The mere proximity of citizens — that they drive the same streets, vote at the same polling place and see their local taxes pooled in the same coffer — doesn’t create a community. So thought a group of forward-thinking Colorado Springs citizens back in 1976 when the city’s population hit 200,000, up from only 70,000 in 1960.

This group, which became known as Citizen’s Goals, formed a unique plan to unite and mobilize the growing community: Turn a wide cross section of population’s eyes toward the future of our city by, well, making them leave the city to attend the Keystone Summit, which ran Nov. 18-21, 1976.

“We wanted to get you up (to Keystone) for three or four days so you wouldn’t be interrupted by the normal problems of living at your home and in your environment,” says Rocky Crawford, a retired Air Force brigadier general who helped organize the conference.

“We involved all the top people but it was also very broad-based, including all the minorities that we could and people from every part of the community,” continues Barbara Yalich, another founding member of Citizen’s Goals. “The Colorado Springs community was very splintered and no conversations were going on. Everybody was very down,” she continues, mentioning the oil crisis of the late ’70s as an example of the difficult times.

With an assembly of 103 citizens ranging in age from 16 to 76, the conference aimed to create goals for Colorado Springs, a wide-ranging list of problems to be fixed and projects to begin. After four days, they came away with 134 goals in 12 areas of concern, including transportation, human services, cultural and recreational activities, the environment and more.

CLICK HERE to read the full text of this article, which published in the May 11, 2009 Gazette newspaper.