EDH 2025: 5-Year Action Plan Update, Nov. 2010

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY EnVision Downtown Hilo 2025, `Ike is Hilo, is the result of a grassroots visioning process that inspired a community. Originally guided by the Friends of Downtown Hilo Steering Committee, community members in Hilo came together in 2004 to develop a shared vision and an implementation matrix that would make their vision a reality. The resulting plan, titled EnVision Downtown Hilo 2025: A Community -Based Vision and Living Action Plan (EDH 2025), was adopted by Hawai'i County Council Resolution 192 -05 in November 2005. Today, the EDH 2025 Plan continues to serve as a guide for planning in Downtown Hilo. EDH 2025 contains a long -range Overarching Vision which is achieved via the implementation of multiple strategies and actions within six (6) Vision Focus Areas: Creating Economic Vitality; Preserving Our Environment; Strengthening and Sustaining Our Community; Enhancing Education, Culture, and the Arts; Promoting Health and Safety; and Managing Growth. Following the adoption of the Plan, in January 2006 the Friends of Downtown Hilo introduced a successor implementation committee called the EDH 2025 VisionKeepers. Since then, the VisionKeepers have worked tirelessly to ensure that the Plan does not simply 'sit on the shelf' and that key government agencies and community organizations embrace the Overarching Vision and implement its strategies. Support from the County of Hawai'i Planning Department has been crucial in assisting the VisionKeepers to 'shepherd' the implementation process. As a model implementation committee for the Island of Hawai'i, the VisionKeepers documented and shared their challenges, highlights, and lessons learned in a publication titled, The VisionKeepers' Guide to Implementing Your Community Plan. Why conduct a Five -Year Action Plan Update? A true Living Action Plan evolves with its community. Moreover, since EDH 2025 represented a new community planning process, there were many lessons learned about how to clearly communicate strategies and actions. We have also discovered that implementation is a dynamic process that changes as new partners work together. Many of these changes feed back into the Action Plan in a constant loop of new information. During these last 4+ years, implementers, called "Lead Solution Partners" (as identified in the EDH 2025 Plan), have provided the needed information to prepare and enhance this new updated Action Plan Matrix. Their advice and EDH 2025: 5 -Year Action Plan Update iii I P a g e