McLean County needs affordable housing. It also needs more mental health services. These are known issues, so it wasn’t a surprise when they rose to the top in a recent community leadership survey by the faith-based consulting group GoodCities in partnership with the Salvation Army in Bloomington.
What did come as a surprise to GoodCities was Bloomington-Normal leaders’ commitment to collaboration as a means of addressing the problems.
“It's rare that we've run into a group of folks — leaders — in a city… that recognize that that's an issue, but have very high sense of value about the good people that are part of this community,” said Reggie McNeal with GoodCities.
Of the 79 community leaders surveyed from January to April, 85% expressed interest in meeting with others to work toward solutions in the four key areas identified: affordable housing, mental health and overall health services, a prosperous economy for all, and downtown infrastructure and revitalization.
“We find that very hopeful, very promising,” McNeal said. “Because the people are saying, ‘Yes, we've got issues, but we believe we've got the people and the resources to deal with this.’”
GoodCities President Glenn Barth said the leaders come from commerce, education, churches, philanthropy, and health care. Diversity was an intentional choice, he added.
“We didn't cherry pick, and just pick people from the affordable housing field,” he said. “These are regular citizens, who told us this was the most important issue.”
In addition to identifying the problems in Bloomington-Normal that need to be addressed, surveyors were also asked to point out the challenges that face them. McNeal said a common thread among respondents was that “people don’t know what’s being done” already in the city.
“All four of these things that we’ve brought up… have very granular things going on, and sometimes, what this survey showed, (is organizations have) become siloed even with all the efforts that are going on right now for collaboration.”
Task forces created
GoodCities started breaking down some of those siloes Tuesday night by creating four task forces — aligned with the four key areas of improvement. McNeal said the members will investigate existing community efforts to solve the problems identified in the survey “to accelerate the work that’s being done in Bloomington already.”
McNeal said the task forces are not necessarily looking to invent their own solutions for these problems but answer the question: “Where is there energy really to do something about these issues?”
Major Dan Leisher with Bloomington Salvation Army said headquarters funded the survey. A report with the findings will be released around October. However, what the report may look like is unclear, since task forces aren’t aimed at reinventing the wheel.
“Even if one or two things emerge from this, we've got something great,” he said.
Leisher said he’s “optimistic” these task forces will bring about change.
“We’re just waiting to see how this unfolds,” he said. “It’s exciting for us, because not only do we have the study now, but we also have things that can help us as a Salvation Army begin to address some of those services and issues.”
