The city of Brainerd is working on a long-term comprehensive plan to refine and craft the future of Brainerd. A community design session was held this evening to allow community members to view and hear about the plan and voice their opinion on what they would like the future of Brainerd to hold.

A Comprehensive Steering Committee was appointed six months ago by the Brainerd City Council to lead the project. The committee is made up of a wide variety of community members that represent various sectors of Brainerd. The group is in the data collection phase and is working with the community to establish a shared vision for the city of Brainerd.

“Please give us feedback. As the community members, the more feedback we get the better we can do our jobs are figuring out what the community wants. There’s about 16 of us on the committee and it’s not all about what we want. We’re trying to get a feel for what the community wants in general so we know what direction to go,” said Mike Higgins, who is on the Comprehensive Steering Committee. “So feedback, feedback, feedback, data, data, data.”

The Steering Committee plans on holding a series of open houses and ward meetings in the future to collect additional community feedback throughout the process.

By — Rachel Johnson

Lakeland News Lead Reporter