Middle-Upper Sackville & Lucasville

Community Vision Engagement Process

- Summary -

The Community Visioning process began in Middle Sackville in May of 2008 with a Kick-Off event held at the Sackville Heights Community Centre (SHCC).  Residents attended to learn about the project and express interest in joining the Community Liaison Group (CLG) who, as volunteers, would lead the process of engaging the community and developing a Vision over the next year.

Beginning in September 2008, the CLG began meeting weekly, at both the SHCC and Harry R. Hamilton Elementary School, to start the visioning process and did so up until August 2009.  They received training in community engagement, sustainability, project planning and group dynamics, as well as a toolkit that covered all aspects of the process, which they could refer to and use best practices. 

One of the very first things the CLG did was discuss the area selected for visioning in the Regional Plan.  The centre of the Vision area was designated in the Regional Plan as a Suburban Local Centre. Effectively this is a largely undeveloped parcel of land surrounding a proposed highway interchange and the proposed Metro Transit Park and Ride.  The group felt that the area should be broadened.

The Sackville area is distinguished as three areas, Lower, Middle and Upper but to date most focus has been on the Lower area and there is the opportunity for growth within the Middle area.  But the group felt that there was an opportunity, if not a necessity, to incorporate Upper Sackville and Lucasville.  They felt all of these communities would have an affect on each other and there is an opportunity to do some planning and shape the future of the area, rather than not consider the areas surrounding the original selected area and have sporadic and unplanned growth, which is what has happened in the past.  The result was the Vision goal, “Many neighbourhoods. One community.”

The CLG developed a communications plan for the various stages of the process, which included logo development, business cards, post cards, Facebook, e-mail lists, word of mouth, web promotion, community signage, posters and newspaper articles.

The CLG decided to hold two Community Visioning Forums at the SHCC on the evening of Monday, February 23 and the afternoon of Saturday, February 28, where the public could come share the assets of their community and their wishes for its future.  The CLG selected six theme areas to hold discussion around.  They included Recreation/Parks, Quality of Life and Civic Pride, Residential, Commercial/Economic Development, Environment, and Infrastructure/Services/Transportation. 

The CLG, using an Appreciative Inquiry approach, designed a forum which included a brief introductory presentation, interactive maps and rotating topic tables.  These methods helped create conversations between neighbours about things that they value and hope to see for their community.  There was a lower than wished turnout of about thirty residents among the two forums.  However, the discussion was valuable and exciting and was a great beginning to the year long process of reaching out the community.

Following the forums, the CLG created an on-line web survey to gather more feedback from the community.  The same questions were used and residents were given about a month to submit their wishes for the future.  Another fifteen responses were collected.

For the months of April through June 2009, the CLG worked hard to reach out to community groups that play an important role in many aspects of the area.  This effort generated about one hundred fifty responses.

In addition to these groups, the CLG also engaged various HRM Business Units and members of the development community who had land or potential development opportunities in the Vision area.  These groups came to CLG meetings to do presentations about plans relevant to the area and answer questions.  

In the end, the CLG heard from approximately one hundred eighty people.  Upon completion of gathering community wishes, the CLG began the process of reviewing the feedback and creating goal statements and actions that reflected the desires of the community.  They created a draft Vision and Action Plan which was circulated to the community for a two week period during July/August 2009.  The CLG considered the comments they received and began shaping the document into the final plan you see today.