One of the common themes in the input was an importance placed on the community’s natural resources.

“In my opinion, most of what I saw was expected,” said Kyle Kearns, economic development specialist/associate planner. “I’m glad to see that natural resources … is high ranking. I think that goes to show how important our parks are in our community and how important our access is to the natural resources and the rural area around us.

Another preliminary observation by city staff is a subtle desire for the municipal government to be more user-friendly from the business community.

“One thing that I noted earlier in the stakeholder meetings was that to them the most important was the government and the ordinances that are in place, which identifies that maybe we need to do some tweaking to be friendlier to the business community or more adaptive to the business community,” Kearns said.

“As Kyle had said, I don’t think there were a ton of surprises. I think Stevens Point prides itself on its recreational opportunities, its business opportunities and we’ve heard that time and time again,” said Michael Ostrowski, director of Community Development.

“Everybody has different ideas, and to organize those thoughts we grouped them into lifestyle thing, infrastructure things – areas of general concern or thoughts,” Wiza said. “From there we’ll further refine that into an actual planning document.”

“We’ll continue to take community input. It’s available on our website (www.stevenspoint.com), drop me a line, call me or stop by my office. Let me know what your thoughts are,” Wiza said. “As soon as we have a rough draft of things, we’ll get that put out there too. It’s a ‘living document,’ so things can change.”