhaps most important, I learned that failure to communicate with the public resulted in lack of trust from the community.

The residents wanted more information about community projects. They wanted timelines, input, outcomes, solutions and answers.

As a new homeowner on the westside of Colorado Springs, I see all of the ways neighbors work at their gardens, their hobbies, their parenting, their day jobs and busying themselves to keep food on the table, bills paid and everyone happy.

As in Pueblo West, I see servant leadership all around me in the Pikes Peak region. And I see the challenge of time to find the information the local government is providing.

In returning to Colorado Springs, I’ve seen a growing city and county that needs enhanced community engagement at all levels.

The pressure is on us to plan for it and accommodate it in the best most productive way possible. At CONO, we believe it’s never been more important for neighborhoods to have a loud voice in the development process if we are going to keep our neighborhoods strong and healthy places to live, work and play.

How do we help neighborhoods during this time? By educating neighborhood groups, grooming new leaders and empowering neighborhoods to speak up so their concerns are heard by elected officials and government employees.

At CONO, we know from our four decades of empowering neighborhoods that the first thing we must do is spark conversations and get people plugged into the process. In other words, it means facilitating enhanced community engagement. It means connection to information, access to the facts, inclusive dialogue with neighbors and decision makers, and a way to learn about the processes.

But this is not the same old CONO you might remember. Just as Colorado Springs, Fountain, Monument, Woodland Park, Falcon and all the other communities of the Pikes Peak region are changing, CONO has been changing with them.

As executive director, my goal is to lead CONO as it focuses on a primary mission of educating neighbors, providing a structure for neighbors to access information and connecting the people to the decision makers.

This won’t be change for change’s sake. We will involve neighborhoods and citizens in shaping the new CONO and its vision. This nonprofit agency exists to serve neighborhoods and the community which requires communication at all levels.

I can’t wait to have a conversation with you every month to talk about community matters. I want to help connect and equip you to be a strong part of this community.

Look for more next month as I explain the steps that CONO will take to build a more connected community.

Please join the conversation by emailing me questions at sara@cscono.org. Or you can simply leave comments that I may use in a coming column.