Maupin Community Visioning
About seventy-five people attended Maupin’s Community Visioning meeting on November 5th. Participants were predominantly City of Maupin residents, along with several residents from surrounding areas in South Wasco County, and State and County representatives.
The City of Maupin finalized its last strategic plan in 2004. Since that time, Maupin accomplished most of the lofty goals, including bringing some of the fastest internet in the Pacific Northwest to South Wasco County in 2019, thanks to a multi-million dollar project that installed fiber internet in the area.
Under the leadership of Mayor Lynn Ewing and City Manager Kevin Lewis, it was time to engage the community to create a vision and strategy for the City of Maupin for the next 20 years. The Maupin Community Visioning meeting was designed to accomplish three primary goals:
to gather ideas about development, opportunity, and growth for the city directly ‘by and for’ the citizens of Maupin;
to assemble focus groups with defined ‘first steps’ toward community initiatives and growth; and
to maintain the continuity of community work via Maupin residents and in alignment with regional community partners and their respective projects.
Meeting participants chose topics they wanted to discuss in broad areas related to:
Economic Development & Tourism,
Education,
Housing,
Infrastructure,
Livability,
Parks & Recreation; and
Public & Social Services.
Groups generated ideas for each topic, then, at the end of the day, the groups “voted” with stickers on ideas that were most important to them. Ideas with the most votes included:
Creating biking/walking trails and more organized fitness opportunities
Bringing more professional resources into the community and connecting them with the School District
Modernizing Maupin’s wastewater system
Providing more opportunities for solar power for homes and businesses
Becoming a “Dark Sky” town
Make general improvements to our park facilities (and consider building an indoor pool in Maupin!)
The City will host a follow-up meeting with interested citizens to build the next steps for completing a new comprehensive strategic plan based on ideas generated in the visioning meeting.
Contact City Hall if you’d like to be included, 507 Grant Ave. PO Box 308 Maupin, OR 97037. 541-395-2698, cityhall@cityofmaupin.org. Business Hours: Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
