BY DAVID MAMARIL HOROWITZ

david.horowitz@bgdailynews.com

 

 

Should Bowling Green get a Trader Joe’s by 2050? What about year-round farmers markets? Should recycling be a focus? How about easing traffic? And what of a local Fairness Ordinance?

Community members submitted thousands of statements surrounding these topics and others in the first several weeks of the “What Could BG Be?” initiative — with input expected to feed into a plan aiming to guide the region through 2050. This massive, ongoing outreach campaign — held across the greater Bowling Green-Warren County area for the BG 2050 project — has engaged more than 4,700 participants, with about 5,500 statements submitted (nearly 3,500 after being moderated primarily for redundancy) and more than 500,000 votes cast, according to Friday data.

And now — with the campaign closing March 17 — the county and others leading the initiative are seeking the votes “Agree,” “Disagree” or “Pass/Unsure” on existing statements at whatcouldbgbe.com above all else.

The monthlong initiative is accepting new statements through Monday — and the final week will be reserved solely for voting. Using an internet browser works best, as it enables website visitors to avoid seeing statements they’ve already voted upon.

“(Voting) is as important to us — or even more important — than adding statements,” said Sam Ford, cofounder of Innovation Engine, the strategy firm that has overseen the website and helped facilitate the BG 2050 initiative. “We’ve collected all these ideas. But how do (…) neighbors feel about (them)?”

Statements and votes submitted at whatcouldbgbe.com will be distilled into summarized findings, reviewed by local leaders and stakeholders, released to the public and incorporated into a broader planning document for the next 25 years.

Warren County Judge-Executive Doug Gorman has described it as “a community-involvement plan that decision-makers can take a look at and will help them make decisions on the direction of the community” — one that he hopes will largely be completed by 2025’s end to prepare for the county’s exceptional projected growth.

Early findings, ongoing outreach

Data is collected and analyzed through Polis, which is overseen by the nonprofit Computational Democracy Project — and one of its founding members, Darshana Naryanan, says that “What Could BG Be?” is one of the most engaged with initiatives in Polis’ history.

A snapshot of the main findings — where the data will be made sense of by AI piloted by the Google division Jigsaw — will be released by Innovation Engine following the campaign. So, it’s still too early to make determinations based on the data, especially as votes keep coming in. (In the past week alone, there’ve been around 125,000 new votes and some 1,500 new statements submitted, Ford said Thursday.)

Still, some early findings have been revealed by Ford as well as The Computational Democracy Project, where Naryanan has been managing the project on the ground.

In addition to Trader Joe’s, farmers markets, recycling, traffic and the Fairness Ordinance, common topics for statements include issues around parking; sidewalks, walkability and greenways; more upscale shopping; public transportation; bicycle infrastructure; and growth/changes in the airport, according to Ford.

Some high-consensus statements so far — though there are many, many more — are supporting farmers, combatting traffic issues on Scottsville Road, ensuring Bowling Green still feels like a safe place to raise a family, restoring lost tree canopy from tornado and storm damage, preserving greenspace, incentivizing the repurposing of empty retail space, modeling the riverfront after cities like Owensboro and Cincinnati, and having fewer vape and smoke shops, according to early findings from Naryanan.

Organizers are hoping people will continue spreading awareness of the campaign.

It will also be promoted at a Thursday meeting of the Bowling Green-Warren County Metropolitan Planning Organization at the Sloan Convention Center, Ballroom C. The open house-style workshop will primarily and separately focus on a draft that lists transportation projects, sharing feedback from public engagement thus far and seeking public approval or disapproval on those projects.

Because demographic information isn’t being collected, it’s difficult to determine who is and isn’t participating in the Polis conversation, Naryanan said. That said, several ongoing efforts — including some she’s involved in — are aiming to engage groups often underrepresented in these discussions, she said; these groups, Naryanan said, include residents in the rural areas around Bowling Green, immigrants and those from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.

So, while it’s hard to target specific groups who haven’t used the website, the focus remains the same for those leading the campaign: getting a wide diversity of perspectives.

“From now until closing, our main goal is to get as many people as possible to weigh in on the statements already in the What Could BG Be? Polis—the more responses, the better,” Naryanan said.