An Alliance for Cooperation and Action

The mayor's meetings are an effort to increase regional understanding and explore opportunities for collaboration.

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Working / draft mission
To create vibrant, diverse, and livable communities.

Objectives
The Roaring Fork CDC (working name) would accomplish it mission by working toward the following draft objectives. The name, mission, and objectives will be tested as part of the formation process.

A. Creating affordable mixed-use residential and commercial properties

B. Enhancing community financial, social, and natural capital (the triple bottom line)

C. Increase awareness of community members of the tools and strategies for community-based development
 

This effort to create a CDC builds on HMC's recent housing and transportation efforts.

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Roaring Fork CDC

Third Street Center
Basalt Community Campus

Place Notes: A Guide to Thinking Beyond Boundaries (under development)

TASKS

1) Community Health Symposium
This event would be designed to raise awareness of health insurance issues, offer provocative solutions, and issue a call to action at the local regional level. We are working to have Former Oregon Gov. Kitzhaber keynote the event. He would give an overview of the problem, share his recent thinking and discuss the importance of citizens and community action in addressing health care and insurance issues. The event would also include speakers on other innovative ideas (i.e., State of Maine, Hillsborough County (Tampa), Florida, etc.) and have testimonials from local business and health leaders in the region.

2) Community Health Insurance Survey
County Public Health Agencies in our region are currently conducting health needs assessments to evaluate and focus their services. Although these are worthwhile efforts and will offer additional information on the state of health services in our region, they are limited in both the questions they ask and the population they survey.

A Community Health Insurance Survey would compliment the public health data by focusing more on health insurance issues of the entire regional population (not just people using public health services) by using a more random survey methodology (similar to what the Health District of Northern Larimer County currently does).

The purpose of the survey would be to get a better understanding of the public and private insurance issues in our region as well as individual data on insurance rates (individuals, families, children), insurance costs, means of insurance, as well as questions probing potential trade offs people might be willing to make in order to cover more people and make changes to the current health insurance system.

3) Health Leadership Roundtable
We will use Kitzhaber's visit to kick-off the creation of a Health Leadership Roundtable (similar to the Bighorn Center's efforts that will take the survey data, Kitzhaber’s thoughts and recommendations (as well as ideas for other health policy folks such as the Colorado Health Institute, Dick Lamm, others across the country) and try to create an implementation strategy or plan (a Community Health Access Plan) for health care and coverage for all residents in the Roaring Fork Valley (and beyond as appropriate).

Although many leadership programs focus on the skills of leadership, this approach with go a step further by focusing on applying leadership skills to a specific community issue. In addition to its own dialogue, the Roundtable would engage the local professionals, elected officials, and citizens in their work, findings, and recommendations (by issuing reports, proposals, and hosting additional workshops). The policy debate would be grounded in the realities of the Roaring Fork Valley. The leadership roundtable would be charged with:

• Researching key elements of a model for expanded health coverage;
• Disseminating a series of research papers, solicit input, and achieve consensus among local stakeholders related to design features (e.g. financing strategies, benefits design, and service delivery mechanisms), scale and scope of the demonstration project; and,
• Developing the organizational structure to offer the Roaring Fork Community Insurance Plan (e.g., community development corporation)
   

Readings in Health Care

The State of the Valley Symposium is a forum to explore the health and wealth of the Roaring Fork and Colorado River Valleys. The Symposium offers business leaders, elected officials, planners, and residents a chance to hear from local, state and nationally recognized practitioners, analysts, and thinkers about issues and trends in our region and how we can work together to thrive in an ever changing world.
Learn more >

State of the Valley Symposium

 

"This is a heck of a good example of getting it [collaborative work] done right," Daniel Kemmis, SOV 2004

"The work you have done in this region is an inspiration for people all over the West," Luther Propst, SOV, 2006

New Population & Job Projections