Boulder has been selected as one of five towns to join Community Heart and Soul’s (CHS) next Montana cohort. CHS is a national organization that helps rural communities survey their residents and establish clearly defined long-term goals and action plans.
“I think it’ll be nice, coming together in a way that isn’t necessarily government driven,” said Jefferson County planner Lindsey Graham. “We’re trying to find new community leaders, and get more people involved. We always hear from the same people, and now we’re trying to bring in new voices.”
Boulder’s initial CHS meetings will be held monthly from June to Sept. at Boulder City Hall. The group’s project process involves four phases: Imagine, Connect, Plan, and Act. The Boulder branch of CHS will be paired with a coach from the organization who will help the group recruit, organize, and manage input from community members while navigating the CHS curriculum.
CHS will also offer the Boulder branch a $10,000 matching grant, which could potentially aid future project efforts should Boulder CHS manage to accomplish the initial fundraising. Boulder CHS is also partnering with Montana State University extension school and the Montana Community Foundation to accomplish its long-term planning and fundraising goals.
“This is very much a visioning group,” said Jefferson County Planning Director LaDana Hintz. “We’re really trying to figure out how all of these little groups working in Boulder can come together and create some shared sense of priority.” While Boulder’s application to CHS’s national program was submitted by the Jefferson County Planning Board in May, there is no formal relationship between the group and any local government offices.
All organizations in Boulder, and Jefferson County, are invited to participate in the upcoming phase one meetings for Boulder CHS. (The first will be Tuesday, June 25, 6 p.m., at Boulder City Hall.) While no specific community improvement projects have been yet considered, Boulder CHS hopes to gather feedback from meeting participants over the next few months and begin pursuing specific ideas in phase two. Once the group has established a list of potential works, it will move to begin phases three and four once it completes its initial $10,000 grant fundraising requirement.
“There are a lot of other grant opportunities in the pipeline, too, that we could start to go after if we can create a consensus as to what we want to see happen in Boulder,” said Hintz. “So many people have come over the past 10 years. We need to figure out what they want, and also why they came.”
