The City of Athens has announced there will be a citizen’s input meeting for recreation on Thursday, April 25th at 7:15 pm in the council chambers at the Athens Municipal Building (City Hall). This meeting is part of the process of updating the Recreation Master Plan and is open to citizens of McMinn County and its municipalities.
Dr. Ananda Mitra, Professor of Communication and Public Health at Wake Forest University, has been retained to lead the meeting. Dr. Mitra owns Management Learning Laboratories and has directed nearly 150 recreation needs assessments. He is the author of three books and numerous magazine articles on needs assessments and known worldwide for establishing “best practices” for collecting citizen data.
“Dr Mitra literally wrote the book on needs assessments,” said Austin Fesmire, Director of Parks and Recreation. “Not only is he the best in his field, his presentation is enjoyable. The information given to him at this meeting will be the basis for a community-wide survey that will shape recreation for over 10 years in McMinn County. Citizen input is key to this process and I encourage everyone who is able and interested to come to this meeting,” said Fesmire. “During our last planning session, we developed a countywide document that has been the basis for the development of recreation for the past 15 years. It has been a vital part of grant applications that have supported numerous projects and programs our citizens enjoy today.” As part of this process, citizens will be speaking to Dr. Mitra absent of any government officials or employees.
The City of Athens is a full-service municipality nestled in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains and
has garnered a reputation as the “Friendly City.”
For more information, please contact the Office of Parks & Recreation at (423) 744-2704.
