On Wednesday night, the Leadership Cayuga Class of 2008 made their project presentations to a group of alumni, community leaders, friends and family at Auburn Memorial Hospital's auditorium. Five teams made presentations that had more than practical applications for Cayuga County in the short term.
The local leadership building program, based out of the Cayuga County Chamber of Commerce, that has had more than 450 participants since its first class in 1989, has made it a regular practice to assign the participants a project to research and present.
This year, all five projects were narrow in their focus, asking for practical plans to implement suggestions. The 25 participants, including three area high school seniors, looked at such items as the building of a boutique hotel either at Emerson Park or downtown (as broadly outlined in the Randall Travel Study commissioned by the local tourism office more than a year ago) and how to reduce local child and adult obesity (they came up with a historic walking tour to burn calories) to recognizing local business leaders through a hall of fame and strengthening the group's alumni organization.
The team that looked at how to make TomatoFest more viable is a perfect example of the caliber of the work done. Last year, the annual festival, created nearly 23 years ago, almost didn't occur because of the costs associated with its operation. The five-member group, that included City Councilor Gilda Brower, Evergreen Heights Executive Director Laurie Didio, Auburn High School senior Michael Fandrich, David Homick of the CCC's geospatial program and Susan Rose of the Inn of the Finger Lakes, specifically looked at creating a strategic plan for the festival with long and short term components.
They were clear that some of the items that needed to be done covered two main areas - marketing and tying the festival more to tomatoes and strategic partnerships - could be started this year, but may not pay dividends immediately. They emphasized, for example, that there is a need to go multi-media and that the 15-member TomatoFest board needs to invest in such things as an easily accessible and user friendly web site. They also need to refocus on the theme of the event - tomatoes - which could include not only cooking contests and demonstrations, but partnerships with local restaurants that could generate interest in the festival, long before it occurs the weekend after Labor Day.
The bottom line is that this presentation, like the others, did a fresh low-cost review of options on a specific issue that could be easily implemented and make a big difference locally.
Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com
This year, all five projects were narrow in their focus, asking for practical plans to implement suggestions. The 25 participants, including three area high school seniors, looked at such items as the building of a boutique hotel either at Emerson Park or downtown (as broadly outlined in the Randall Travel Study commissioned by the local tourism office more than a year ago) and how to reduce local child and adult obesity (they came up with a historic walking tour to burn calories) to recognizing local business leaders through a hall of fame and strengthening the group's alumni organization.
The team that looked at how to make TomatoFest more viable is a perfect example of the caliber of the work done. Last year, the annual festival, created nearly 23 years ago, almost didn't occur because of the costs associated with its operation. The five-member group, that included City Councilor Gilda Brower, Evergreen Heights Executive Director Laurie Didio, Auburn High School senior Michael Fandrich, David Homick of the CCC's geospatial program and Susan Rose of the Inn of the Finger Lakes, specifically looked at creating a strategic plan for the festival with long and short term components.
They were clear that some of the items that needed to be done covered two main areas - marketing and tying the festival more to tomatoes and strategic partnerships - could be started this year, but may not pay dividends immediately. They emphasized, for example, that there is a need to go multi-media and that the 15-member TomatoFest board needs to invest in such things as an easily accessible and user friendly web site. They also need to refocus on the theme of the event - tomatoes - which could include not only cooking contests and demonstrations, but partnerships with local restaurants that could generate interest in the festival, long before it occurs the weekend after Labor Day.
The bottom line is that this presentation, like the others, did a fresh low-cost review of options on a specific issue that could be easily implemented and make a big difference locally.
Cosentino is a former mayor of Auburn and can be contacted at cozguytho@aol.com
The Citizens' Say
There are No comments posted.