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Trail connecting Erickson, Creston and Wynndel named a priority by Community Conversations participants

The final Community Conversations resulted in choosing to create a designated bike and walking path to connect Creston, Wynndel, Erickson...
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Kootenay Employment Service staff inputting data from ballots.

After six months of discussion, the final Community Conversations event on Wednesday resulted in participants choosing a project for the Creston Valley: a designated bike and walking path to connect Creston, Wynndel and Erickson.

Nearly 250 attended the Kootenay Employment Services (KES) event to take part in three rounds of voting, after about 300 took part in the monthly conversations.

"We'll be drawing from that database to see who can help out with this project," said Eden Yesh, who runs the program and is manager of KES's Invermere branch.

An initial round of voting listed 300 potential projects, from which participants on Wednesday selected their first, second and third choices in several subcategories, including recreation, health, education and business. From there, using software developed by KES staff, the list was narrowed to 81 options, and then, after a second round of voting, to nine.

Among the top nine were "More doctors and a walk-in clinic", "Co-operative housing project", "Value-added cannery and packaging for local fruits and vegetables" and "Strategy to become an organic and sustainable capital in Canada."

The goal now, Yesh said, is to create a steering committee and a realistic timeline and milestones for the trail project, hopefully within six to 12 months.

With nearly 300 potential projects that didn't make the cut, there will be an opportunity next month for champions of those ideas to give a 10-minute presentation to funders on July 17. To be slotted in, a form can be filled out at ourcommunityconversations.com/panelprojects.

And the hope is that the other top choices can be considered at some point in the future.

"These will be valuable to community development over next couple of years," said Yesh.

The potential Erickson-Creston-Wynndel trail was the only project of its type that made it to the top nine, but it was one of several on the initial list, which was a good sign, according to Trails for the Creston Valley Society president Mary Jayne Blackmore.

"It shows that the focus of the community is on developing recreation and a healthy lifestyle," she said. "We were excited to see a lot of our top projects in the short list."