Many American Falls residents attended the Horizons visioning rally on Friday, May 15, at the American Falls Intermediate School. Starting at 5 p.m., attendees were served free food, including hamburgers donated by Dan Hammond and enchiladas donated by Templo Emmanuel. Volunteers from the American Falls Police Department, including Gary Krell, Josh Campbell, and Doug Preston, barbecued the hamburgers while Police Chief Brandon Wilkinson served soda. About 100 people received a free meal.
At 6 p.m., everyone gathered in the music room. Babysitting was provided by several teenage volunteers while the rest of the attendees, under the direction of motivational speaker David Burle, started discussing the direction American Falls should move in and developed a vision statement. Power County Junior Miss Amy Carlson helped emcee the evening, and Spanish translations were provided by Jose Favela, former pastor of Templo Emmanuel. Door prizes and a grand prize were also given.
All American Falls demographic groups were represented, and despite some attrition between the meal and the meeting, more than 50 attendees participate in the second segment of the evening. Students as young as seventh grade to retirees, Caucasions, Hispanics, men and women all attended the rally. Representatives from the American Falls Chamber of Commerce, the city council, and Mayor Amy Wynn were also present.
The first item discussed was the perception of how American Falls compared to other small, rural towns. The ten attributes of successful communities were written on ten poster-size sheets of paper on a wall. Everyone was given eight stickers, four orange dots and four green dots, and those were placed on the posters and used to vote for American Falls’ strong and weak points.
After the chaos of voting, Burle pointed out that on attribute one, “evidence of strong community pride and inclusive culture,” four dots were right on the line between strong and weak, which was typical of Idaho. It was the only attribute where voting was split almost evenly.
Even with a very diverse voting group, most of the opinions were unanimous. American Falls has two very strong areas, “strong belief in and support for education,” and “strong presence of traditional institutions that are integral to community life.”
The weak areas were “invest in the future - built to last,” “participatory approach to community decision making,” “creatively build new economic opportunities,” “support local businesses,” “deliberate transition of power to new leaders,” “willingness to seek help from the outside,” and “communities are self-reliant.”
Of the numerous areas that the group voted as needing improvement, Burle said that the most critical was number four, “creatively build new economic opportunities.” As much as 70 percent of new jobs in rural America come from entrepreneurs and small businesses, according to Burle.
“American Falls is very strong in building up the young people, but then they leave because the jobs they want to work at are elsewhere,” said Burle.
“You have a unique opportunity here,” he said. “If we can put it together right.”
A graphic was projected onto the wall which showed arrows pointing everywhere. They represented all of the civic clubs, economic development groups, and government entities in American Falls, said Burle. “This is normal for a community,” he said. “But what happens when different groups have different goals?”
Several audience members suggested that “nothing gets done,” “groups fight each other,” and “resources are wasted.”
Burle said that a town the size of American Falls could not afford to squander even one volunteer’s time. He then changed the graphic on the wall to show all of the arrows pointed in one direction. “What could you accomplish if you were all working together?” he asked.
Burle then told the story of Newton, IA. It is a town of about 15,000 and up until two years ago, was the manufacturing center of all Maytag products. Then the factory closed and almost 25 percent of the town was out of work. The people held a rally and created a common vision, to be the epicenter of “going green.” The town attracted TPI Composites, a company that manufactures wind turbine blades. Almost everyone who lost their jobs with Maytag is now working for TPI Composites, according to Burle, and on Earth Day of 2009, President Barack Obama visited the plant.
The group then collaborated on answering questions such as “what kind of economy do we want to have 15 years from now” and “what lifestyle do we want?” The resultant American Falls Community Vision Statement is shown in both English and Spanish in a sidebar.
Three committees were formed during the last part of the rally. One concerns the revitalization of downtown, one concerns turning American Falls Days into more of a cultural heritage event, and one is going to be working on helping everyone learn everyone else’s language to help bridge the divide between the English speakers and Spanish speakers.