City of Airway Heights Comprehensive Plan

Airway Heights, Washington

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Challenge: The City of Airway Heights experienced a 30% population growth between 2017 and 2020. To ensure their city’s vision aligned with the demographic of this new, larger community, the City of Airway Heights sought to update their comprehensive plan. Big Sky Public Relations was brought onto the team to create a continuous community engagement plan  to include detailed strategies and tools for public outreach and involvement from visioning to adoption of the comprehensive plan.

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Approach: The community engagement plan was well underway. Big Sky Public Relations first created project branding that reflected the stakeholders’ view of the city, the comprehensive plan, and the goals of the engagement process. With that branding in place, Big Sky Public Relations developed project materials for both informational and marketing purposes to distribute to residents and encourage participation in the comprehensive plan process. 

 

Following the creation of these materials, the team identified key stakeholders, met with them to gain insights into the community, and engaged with members of the general public to discuss the City of Airway Heights comprehensive plan. Methods of engagement included face-to-face meetings over coffee, canvassing around town, an online survey, a town hall meeting, and city presentations at central community locations.

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Results: By meeting with the community through accessible methods, we ensured that  Airway Heights community voices were heard. This engagement highlighted portions of the community that have historically been marginalized and underrepresented during planning processes.

 

Whether access to the internet, reliable transportation, or any other external factors might have made them feel left out of the equation, Big Sky Public Relations’ priority was to connect with these residents and to make their voices heard. All of these outreach methods brought the community’s voice to the new comprehensive plan, which was completed in 2022.

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