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Vital link to community

The annual Vital Signs survey provides a coherent and comprehensive perspective on the community.
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The annual Vital Signs survey provides a coherent and comprehensive perspective on the community.

And as the Red Deer and District Community Foundation-sponsored initiative gains a firm foothold in Red Deer — this is the fourth year the survey has been conducted here — it also gives each of us a chance for a little introspection.

This year, again, the survey wanders through a gamut of issues: poverty, crime, health care, education, recreation, housing, immigration, environment, employment, culture, democratic responsibility, youth and public transit are among the key elements examined.

In the process of answering the questions, you’ll also find a pretty comprehensive snapshot of the community.

In each question’s preface, there is information about the state of the Red Deer region that helps to inform you and, perhaps, influences your answer.

Much of the information included in the survey should also make you consider your role in the community, and whether some of your preconceived notions about Red Deer and its people were fair, or even well informed.

And then you get to express your level of concern, or satisfaction, with the state of services and circumstances in the community.

Lending your perspective on the community is (or should be) a fairly common occurrence: we talk to our friends, family and neighbours. We write letters to the editor and drop comments onto websites. We attend public meetings and gatherings, and join community groups. Simply by volunteering, we are expressing support for a group or activity in the community.

And sometimes — although more rarely all the time — we actually take part in the democratic process. As Vital Signs points out in this year’s survey, the participation in the Red Deer municipal election has declined from 43.1 per cent of eligible voters taking part in 1992 to 22 per cent voting in 2007. You get another opportunity to take part on Oct. 18.

This survey has the potential to generate the kind of information that is so critical to planning, and so essential to understanding our surroundings, that it deserves significant traffic.

On Oct. 5, the 2010 Vital Signs report will be released. It will package up the results of the 2010 survey, combined and framed with information from a variety of other sources (Vital Signs is a national initiative, and such resources as Statistics Canada census are also tapped). After four years, we have a working document that profiles the community and what we aspire to be, and the promise that it will continue to provide vital information year after year.

The survey results help the Red Deer and District Community Foundation in its grant-awarding process. But the results of this year’s survey will also arrive in time for you to examine city council candidates against the results — and then use that information to rejoin the democratic process.

In the past, the Advocate has used Vital Signs results to argue for greater recreational opportunities in the city, in part to combat youth crime. We have also argued for a more significant and cohesive role for culture and diversity in the community, in part based on Vital Signs results.

But as Vital Signs has gained steam, and credence, over the last four years, it has become a tool to bring about even more meaningful action in the community: it provides us with the opportunity to reconnect with Red Deer, its decision-making process and the people we elect to make those decisions.

Nothing could be more vital for the well-being of a community than that. Go to www.reddeeranddistrictcommunityfoundation.ca and lend a hand.

John Stewart is the Advocate’s managing editor.