Lorri Solomon is Oxbow/Enniskillin’s new Community Director. Born in Ottawa, raised in Manor and with three grown daughters, Solomon has lived in Carlyle for the past five years and worked with town council there in a similar capacity. Her new “reconstructed position combines economic development with tourism, recreation and culture ‹ my strong suit”, she says.
On the job less than a month, she’s jumped right in. She had a special meeting with four members from each of RM Enniskillin and Oxbow Councils to define the position and identify issues, assets, desired results, assumptions and strategies.
The meeting, Solomon said “was very positive.” A believer in participation and openness, Solomon says that when you put together “well-intentioned people around a common effort, great and wonderful things can happen”.
She’s charted the meeting results in a ŒLogic Model Flow Chart’ for each of community development, marketing, tourism and for culture and recreation together. That’s been compiled into a work plan for 2010/2011. It’s a methodology that worked well in Carlyle, she said. “It’s fluid,” she said, and it keeps everyone in the loop with the same information.
Solomon is working on data bases, collecting community group information and contact lists and updating the Town’s web site. She’s developing a “quality of life survey” which she hopes as many people as possible will use to anonymously give their opinions and hopes for and about life in Oxbow. She thinks having no history in the town is a positive. “I can start with a clean slate and look at things objectively”.
She anticipates that much of her job will involve identifying and applying for project funding. She’s won’t be on many committees. “I’m not going to replace local volunteers,” she said. But she will have resources, contacts, and experience to offer. Councils, and the larger community, through instruments like the survey, will set the priorities. Solomon sees her job as “putting the mechanics in place to make it happen”.
A community development example addressing the housing shortage calls for an accessible up-to-date listing of rental or boarding opportunities; and a look at grants that could help interested people to renovate, refurbish or restore their homes or other properties to provide rental units. The tourism plan is starting from scratch, with no available list of existing opportunities. Desired results from such a plan include readily available documentation of attractions for tourists and getting the Lady Souris riverboat up and running. The Culture and Recreation plan calls for a database of committees and interest groups, more events with higher attendance, community-based volunteer recruitment and retention, the Rec Board feeling well supported.
Solomon won’t be holding any marathon meetings. “If you’re ready for it and you can’t do the work in an hour, schedule another meeting,” she says That can be hard at first, she says when people, long familiar with each other, are used to visiting around the formal agenda. “I love small town Saskatchewan,” she said “and it’s a great time to be here in the southeast.”
And oh yes, Lorri Solomon is also a musician singer/songwriter with a new CD just out.
