The Fourth Public Meeting

Because the number of people attending grew at each meeting, we moved the fourth session to the gym at the Palmetto Elementary school.  The growing attendance demonstrated the developing community hope that we could become united and create a different reality than the expected sprawl that had spread over the hills around Atlanta in the previous decades. 

For the fourth meeting, the ECOS team had taken the fourteen working maps from the previous session and summarized the key ideas in each.  They sorted these ideas and found there were three basic approaches to creating a balanced growth area.  They prepared maps showing what each of these three approaches might look like. 

Each map was placed in the middle of the gym on an easel with an ECOS facilitator standing next to each map  to answer any questions about that plan.   When the attendees arrived, they were each handed a pack of red and green stickers.  Everyone was ask to mingle and visit each map, engage with the map host and express their thoughts by posting green dots for the map and ideas they most liked and red for the ideas they did not want to see applied to the area. 

People came and went over the two hours, mingling with discussions as small groups formed and pulsated back and forth pensively viewing the maps. Once most people had come and gone, the ECOS team rolled up the sticker laden maps, one more dotted than the others, and set off to prepare for the fifth and final public meeting.