Heart & Soul

Healthy, vibrant small towns are remarkable places, and if you’ve ever visited a really vibrant small town, you know what I mean. There’s just no place better.

Many of us love our small city of Polson because it is friendly and family-oriented, we have strong connections to our history and natural surroundings, and it is just overall a great place to call home. However, we are also struggling. We do not provide enough jobs to keep young people here, the cost of living is high, incomes are low, local businesses are not thriving, development has created controversy, there are cultural misunderstandings and conflicts and many citizens feel that their voice is not heard. In short, there is much room for improvement.

I would like Polson to be a healthier, more vibrant small town. I think a lot of other people would too, and they probably have a lot of ideas about how it could be accomplished. A survey conducted by the Greater Polson Community Foundation and Envision Polson! last year resulted in nearly 100 pages of ideas and suggestions about Polson’s future. Most of us like our ideas to be heard, and many would even like to play a role in working with others to put our ideas into action in our community. Envision Polson! and the Heart & Soul project are ways do just that.

Envision Polson! is neighbors working with neighbors to positively impact our small city. It is civic-minded, action-oriented volunteers who give their time and talents to work on a wide variety of large and small projects to do good things in the Polson community. Anyone can join an Envision Polson! committee to work on a topic of particular interest to him or her.

The Heart & Soul project is a two-year grant program for the purpose of reaching out to all members of the Polson community to engage in conversations about what citizens love about Polson and why they choose to live here. These conversations will lead to development of central themes that represent the “heart and soul” of Polson, i.e., commonly held concerns, values and aspirations.

This citizen-based information will help organizations like Envision Polson! and the city of Polson be in-tune with all of our citizens as they go about their good work.

We are so fortunate that the Heart & Soul grant will provide an opportunity for a Community Advisory Team that is representative of the community to be formed to do the challenging and frequently underfunded work of hearing from as many community members as possible. I am grateful that the Heart & Soul effort is steeped in democratic principles, including representation, listening and understanding, cooperation and consensus; giving everyone in the community an equal voice, and striving for common understanding, fairness in providing all community members an opportunity to be heard and respecting individual opinions.

With the Heart & Soul project, the values that our community identifies and the actions that are determined will be arrived at through a fair, open, and extensive public process. Public processes can be challenging, even daunting, but I trust our community knows how to express what is best for the whole community to help shape our home together.

I believe the Envision Polson! and Heart & Soul efforts will build a more unified Polson community - one where differences of opinion can be expressed and respected and used for positive outcomes. A healthy and vibrant community doesn’t just happen, we all need to dialogue and work together to achieve that outcome.

To volunteer or for more information about the Heart & Soul project or Envision Polson!, call Darlis or Daniel Smith at 406-250-3498.