City of Fort Dodge, Iowa

Over the next few months, City of Ft. Dodge residents will be sharing their ideas on how to continue making the City of Ft. Dodge the best place in America to live, work, stay and play for the next 20+ years. This community visioning and planning project is designed to gather input from the city's 25,000+ residents, as well as input from county, regional, and state leaders.  Our goal is to involve and engage residents in planning the city's future.  With broad-based citizen input it is possible to develop a vision for Ft. Dodge that will position the city as the "ideal" city and enable the community to develop plans for achieving goals identified during the process. 

The visioning effort will include one-on-one meetings, community focus group meetings, surveys, and research about the City of Fort Dodge and other benchmark communities.  The process is inclusive and draws input and participation from all citizens. 

The first phase began in fall of 2006 with interviews and collecting research data about the City of Fort Dodge and other benchmark communities. The second phase included open focus group sessions and employee awareness meetings that provided an opportunity for all citizens and employees to participate in the visioning and planning process.

The third phase includes the development of recommendations based from generated data.  A draft of the report will be provided for public information and comments. Revisions will be made after a period of public comment and the final report will be published and made available to the public.

The vision for the community will be developed based on the most prevalent ideas that emerge from the community meetings and other informational sources.