The Citizens' Agenda for Houston's Future was developed over a period of five months, from January to June 2003, with the assistance of thousands of City of Houston residents who attended Blueprint Houston's public meetings.

The Citizens' Agenda for Houston's Future captures and represents the goals and desires of residents and is additionally legitimized by the results of a random telephone survey of likely voters who strongly supported the values and goals that emerged from the public process.

It is a powerful and strategic document designed to stimulate citywide conversations between candidates and citizens in the months leading up to the November 2003 citywide elections and to sharpen the focus on issues critical to the future of the City.

It is expected to inform the City's legislative process in the future, to energize private-sector initiatives and to bring together a wide coalition of civic and business organizations dedicated to the economic, social and environmental betterment of the city and the lives of its residents. The Citizens' Agenda for Houston's Future is the result of the early work of an ad hoc group of civic leaders who came together to form Blueprint Houston with the intent to create a vehicle for Houstonians of all ethnic, social and economic backgrounds to work together and formulate a vision for the City's future. The Executive Committee of Blueprint Houston recognizes the historic significance of the Citizens' Agenda and pledges its support to bring the vision to fruition. It also recognizes that the ideas presented are too big for any one organization to see through to completion.

To this end Blueprint Houston is in the process of involving residents to convene again, in a collaborative fashion, with government, business and non-profit organizations to ensure that the results of the vision are implemented. The process of public involvement continues to make the Citizens' Agenda for Houston's Future an exciting work in progress.

	A Blueprint Houston Public Meeting.		and a Workshop.

The Citizens' Agenda for Houston's Future is the result of a carefully designed participatory process where residents suggested shared values, offered ideas, developed goals and actions and set priorities. The totality of these outcomes forms a clear and bold agenda for the City's future. It provides a snapshot of needs and desires and suggests actions that can be addressed expeditiously.

The steps of Blueprint Houston were linked so that each meeting provided content for the next. The set of values that are the foundation of the process were first suggested and then refined at two meetings held January 23 and February 14, 2003 and attended by more than 50 Blueprint Houston Steering Committee and Task Force members. Those values were discussed and expanded at the Leaders Workshop held on February 15 and attended by 250 participants. They were finally validated at the five public meetings held in April and attended by more than 600 residents.

In the course of the five public meetings participants also brainstormed ideas for the future and evaluated the pros and cons of planning for the future of the city in a comprehensive way. Every individual idea was categorized in a database and published on the Internet.

Using the ideas suggested at the public meetings, goals and strategies were first proposed at the Goal Writing workshop attended by 70 participants and later evaluated and prioritized at the Blueprint Houston Citizens' Congress attended by 1040 residents and held on May 31, 2003. The Congress was an unprecedented meeting in Houston's history. Not only did participants review goals, they rated them individually and then ranked the top ten goals in order of urgency. They also discussed and voted, in a lively display of direct democracy, on four actions that will keep Blueprint Houston's Citizens' Agenda on the forefront of the City's political and civic activities for a long time to come.

Finally, seeking to establish a scientific base of support for the goals and strategies that make up the Citizens' Agenda, Blueprint Houston commissioned a random telephone survey of 1000 registered and likely Houston voters. The survey was developed by a group led by Dr. Stephen Klineberg of Rice University, and conducted by the University of Houston Center for Public Policy under the guidance of Dr. Richard Murray.

Blueprint Houston was funded primarily through a grant from Houston Endowment, Inc. to the Gulf Coast Institute with additional support from dozens of individuals and corporations. ACP Visioning & Planning, a planning and visioning firm based in New York and Columbus, Ohio, designed and implemented the Blueprint Houston process working closely with Blueprint's Chair, Project Director and staff as well as hundreds of volunteers. Eventions, a meeting design firm based in Houston, attended to the Congress' logistics, while the electronic keypads and supporting software were provided by Padget Communication Inc., based in Clearwater, Florida.

At-A-Glance

• 10 Blueprint Houston public meetings
• 2,500 residents who attended all the public meetings
• 9,600 volunteer hours to participate, facilitate and volunteer
• 1,600 ideas about the future collected in the five brainstorming meetings
• 400 ideas about planning for the future
• 27 core values
• 29 goals
• 137 actions
• 180 facilitators trained to conduct the public meetings
• 25 financial and in-kind contributors
• 1,000 electronic keypads used in the Citizens' Congress
• 55 Blueprint Houston Steering Committee members
• 10 Blueprint Houston Executive Committee members

Over 100 delegates participated in the Citizen's Congress on May 31, 2003.