NWA GO

Happy New Year everyone. I want to start by setting out some goals for the next year. Then some strategies for reaching our goals. Followed by some specific actions we will take. These are time tested and will work if you work it.

Realistically the political landscape is not friendly to our mission of putting green mass transit in place here in NWA. We have a hard road ahead of us but we can get things accomplished if we work together. Smaller groups have made big changes in their communities. So how do we overcome the challenges before us?

Our goal is to get the word out about the need for green mass transit. Our second goal is to motivate the public to pay attention to what office seekers are saying about green mass transit and what office holders are doing about it.

The strategy to do this is more public engagement. We must get our goals, our vision, and our message out to more people in more ways. The politicians won’t listen however, the people will. Once more people are publicly engaged we may see an avalanche of support building up. This will take time and this will work.

The specific actions are the Letter to the Editor campaign. The speaking up at city and county meetings initiative. We will start planning a group trip to Little Rock to address our state legislators, ARDot, and the Transportation Committee in both the Arkansas House and Senate. This will turn into publicity that will raise public consciousness. I’m going to reach out to some folks in Little Rock and see if we can team up on the Ledge. We will also form teams who go to county fairs, farmer’s markets, or any public meeting and pass out literature. If everyone pitches in we will have the people power to do this without burning anyone out.

We also need to raise money to pay for the literature, and help with the expenses for travel to Little Rock. I’m going to start a YouTube Channel and I’m thinking of changing our group name to NWA Go. The issue with ORBTS is that we share too many words with Ozark Regional Transit Authority. We want to help ORTA, not get tangled up with them in Google search. The YouTube channel is another form of outreach. If we get 1,000 subscribers and a portion of folks watch the videos the channel will be monetized. The name change itself will bring us publicity since I will reach out to news outlets, our community partners, and others to let them know our new name.

We will discuss the name change, the strategies, and actions at our next public meeting on January 14, 2023 at 2PM. The meeting location is ORTA on 2423 E Robinson Ave, Springdale AR 72764. We will nominate and select our next board of directors too. If you have any questions respond here or through our Facebook group, there is a link above. See you soon.

#BallsToTheWall2023