Having a strategic plan for our city is a requirement of the Local Government Act. A new strategic plan was required to replace the 'Positive Futures' plan for 2004-2007. Council decided it would embark on a community engagement process in 2007-2008 to develop a COMMUNITY PLAN for Whyalla. This is to be broader than just a Council plan, and is to take direction from South Australia's Strategic Plan of March 2007. This means we are to collaborate and engage with all stakeholders within our community, State Government departments also guided by the State Plan, as well as non government and federal government agencies, community groups and associations, business and most important of all Whyalla's citizens.
A community visioning process was undertaken between 31 July - 2 December 2007.
This process involved community meetings, questionnaires, focus groups, 'Do It Yourself' engagement kits and gaining responses from as many community members and stakeholder groups as possible by surveys, conversations, written responses and whatever it takes!
These inputs provided a series of themes around the opportunities and challenges facing Whyalla over the next generation - a 15 year period taking us out to 2022.
Where did we see our Whyalla community and ourselves, our children and grandchildren, in the year 2022? What will Whyalla look like? What sort of a community will it be? What is our vision and plan for that future and how will we get there? How will we make our shared vision for Whyalla happen? These were some of the questions posed to the community.
These were questions around which we wanted a stimulated, vigorous (yes even passionate) debates and community conversations.
Out of this visioning process undertaken together as a community emerged our shared vision and the planned future outcomes for our city in 2022 captured in our vision document.
