Surveys to help set goals for future of NY Mills

By Tucker Henderson

Reporter

For any city that wants to maintain growth and cultivate economic development, a strategic framework for future goals is important to have as a guide. In New York Mills, the most recent framework from 2017 has had nearly all of its goals met in the past decade. As 2026 begins, so too does the community’s latest strategic framework planning.

“We started the last strategic framework process in 2017 and that was a really good process,” said Latham Hetland, chair of the NYMForward organization. “It really made us think about what our community wanted as a whole. It was really wide spread, we got over 350 surveys filled in, which was really good. We used that information to create some of the goals for our community for the next few years.”

Those goals included the now functioning daycare project, the walking trail in South Point, along with the Perham Health walking trail and PACC fitness center, which was a part of the health and wellness projects, the community branding of “Small Town, Big Life” along with the NY Mills logo. Other projects included the billboards sponsored with CEDA funding, community branding videos, and supporting both the NY Mills School and the Cultural Center.

“We’re still supporting them, being advocates for them and trying to help spread awareness in the community,” said Hetland. “We ended up adding some other projects like the pool restoration and the football field scoreboard. We also host the Welcoming Week event every year.

“One last goal that we’ve been working on and is going to stay on as a project is the downtown revitalization,” he continued. “We have made some good strides with that, but I think it will be good to have some more specific guidance from the community on that in this next round to see what people want, and hopefully find people to make that happen.”

Hetland said that starting this new strategic framework has been an easier project as there is a baseline of what the community wanted to see in 2017 and is able to help shape the questions and goals for this new framework.

“We have a lot more of a baseline to go off of, which is super helpful,” said Hetland. “We know a lot more about what we wanted, more recently in 2017. I think that last one before that was in 2000, so it’s less than 10 years and it’s a lot of the same people who have been involved, so there’s that continuity, which is nice. We’re always working on getting more people involved too, the steering committee should be a really broad spectrum of the community with as many different parts as can be represented.”

The NYMForward organization has put out a survey for all New York Mills community members to fill out and share their input for the 2035 Community Planning Process to guide the strategic framework. Surveys are available in physical form at the city office, public library, and the Cultural Center. Surveys are also available online and through the QR code which has been distributed on flyers across the community. The survey can also be found at www.jotform.com/260204125454143 and takes about five to seven minutes to fill out.

“The questions are aimed to get people thinking about the community,” said Hetland. “What’s good in this town? Why are they here? What would a dream NY Mills look like? What do you want to see happening in the next ten years? Then we’ll drill down on that information, have some community meetings, come up with tangible goals that we can make off of that, and hopefully get some champions for the projects like we did last time. Then we’ll just work really hard to make those things happen. It’s a lot of work, but it’s important.”

The deadline for surveys will come sometime in mid- to late March, and then the organization will begin to dig into the information gathered. They are also intending to meet with the community in different meetings in February and March in order to continue hearing and learning what the goals, vision, and values the community wants to highlight going forward.

“We have a steering committee that will do some more analysis on the survey results,” said Hetland. “At the end of March, we’re hoping to have that same strategic framework document ready to roll out and get into the hands of different organizations in town so that everybody’s on the same page.”

One helpful addition to this year’s strategic framework process is that the Economic Development Authority (EDA) is also having a housing study done within the City of NY Mills, which will be finished at the end of February. With this information, tangible goals will be easier to create as up-to-date information on housing will be extremely beneficial to guide further development within the city.

“We’ll have all of that information available and we can put that into the strategic framework,” said Hetland. “Instead of talking hypotheticals about our housing situation, we can see the actual numbers and I think that adds another level of professionalism about it. I’m very interested to see what that looks like.

“It was brought to our attention from Otter Tail County that we hadn’t done a housing study in quite some time and they were talking in terms of different developments in different communities,” he said. “The EDA figured it was in our best interest to move forward with that and we are able o get some funding from the County to help pay for that.”

“Getting that information now is at a really crucial time as we’ve been seeing more single-family growth in housing than we have in a long time and we have some future development opportunities that we haven’t really been able to start, so we’re kind of at that perfect time to think very carefully and thoughtfully about what our next steps are going to be,” he continued.

One final study the city is having done is an environmental and sustainability study which is being funded through West Central Initiative. That study looks at how the city can utilize their existing infrastructure or capitalize on new infrastructure with grant funding to provide opportunities for the community to save money, reduce energy and plan for the future in that perspective. With all three studies being done simultaneously, Hetland is hopeful for what will be available in the future with the additional information.

“Having the reference of the last time and seeing the things we really did accomplish, I’m excited to get that spark back from the next generation of projects that we can accomplish as a community,” he said. “I think we’re in a really good spot as a community, and I’m really excited to see what our community wants and has in their mind for the future.”