Remarks Before Batavia City Council

Thank you your Honor and members of the City Council.

I’ve come before you tonight to talk about Ignite!…the community visioning session we are planning for March 26 at Waubonsee Community College.

The great psychologist, Kurt Lewin, generally recognized as the founder of modern social psychology, was the first to say “Nothing is as practical as a good theory.”

So here is the theory driving our plans for March 26. All living systems naturally seek life, health, and growth. In living systems, life, health and growth naturally emerge through intimate connections and interconnections. In the living systems we humans inhabit—our organizations and communities—that intricate web of connections and interconnections is known as social capital. What Robert Putnam discovered in researching his ground-breaking book “Bowling Alone” is that social capital is in dramatic decline in America.

At a very high level, March 26 is about rebuilding social capital in Batavia. It is an opportunity for everyone who joins us to reestablish old connections and build new ones. Those will, over the coming years, enable new possibilities and a new future…a future built on friendship, respect and trust.

So how do we make this theory practical on the 26th? After we gather, we will identify the hundreds of extraordinary assets and capabilities we enjoy…the spirit of volunteerism, the magnificent Riverwalk, our relationship to Fermilab and Mooseheart, our history and historic architecture, and hundreds of others. We’ll use this amazing inventory as our foundation, and gather in small groups to generate the ideas and projects that will build the Batavia the future is waiting for us to manifest.

We’ll leave Waubonsee Community College on the 26th with ideas, project teams, plans and dreams. My dream is that future generations will point to that day in late March, in the year 2010 and say, “that was the day Batavia ignited a bright new future.”

I am hopeful hundreds will join us to begin the journey. Registration is available on the Community Calendar at BataviaChamber.org and participants can follow along on our “Ignite Batavia 2010” page on Facebook.

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