Recently, Mayor Munson gave his annual State of the City address. It gives a good overview of what we've accomplished and where we're headed as a city, so if you have a few minutes I'd encourage you watch it here:

State of the City Address Video

The Mayor also mentioned his Young Sioux Falls initiative. Here's a little of what he had to say:

"In general, young workers are telling us Sioux Falls is heading in a positive direction. They like how we're a growing city that is still a safe and clean place to live. They're very interested in downtown development and outdoor recreation opportunities. And they want to see more young workers move here because they know that will attract more job opportunities."

Also, thanks to everyone who filled out a Shape Sioux Falls survey. More on that soon!

We had a good response to our first Shape Sioux Falls session, but we're hoping for even more feedback now that we've put our survey online.

Just click here and fill it out for us!

Your response to the images in this survey will help us with our future planning for the city.

We're also surveying our ongoing focus group of young Sioux Falls residents. I'll let you know what they have to say!

It's a project called Shape Sioux Falls, and basically, it's a long-term planning process that we're working on right now at City Hall.

Long-term planning helps us determine a vision for what the city will be like far into the future. Right now, we have a plan that takes us out to 2015. But Sioux Falls is growing so fast that a lot of things we thought would happen years from now are coming quicker than we thought. And we need to plan out even farther ahead.

Shape Sioux Falls will look out to the year 2035, which is a really good way to get a "big picture" look at the city's future. The long-term plan we create from this project will help determine where new houses, businesses, schools and parks are built. We'll also look at what we need to do to make sure the older areas of Sioux Falls are taken care of, and we'll ask if we have the kinds of amenities in our city that people want.

We'll also cover some exciting projects like the River Greenway and trail system, new designs for neighborhoods, and transportation improvements-for cars, bikes and buses.

But to be successful, Shape Sioux Falls needs input from you. In other words, we want to show you ideas for neighborhoods, businesses and other amenities and we want you to tell us what you like and what you don't like. We want to talk about concepts that have been done in other cities and see if you want to try them here. And we're open to your ideas too!

The first open house will be February 20, 2008 at 5:30 p.m. at the Orpheum Theater downtown. I plan to be there and hope you will too! Stay tuned for more workshops and other ways you can help Shape Sioux Falls.

Since we launched in November, we've been happy with the response and amount of feedback to our website. It seems like there's a lot of interest in making Sioux Falls more appealing for young residents, which is really encouraging to see.

We're starting to bring together groups of young residents to get a better idea of what they'd like to see Sioux Falls do differently, and their comments have been very helpful so far. Eventually, we'll put a report together so everyone can read what our city's young professionals have to say.

In the meantime, I wanted to point out a couple good places to find things to do in Sioux Falls this winter. Our Parks and Rec department put together a great guide of indoor and outdoor activities. You can find it here:

http://www.siouxfallsparks.org/newsletter_activityguide.aspx

Also, if you're new to Sioux Falls or aren't familiar with where to go for skiing, snowboarding and tubing, here's a link right to Great Bear Recreation Park:

http://www.greatbearpark.com/

As always, let us know if you have ideas for youngsiouxfalls. Have a great holiday season!

Jodi