Following a couple of informational meetings in February about a comprehensive community development project in Greene County, it is starting to take a better shape.

Greene County Community Development Director Ken Paxton says the Vision 2020 project is a county-wide endeavor to create projects to attract people to not only work in the county, but live here as well. A steering committee, which will include city council members throughout the county, the Board of Supervisors, GCDC, Grow Greene County Gaming Corporation, Jefferson Matters: Main Street, young families, major employers and various community members. The steering committee will oversee the different projects that project leader Zach Mannheimer will establish.

The first phase is to gather input from community members about what types of projects there need to be in the county. However, the initial cost for the first phase is $98,000. GCDC is proposing that they, along with with Grow Greene County, pay $25,000, another $25,000 from private contributions and $24,000 from each of the City of Jefferson and the County Board of Supervisors.

Following a discussion earlier this week, Supervisor Board Chair John Muir says he’s ready to invest in the project and describes his reactions from the comments that were made at their meeting on Monday.

“I was impressed with the number of people who came to let us know that they thought this was important and it might be time to be addressing some of these things and working with an outside group that can give us some direction or help us with accomplishing the goals or the direction that we want to go.”

The Supervisors haven’t made a decision whether or not to contribute $24,000 toward the project.