ROCHELLE – The City of Rochelle hosted its first of five Revved Up meetings Tuesday night to discuss where the city is now and what residents would like to see change in the future.
The meeting was put together and run by representatives from the Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs from Western Illinois University. The IIFRA was created in 1989 to help develop rural communities in areas such as economic development, business data and technical support, education, housing and transportation to name a few. Since the creation of their “Mapping the future of your community” program they have helped more than 135 communities in more than 60 counties.
“We do this because we believe in the community, people are an organization and the community’s greatest resource,” said program manager Gisele Hamm.
The meeting started with attendees checking in, sitting at a numbered table with about five others, being served a meal from Ralphies BBQ and then completing a small introduction survey on how long they have been a community member, what they do for work and how they are involved in the community.
After completing the survey, attendees would stand up and share their answers to help everyone get to know each other a little better.
This was followed up by a presentation from City Manager Jeff Fiegenschuh and Director of Marketing, Public Relations, and Tourism, Jenny Thompson about seven strategic goals that have either been completed or are currently being completed within the community.  
“We have come heads and shoulders within the last two years from where we were and we have made so much progress in our downtown with offering programs to new businesses and communication with our residents. We have just been rocking and rolling the last few years,” explained Thompson.
It was also discussed during the presentation that it is up to the community members to come up with the ideas and see them through. The city encourages everyone to think of big ideas that would impact the community for years to come.

“What I would ask and I will commit to tonight on behalf of the mayor and all our staff, I want you to think of all kinds of ideas. Think big and think long term, no idea that comes out of this process is a bad idea,” Fiegenschuh added. “We, as a city, will get behind anything and everything that you come up with and we will make it happen.”
Following the presentation by Rochelle city officials, IIFRA representatives had everyone write down on a sticky note positives and negatives that have happened within the community since 1950. Those notes were then stuck to a board that someone from each table would read in front of the room, including the mayor John Bearrows.
It was now time for a presentation by community and economic development specialist Linda Lee Blaine about the economic and demographic overview of nearly every aspect of Rochelle. This overview discussed everything including population, ages of the residents, ages and values of the houses within town, what kind of retail options and even their percentage of sales.
Blaine compared a community to a human being in the way that it grows and grows until reaching its peak. It then hits a stagnation stage, but then unlike a human has the chance to revamp itself and continue growing. Local residents were then asked when they thought the City of Rochelle was at its peak.
“The early 60s are when Rochelle was at its peak and businesses were growing,” added one attendee at the meeting.

Goal
The main goal of these five meetings is to come up with a list of 30 or so ideas from the community members, the IIFRA representatives will then narrow it down to approximately 20. Community members will then vote on the ideas until it is down to six high priority ideas that they will then begin planning how to work on it.
The final activity of the night was to have everyone in the room write down on one side of a notecard why they love the community and on the other side what could it use more of, or what would they like to change. These cards were then passed in and randomly distributed so the writers would remain anonymous.
Everyone stood up and read to the room what the card they were holding said. The main theme for what the community was lacking were retail options, fine dining options and activities for both kids and adults that are not bars.
But for the positive, nearly everyone said it was a safe place to raise a family with some of the most welcoming people in it.
“You guys definitely broke the record for positive quotes about people in the city, sometimes when we do this the people are brought up as one of the negatives,” Hamm said.
Residents were assigned the homework of coming up with two long-term goals for the community before next week’s meeting.