LYNN — The city’s Vision Lynn plan, a comprehensive community feedback program, continues to garner feedback from the public on issues of infrastructure development, park clean-up, and accessibility.
The city’s associate planner, Lauren Drago, said that since Vision Lynn’s inception in 2021, the city has received over 1,000 surveys from the public. The city’s main points of feedback were safety, accessibility, and maintenance.
“We had three different vision statements: one of them was that people wanted to feel safe and comfortable in their community, another one was that they wanted to make sure that everybody had access to the housing, transportation, social connections, and economic opportunity they need to live a fulfilling life, and then, finally, they talked a lot about the importance of diverse and connected communities that take care of each other,” Drago said. “Sort of this stream of maintenance, wanting to make sure that we’re taking care of each other, our parks, our infrastructure, that was our third vision statement.”
Using open-ended question surveys, Drago said that the city is able to track down specific issues that residents would like to see resolved. One of these issues, she said, was the amount of trash in downtown Lynn.
“A lot of the surveying we were doing was open-ended questions, and we have been using a tool to analyze what people have said during their open-ended responses,” Drago said. “That was really helpful when we were talking about trash in the downtown, for example. A lot of folks had specific ideas about the ways that they could solve that problem, or what they’d like to see the city do. So to suddenly have this database and see people’s responses, that’s really helpful for us as we start to strategize solutions.”
Some of the city’s recent investments in infrastructure, housing, and parks coincide with results from the Vision Lynn project. Community engagement, Drago said, helps the city focus their efforts toward changes that the public wants.
“When you’re working in a government, there’s a lot of things that you could be doing, there’s a lot of things that you are doing, but seeing so many specific topics come to the top of the list for our residents was really helpful in focusing our efforts,” Drago said. “Especially where we had the [American Rescue Plan Act] outreach going on at the same time, we heard a lot of consistent feedback about wanting to spend money on infrastructure, on housing, on the parks and the open spaces that we all share.”
Mayor Jared Nicholson said that the city’s upcoming Lynnside Out event at City Hall is meant to bring city government officials, including members of the Vision Lynn team directly to their constituents.
“This initiative is moving full speed ahead, it’s a top priority for our administration. We’re really grateful for everybody that has engaged so far. The first survey we put out turned over a thousand responses, which has been really useful,” Nicholson said in an interview Tuesday. “The next big ask of the community is for folks to join us at an outreach festival that the city is organizing later this month called Lynnside Out, where we’re looking to bring City Hall out to the community, meet people where they’re at, so a lot of city departments will be there sharing what they do and interacting with the community.”
Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at [email protected].
