2009.11.2 Teen Advisory Board

Heartland Visioning Executive Speaks to TAB

Guest speaker, William Betata, Executive Director of Heartland Visioning spoke with the Teen Advisory Board at the November meeting. According to Beteta, “Heartland Visioning is a community-wide initiative to develop and implement a shared strategic vision for what we want our community to be in 5, 10, or 20 years.

A native of California, Beteta came to Topeka with the National Park Service as an administrator at the Brown V Board National Historical site. He and his family really liked Topeka and chose to make their home here. “I know.” he said, “Everyone asks, Why would I want to make my home in Topeka?” “The people and community are great. After living in California for most of my life, I just love it here.”

Being a skilled facilitator, Beteta lead to teens to think about and discuss such issues as, “What is one of the first things in the community new people and/or company representatives encounter to form their first impressions of Topeka? “ They talked about the city streets, the ½ cent sales tax, and need for sidewalks in the East side of town.

 Beteta emphasized several times, one the biggest gaps in the task force were teens. They are looking for ways to connect with teens. They want to know, What teens would like in Topeka? What teens want for entertainment?

The TAB looks forward to Mr. Beteta coming back in a couple of months. At that time he will prep the teens with topics to be thinking about.  He wants everyone to bring their friends.

 Before adjourning the members suggested things like:

• drive in movie theaters,
• a good basketball tournament,
• a full buffalo wild wings,
• march madness TV coverage in the edge,
• more stuff in the Edge
• less video games in the Edge because not everyone plays video games in the world.
•  we need to get someone on a game show from Topeka so that more people will come to topeka and then people will be more important

Members of the board look forward to Mr. Beteta's returning for further discussions.

Present:  Sawyer, Victor, Colleen, Jenna, Natasha, Brian and guests Melissa, Chris, Michael (staff-Jean)