The Village of Dolgeville identified a need for action in response to the loss of local industry and businesses.  During the summer of 1999, Cheryl Doble and Sue Thering worked with community members to develop a series of workshops that addressed issues facing the village and identified opportunities on which the village could build and articulate a desired future.

The Dolgeville Vision Planning project was designed around a series of workshops which each built on the information gathered or was developed in the previous session.  Each workshop brought further refinement of ideas, a process that ultimately formed the shared vision.  The first workshop identified a set of issues and major areas of concern.  The second workshop developed alternative design proposals based on analysis of information from the previous workshop.  At the third and final workshop the design alternatives were presented to community residents who then broke into small working groups to review and critique the alternatives.  Based on the comments, the final vision statement was developed and design proposals were revised to reflect community desire and vision.  The four-part vision statement and project proposals were review in a public presentation and published as an insert on the local newspaper.

The vision statement, as described in the Dolgeville Vision Planning Report, established the following goals: to revitalize the civic and commercial center of the village, to use historic patterns to guide future development, to identify and develop local opportunities to strengthen and diversity the economic base, and to strengthen a tradition of citizen participation that reflects community pride.

Individual concerned citizens joined with elected and appointed officials, business leaders, and civic groups over several weeks of information gathering, discussion, strategizing, and decision-making.  The success of this effort was due in large part to the diversity of participants and their dedication to the process.