HOT SPRINGS, S.D. – A sense of optimism and opportunity filled the air as a group of residents of this southern Black Hills city gathered recently to forge a new potential path forward for their community.

The roughly two dozen people brought a wide variety of backgrounds: city council member, hospital administrator, school superintendent, landlord, artist.

Despite their inherent differences, they all shared one critical similarity: They were and remain committed to finding ways to make life better now and into the future in their beloved hometown of Hot Springs.

Challenges were quickly identified.

Housing availability and affordability. A lack of workers. A need for higher-wage jobs. Indecisiveness in how to move forward.

And then the ideas spilled forth, fast and diverse, both big picture and pinpoint.

Can public-private partnerships attract employers and development of new housing stock? Could Hot Springs repurpose its aging Veterans Affairs hospital into a university satellite campus? Would improved marketing of natural assets drive tourism, especially among young people? Could an enhanced riverwalk use exercise stations or a series of murals to lure more people downtown?

As suggestions flowed freely, no voice went unheard, and contrasting views were celebrated rather than diminished.

That approach is a key component of a new community betterment pilot program called Engage South Dakota, which is being administered jointly by South Dakota News Watch and the Chiesman Center for Democracy at the University of South Dakota.

Engage South Dakota uses community input, a citywide survey and meetings like the one held at The Space in Hot Springs in October to identify challenges and bring forward potentially replicable solutions.

The ultimate goal is to inform the community and its leaders on public opinion, identify local challenges, and bring forth potential solutions that can spread to other towns dealing with some of the same issues.

Engage South Dakota adds a statewide storytelling element to a successful model of community-based strategic planning used in numerous other places, including across the state in Watertown.

In 2012, Watertown used responses to a community survey and other sources of resident input to drive a decade-long planning process that resulted in the development of a wellness center and ice arena and renovation of the local opera house. The city recently embarked on a second community planning effort using many of those same concepts with expectations of further growth based on the needs and wants of local residents.

The strength of those efforts, and of those intended by Engage South Dakota, is to obtain substantial resident input to guide decisions and actions of local elected and appointed officials, said Julia Hellwege, director of the Chiesman center and a co-leader of the Engage South Dakota program.

“This is a set of bottom-up recommendations, a clear idea of what the community members themselves recommend,” she said.

In Hot Springs, more than 300 of the city’s 3,600 residents completed the in-depth survey, which Hellwege said created “highly reliable survey data.” Based on the surveys and input from the October community meeting, Hellwege’s team generated a 43-page final report summarizing the findings and making recommendations for possible action.

Hellwege said the hope is that Hot Springs residents will use the report as a “lobbying document” to encourage city leaders to take the next step of engaging in a more formal strategic planning process.

“It’s one step toward the real strategic planning that is necessary,” she said.

Carson Walker, CEO of News Watch and co-leader of Engage South Dakota, said the strong survey response rate and vibrant conversation at the community meeting show there is a desire and a need for greater resident input in the evolution of cities across the state.

“The information from the survey and the in-person meeting was phenomenal and really shows the value of dialogue,” Walker said.

The hope is that the positive reaction from residents and officials in Hot Springs will form the basis for expansion of Engage South Dakota planning efforts in other cities.

“The goal of this is to go to different places and address different topics, but then tie all the pieces together to address issues but also raise up potential solutions,” he said.

The role of News Watch in the process, Walker said, is to help facilitate community input and get important conversations started in communities that want to grow and prosper. “We’re really on the front edge of something that can jumpstart this process for the 300 communities across South Dakota,” he said.

On Nov. 14, some good news arrived for those in Watertown who are trying to alleviate the city’s substantial shortage of day care spots that are needed to allow more parents to work.

The Governor’s Office of Economic Development announced that it was providing a $500,000 South Dakota Works Loan to the Mother of God Monastery in Watertown, where an effort is afoot to convert a building on the monastery campus into a day care center that could house up to 225 children.

In response to a local needs assessment, city and school officials in Watertown are also working together to convert shuttered elementary schools into day care centers.

Watertown leaders expect their next community survey report will be released soon, providing the next step in their ongoing planning journey.

The online survey completed by Hot Springs residents revealed that the city faces many of the same major issues as other South Dakota cities, notably challenges in housing and workforce.

A majority of respondents listed housing (70%), business development (55%), workforce development (54%) and the labor shortage (52%) as major concerns.

— This story originally appeared on southdakotanewswatch.org.