COMMUNITY PLAN

The Vision – Top 25 by 2025

We are a top 25 community where all people are valued, engaged, inspired and have access to opportunity for leading successful and fulfilling lives.

Our community is recognized as one of the very best regions in which to live. Our vibrant neighborhoods and cultural and recreational amenities draw people to locate to our region. All people are thriving, have a sense of belonging, and enjoy an excellent quality of life.

We have transformed our community by embracing our diversity, caring for our most vulnerable, providing equitable access to opportunity, investing and cultivating marginalized communities, and delivering an excellent education to all our children.

We have an agile, innovative, robust and resilient economy built on manufacturing, logistics, and agribusiness with growth and expansion opportunities for dynamic innovators, creators, makers, and entrepreneurs. Our infrastructure is robust, our workforce is sought after, and we capitalize on our adjacency to urban centers.

Our Shared Values

We, as community members of the Rockford region, commit to achieve our vision for transformational change by upholding the following shared values that serve as the foundation for our culture of belonging in which people are seen, heard, valued, and supported Embrace the knowledge and experiences of others by being attentive, listening well, acknowledging and understanding the impact of inequities, and celebrating diversity as a strength and source of shared learning.

Inclusion

Cultivate and support an environment that fully engages our community’s differences and diversity to ensure that individuals and organizations are heard, valued and supported.

Caring

Show concern for the welfare of each person and foster a community cultural that thinks and acts as one interactive and interdependent region.

Respect

Embrace the knowledge and experiences of others by being attentive, listening well and celebrating diversity as a strength and source of shared learning.

Transparency

Foster an open process for maximum participant input and access to all information to enhance understanding and community ownership.

Trustworthiness

Strive for integrity and reliable communication. Become committed to the highest levels of honesty and truthfulness.

Unity

Place the greater good of all parts of our region and its transformation ahead of self or organization interests.

Ideation

Balance our brainstorming and decision-making process with all points of view and measurable information.

Responsibility

Pursue excellence and accountably of self and others by not shifting blame or taking improper credit. Participate to the fullest of our ability.

Interconnectedness

Won’t compromise any jurisdictions or organizations identity or decision authority, but rather look to partner and integrate shared values, goals and philosophies.

Our Community Plan

What does it mean to become a “Top 25 Community by 2025?” That’s the goal we set for ourselves and as a community we’re working towards that goal by focusing on several key areas for improvement. Areas such as education, families & neighborhoods, safety, physical infrastructure, unity, pride and culture, even living the brand are examples of where we must improve on to become a top community. Overall we found 14 key areas of focus and laid out strategies (how we make change happen) and outcomes (how we measure our success) that we, as a community, need to do in order to achieve our goal of enhancing our city and becoming a community others aspire to be. The plan is not written in stone, instead it’s always evolving and growing as we do the important work of transforming our community!