The Heart & Soul Project has been extended another seven months to implement several of its community enhancement projects, following approval from the Cortez City Council.

It’s the final phase of the sprawling two-year project, and officials involved say the effects of the work are likely to last a lot longer.

“We reached out to people who typically feel marginalized or uninvolved in local government to figure out what the values are of everyone in the community,” said program coordinator Rocky Moss. “To make sure everyone has a voice in how our city grows.”

The Orton Family Foundation initially funded the project in 2012 with a $100,000 grant. In 2014, the foundation offered an additional $25,000 to Heart & Soul for “project implementation support,” half of which was applied to projects before the end of the year. The grant stipulated that all funds had to be expended before the end of 2014, but some projects didn’t make the deadline. Heart & Soul sent the foundation a report-out of projects that did manage to be completed. Heart & Soul has requested to have the grant’s timeline extended through August, so the other $12,500 can be applied to remaining unfunded and partially funded projects.

“The Foundation was impressed with the work to date, and in their continuing commitment to Cortez, they have indicated they would still like to provide us with the remaining funding,” said city planning director Kirsten Sackett. “We’ve been pretty lucky that the foundation has been really supportive of what we’ve been working on. They’re a little different kind of a grantor than somebody that just wants the quantitative data, they want to hear the qualitative stories of how it’s impacting the community.”

Under the guidance of Sackett and program coordinator Rocky Moss, Heart & Soul has spent the past two years trying pinpoint what residents liked about Cortez and wanted to enhance, as well as what they wanted to change.

Sackett and Moss note that over the two-year period, Heart & Soul’s volunteer-led Community Action Team engaged about 1,350 unique community members, conducted outreach at 55 community-wide events at everywhere from churches to trailer parks. The group recorded and listened to over 9 hours of video interviews, gathered and compiled surveys from over 900 community members, dedicated 4,200 volunteer hours and 1,529 staff hours to the project.

Using that community-research as a guide, the Community Action Team identified and prioritized several projects to be funded for implementation. Projects to be implemented under the grant extension agreement include: the establishment of a Community Action Legacy Team to continue carrying out the principles of the program into the future, neighborhood block parties; a community-wide calendar; community outreach at the Cortez Public Library including new iPads; Kindles and an interactive kiosk; cultural diversity activities at the Cortez Cultural Center; a cultural diversity fair; cultural diversity outreach to the Hispanic community; the Southwest Farm Fresh Cooperative and teen center/hangout planning.

Heart & Soul is in talks with local public radio station KSJD to build the community-wide calendar. The Piñon Project is taking the lead on creating the teen hangout space.

Although the seven months are the final phase of the sprawl, two-year project, the Heart & Soul leadership says the program’s philosophy will most definitely carry over for years to come.

One of the biggest things projects to come out of Heart & Soul is the Land Use code rewrite. Through grants from Orton Family Foundation, The Gate Foundation and the City of Cortez, $200,000 was made available to rewrite the code in a way that aligns with values identified through Heart & Soul’s research.

Tracie Hughes, grant manager for the project, explained that most of the original code dates back to 1978, a new standards were updated in 1996, and there have been several ordinances over the years amending it in a patchwork fashion.

“A lot of it will carry over, but this is the first real rewrite in a substantial amount of time,” said Hughes.

The rewrite will seek to address a key issue that Heart & Soul saw arise in their community values research: How do we support economic development and growth, and maintain a small-town feel?

“It’s about finding a balance, and a lot of that, keeping the small town feel can be addressed through land use code,” said Sackett. “It’s about good, proactive community planning, not reacting to developments as they come in.”