Austin County Forum

Sponsored and Facilitated by: Austin County Office Texas Cooperative Extension The Texas A&M University System

Introduction
This report presents the results of the Austin County Forum conducted Tuesday, March 30, 2004 in Bellville, Texas. This Forum is part of the Austin County Futures Forum coordinated by the Austin County Extension Office. Such events are being held in every Texas county as part of the Texas Community Futures Forum, a state-wide needs assessment sponsored and facilitated by Texas Cooperative Extension.

Texas Community Futures Forum
County-level involvement in the Texas Community Futures Forum began in January 1999, with Texans from all segments of the population participating. Citizens in every county were asked to study, discuss and define their communities' current and future needs. Because the populations of Texas counties vary widely, within the framework of the Futures Forum a "community" may be a neighborhood, town, county or region.

Texas Cooperative Extension facilitated the partnering of county government, state agencies, organizations, businesses and other groups to gather information about local needs and issues, and then helped organize action teams to address them. This was an ambitious undertaking. It was also a unique opportunity for many groups to work together in meeting the needs of Texans in the 21st Century.

The 2004 Texas Community Futures Forum process builds off of the previous effort to once again gather information about local needs and issues in all 254 counties. This information will be shared with all of Extension's partners and used as the basis for Extension's long-range outreach education plan for 2005-2008. Extension educational programs, which are available to all Texas residents, will be developed in response to community needs and in conjunction with participating partners.

The products and benefits of this process will be many. All of the issues identified locally will be posted on the Internet for county government, state agencies and other organizations and groups to review and use in developing their own strategic plans. The results from all counties will also be compiled and analyzed in light of trend data to create a comprehensive report. This report will be available to all partners in the Texas Community Futures Forum and to others on request. The information will help all groups to more directly focus their activities and resources; it also will reveal areas of common interest in which partnering groups can work together to solve community problems.

Participants in the Austin County Forum
On Tuesday, March 30, 2004, 74 individuals attended the Austin County Forum. They represent a cross-section of county residents, public agencies and businesses in the area. This forum was facilitated by the following individual(s): Lloyd Van Horn, Allen Kaminski, Pat Vornkahl, Rusty Griffin, Robin Nowak. Other(s) supporting this effort included: Philip Shackelford, Michelle Allen, Rose Coody, Francis Krebs, Scott Jones.

Purpose of the Austin County Forum
The purpose of the Forum was to solicit and prioritize citizens' opinions about the most important needs and concerns in Austin County. A modified Nominal Group Technique was used to conduct the forum.

The County Forum Agenda
Introductions and Overview: The Forum began with a general session to review the overall agenda, discuss the facilitation process and rules, and pose the question to be considered. Participants were then divided into 6 small groups.

Small Group Session: Participants were asked to respond to the following question:

Participants recorded their responses on paper. These items were displayed for all small group participants to see. Items were then grouped and edited by participants to eliminate duplicates and combine similarities. In the last step of the small group session, each person was allocated ten votes (represented by adhesive dots) to be used among the items he or she believed to be the most important. The outcome was a group consensus for the relative importance of the items. The top-ranked items from each small group were reported in the large group session. All items generated in small groups are in appendix 1.

Large Group Session: First, duplicate and similar statements from the 6 group(s) were edited to eliminate redundancies. Using the voting procedure described above, participants then voted for the items they considered most important.

A final step in the process gave the participants an opportunity to identify entities in the county which are best positioned to work on the issues identified. Participants were asked to respond to the following question:

Which entities (agencies, organizations, community groups, etc.) are positioned to best address these issues?

Information from this step was recorded for each of the top-ranked issues. Results of this part of the process are provided below. Priority Needs in Austin County Identified by Participants in the County Forum
The following table reports the final rank of items generated by the Austin County Forum.

Table 1: Critical Issues and Entities Identified in Austin County, Tuesday, March 30, 2004.

Note: Items are the actual and unaltered responses submitted by the participants. Any discrepancy between an item listed here and the same item in the small group listing (see appendices) is due to editing by participants in the general session. The numbers in the Rank column represents the number of votes participants gave to the corresponding item. Higher numbers denote greater importance.

Future Plans for the Austin County Community Futures Forum
The Futures Forum process gives residents of Austin County the opportunity to identify critical issues that affect them, their families, and their communities. Many local and area agencies and organizations want input from local residents to better focus their activities and resources. Working together, such groups can plan individual, joint or coordinated actions to effectively address a county's or community's critical needs.

Note: Small group results are reported here as they were submitted; they have not been edited or changed in compiling this report.

Items Identified by Participants of Small Group(s), Austin County Forum, Tuesday, March 30, 2004.