Rio Grande Valley Broadband • Entered by Susan Ostlie on December 30, 2020
Recreation Economy for Rural Communities (RERC) Conference – Trail and Recreational Use development for the Mt Taylor RD, and Grants, NM
November 16, 2020 – December 17, 2020
Participants and Hours
| Pre Planning hours | |
| Post Admin hours | 4 |
| Activity Hours | 12.5 |
| Participants | 1 |
| Total Hours | 16.5 |
Key Issue: Public Lands Health & Protection
Activity Type: Other Administration (reporting, emails, calls, planning)
Key Partners: Cibola County Gov., Grants City Gov. NM Council of Governments, NM DG&F, Legislator representative, Mt Taylor RD personnel, and many others – there were at least 106 participants on various sections of the meetings
Landscape/area: Cibola National Forest (1616435 acres)
Short Description of Activity
Session 1 – Monday, November 16, 5:30-7:00 PM Mountain (90 min) OPENING MEETING ON VISION AND VALUES. The purpose of this session is to provide context for the Recreation Economy for Rural Communities planning assistance process in Grants, to review the focus areas for the workshop, to learn how other communities are leveraging the outdoor recreation economy to revitalize and strengthen their downtowns and neighborhoods, and to hear your values and vision for what success means to you.
Session 2 – Tuesday, November 17, 10:00-11:30 AM MDT (90 min) SHARING STORIES FROM PEER COMMUNITIES. This session begins with some presentations by Federal Agency partners about their programs and resources. The remainder of this if for the facilitators to share stories from other communities across the country who have leveraged outdoor recreation successfully and for you and other workshop participants to explore ideas, strategies, and solutions that might help Grants achieve goals around outdoor recreation and main street revitalization.
Session 3 – Tuesday, November 17, 1:30-3:00 PM Mountain (90 min) SMALL GROUP EXERCISES. This session will involve interactive small group exercises in which you and other workshop participants will exchange ideas and prepare for action brainstorming at Session 4.
Session 4 – Tuesday, November 17, 4:00-5:30 PM MDT (90 min) ACTION BRAINSTORMING. This session will involve you and other participants brainstorming ideas for action around your workshop goal areas in order to prepare for prioritizing at Session 5 tomorrow.
Session 5 – Wednesday, November 18, 10:00-11:30 AM MDT (90 min) ACTION PRIORITIZATION. This session will involve you and other participants prioritizing actions into the top 4-5 actions on which to focus for each workshop goal area.
Session 6 – Wednesday, November 18, 2:00-4:30 PM MDT (150 min, with a 20 min break) ACTION DETAILING. This session will involve participants outlining specific, measurable, achievable next steps to accomplish Grants’ goals around outdoor recreation and main street revitalization. Small groups will focus around each goal area to detail the specifics of what, why, who, and how these actions will occur.
Session 7 – Wednesday, November 18, 5:30-6:30 PM MDT (60 min) WRAP UP SESSION. This session will involve you and other participants presenting the results of your action planning session, sharing feedback and input for all goal areas, and reflecting on next steps to continue momentum and progress towards achieving your goals.
Reflection/Evaluation
This is a friendly reminder that we are having a 90 min call today at 3pm MST / 5 PM EST to review the Action Plan tables (attached) from our workshop. Also attached is an agenda for the call. Its pretty straightforward. We debrief the workshop experience some, share any updates and then we review the action tables together for accuracy, omissions, clarity. We’ll be looking specifically at who are lead/supporting roles and asking them if the action makes sense, is clearly understood, etc.
There will be two more followup calls in 2021.
This is an exciting workshop, but a long haul to find additional funding to implement the planning. However, there were several agencies that can provide funding and grants, and I am happy that the citizens of Grants are making a turn-around and thinking about how to become more environmentally aware in the process of developing a trails and recreational economy, and a downtown area that is more attractive and supports recreational needs.