The debate over the fiscal health of Lawrence and Douglas County is one of long-standing. At this moment, it is even more heated than usual because of city elections looming on the horizon and the recent release of economic data that show economic growth in Lawrence is lagging behind that of other Kansas cities.

Downtown merchants will happily tell anyone who listens that business is not as good as it ought to be. Builders and developers are suffering from a significant slowdown in the new housing market. Add to this the “unusual” political situation in Lawrence, which not only often pits the business community against the “greens” and the “progressives” but also now must contend with an increasing population in Lawrence and Douglas County both of retirees and families in which one or both adults commute to work in other communities.

Over the past few years I have watched the various city and county commissions attempt to draw up plans for the future physical development of Lawrence and Douglas County. It has been an expensive and time-consuming process. The overall utility of these various planning exercises, including the most recent weeklong planning “fest” with outside consultants, remains controversial.

I want to suggest that, perhaps, the focus on physical planning for the city and county may be premature and that before either government spends more money on such efforts, it is time to take a step back and have a far more fundamental discussion.

During the past decade I have sat on a number of local committees, including those dealing with the city’s sesquicentennial celebrations and the application to have Lawrence and its environs designated a national heritage area. In the course of meetings of both of these committees, I became convinced that one of the most marked aspects of our community is the diversity of opinion not only about our history, but about our future.

There are those who wish Lawrence to remain a small college town with little industry, minimal public services and low taxes. There are others who want Lawrence to become a bustling metropolis, a center of industry and technological innovation with an expanding tax base and expanding public services and amenities. Others want it to be a bedroom suburb, with fun shops and good restaurants. And there are many others with just as many different ideas about what Lawrence and Douglas County should be.

I am convinced that any attempts to design the physical or financial future development of Lawrence and Douglas County cannot succeed without first coming to some consensus about what our city and county want to be over the next decade and quarter century. We need more than a comprehensive development plan, allocating space to different uses. We need to make some fundamental decisions about the very nature of this community.

Will we be an outer-ring suburb of Kansas City and Johnson County? Will we become a cultural and entertainment hub for Kansas? Do we want to attempt to be a mini-Silicon Valley? Do we want to be a medical hub for Kansas and Missouri? Do we want to preserve agricultural uses in this county?

The potential of Lawrence and Douglas County is huge. We have energetic, smart people. We have successful and aggressive businesses. We have a major research university. What we don’t seem to have is a shared vision of our future. Indeed, we may well have a better vision of our physical development than of our economic, social and cultural development. And, to me, that’s putting the cart before the horse.

My suggestion is simple. I think that the city and county commissioners should convene a public forum on the future of Lawrence and Douglas County. We don’t need expensive consultants. We need citizen involvement. Let’s hear everyone’s visions then discuss them and try to hammer out a comprehensive idea of where we want to go as a community. When we have that vision, or at least some idea of it, then we can move forward with more concrete planning.