What is a Community Vision statement?

The vision statement is a tool to highlight residents' desires for the area. Here's the context: The original goal of FOWS was to work with TRPA and county staffs to develop a "community plan" – a detailed set of goals and criteria for Homewood and Tahoma. Several other regions of the lake have community plans, including Carnelian Bay and Tahoe City. However, TRPA advised the officers of FOWS that work on a community plan must wait until the TRPA Regional Plan Update (RPU) is completed. Nevertheless, major changes were being planned on the West Shore (such as the Homewood Resort expansion), so we moved forward with the community vision as our alternate strategy to give participating West Shore residents voice to the values and desires for their communities. In December 2012, TRPA adopted the RPU, which outlined several changes to the West Shore. However, instead of a community plan unique to our areas, the RPU, and Placer County's proposed Area Plan, call for one large area plan for the entire in-Basin portion of the County.

How was the Community Vision statement created?

In 2009, a community vision was crafted incrementally by participants in a series of monthly West Shore community meetings held from May 2009 through September 2009. Draft results were shared with the  subscribers of the FOWS newsletter, and input was accepted by e-mail as well as at the meetings. The Community Vision concepts were also presented at multiple homeowner association meetings attended by board members of FOWS.

Why is Community Vision important?

From the remarks of residents at our community meetings, it is clear that the West Shore community cares passionately about our area of the lake and its special assets. The community vision statement represents our community's chance to raise its profile and declare values and priorities for generations to come. Previously communicated to TRPA in an effort to inform the RPU, the Community Vision will assist us in representing residents' values to Placer County to influence the new Area Plan.

What is the relationship of this West Shore Community Vision to regional plans?

It is notable that many of the points in the West Shore vision statement are echoed in the work products of TRPA's Regional Vision Summary: Pathways & Forum 2007 (a precursor process to the RPU that was conducted prior to TRPA's surprising pro-development approach proposed in 2011 and adopted in 2012). This observation validates the work of the participating West Shore citizens, confirming the consistency of our views with many of those adopted in these larger-scale regional planning and visionary efforts. The following statements highlight the relationships between the Community Vision of FOWS and the Regional Vision.