What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 What We Built Together:
Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
July 2026 Prepared for the City of Fortuna by
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 How to Use This Document
This report contains results from six planning workshops and related polling conducted between November 2025 and April 2026 as part of the Future Fortuna project to develop the City’s first Strategic Plan while also informing an update to the City’s General Plan. The purpose of this report is to:
• Put detailed workshop results in the hands of staff,
Council, community members, and partner organizations
who want to understand and apply them in a variety of
ways; and
• Illustrate the "process trail" of how those results informed development of Fortuna’s Strategic Plan 2026–2036 and
General Plan Update (GPU) Recommendations.
This document walks through each source of information in sequence, describing what was designed and why, what was heard and produced, and how specific themes emerged and were traced through the process, and reinforced each other across a continuous “trail” of results that built upon each other, from fall 2025 listening campaign results to the final staff-Council working session in April 2026.
Images of workshop products are provided throughout the document as well as in the Appendix. Companion documents include the City of Fortuna Listening Campaign Report (the foundation for workshop planning and design), the Fortuna Strategic Plan 2026–2036, and Fortuna’s Voice in the General Plan Update (referred to here as GPU Recommendations), all produced in 2026 and available from the City of Fortuna.
Acknowledgements
Future Fortuna is unfolding because people gave it time, honesty, and care for a place and people they love.
City Manager Amy Nilsen had the vision to approach City strategy differently and made all of it possible. Shepherding an open-ended, trust-heavy, deeply engaged planning process is not a small ask of any City Manager. The City Council's willingness to back an unconventional investment in Fortuna's future made it real. Amy's leadership throughout was strong, open, and genuine at every step.
City department directors and staff who were interviewed, who gave evenings and Saturdays to workshops, who worked through the findings together, and dedicated effort to getting the word out — thank you.
Listening campaign interviewers channeled honest answers into the foundation everything else rests on. Interviewees shared openly shared their hopes and experiences. Felicia Stansbury at the FUHS Wellness Center made two focus groups possible and comfortable – and Marcelina Mejia de Castillo at Providence’s Loleta Community Resource Center, Raven Bermea at Teen Court, Sandy Radic-Oshiro at HCOE and others were the reason participants showed up. Several East High students served as advisors and, thanks to Natalie Heckman, a dozen of them made blank workshop banners shine.
Community Champions Becky Giacomini, Felicia Thomsson, Marcelina Mejia de Castillo, and Fred Robinson provided a regular stream of Fortuna wisdom that shaped this process throughout. The Fortuna Chamber of Commerce and Diego Mejia helped make sure the community knew these workshops were happening. Jon Sapper and a team of local volunteers conducted the business community survey that shaped the economic development findings here.
Volunteer workshop station hosts – Planning Commissioner Neleen Nichols, Amy Jester, Martha Spencer, Leila Roberts, Ani Carrillo, Noelle Melchezidek, and Chris Lohefener – and of course City staff – drew people out and made a room full of simultaneous conversations feel like a coherent experience.
Interpreters and translators helped demonstrate a more accessible public planning process – Agustin Amaro and the North Coast Interpreters & Translators in particular. Humboldt Area Foundation helped make it possible.
Michelle Carrillo and Leslie Tergas of ThinkPlace US were foundational design partners for the workshops arc, Collaboration Stations, and Mentimeter polls. Rob Holmlund brought creative planning engagement savvy, a thoughtprovoking exploration of why residents should “manifest with precision,” and engaging poster exercises everyone is still talking about. Michelle and Rob brought care and valued experience to community workshop co-facilitation. Interns Raven Ross shepherded logistics and Owen Caldwell tallied a whole lot of stars.
Most of all: to the people of Fortuna who came to workshops, answered questions honestly, and kept their kids and their beautiful places in mind — thank you for being clear about what isn't working and bold about what could be. That's what makes this report mean something.
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 Table of Contents
How to Use This Document & Acknowledgements
1. Following Fortuna's Voices: A Standard Planning Process Redesign 1 1A. Public Engagement That Works for Everyone Involved 1 1B. Establishing Common Ground First: A Good Investment 2 1C. A Note on How to Read These Results 3
2. The Six Workshops & Polling At a Glance 4
3. Fall Staff Workshop 5
3A. Purpose & Design 5
3B. What the Staff Workshop Produced 5
3B1. Seeds of the Compass 5
3B2. Values 6
3B3. Purpose 6
3B4. Decision Filters 6
3B5. Initial Priority Planning Sketches 7
4. Community Champions: Workshops Design Session 8
5. Community Workshop 1: Imagine Future Fortuna 9
5A. Purpose & Design 9
5B. Shaping Fortuna's Compass of Guiding Principles: Visioning Exercises 10 5C. The Six Collaboration Stations: What Participants Emphasized & Added 12 5C1. Station 1: Our City Leadership & How We Participate 12 5C2. Station 2: Growing Up & Feeling at Home in Our City 13 5C3. Station 3: The Economic Future of Our City 14
5C4. Station 4: Our Outdoors & Public Spaces 16
5C5. Station 5: How Our City Works: Infrastructure, Services & Safety 17 5C6. Station 6: What Our City Looks & Feels Like: Land Use & Character 18
6. Community Polls 21
6A. Workshop 1 Paper Feedback Guide Survey 21
6B. Workshop 1 Mentimeter Vision & Values Polling 22
6C. Between-Workshops Mentimeter Poll 23
6D. Agreement Across Polls 24
7. Community Workshop 2: Charting a Course to Future Fortuna 25 7A. Workshop 2 Overview 25
7B. Collaboration Station Design Tables & Exercise Results — Workshop 2 27 7B1. Station 1: Our City Leadership & How We Participate 27 7B2. Station 2: Growing Up & Feeling at Home in Our City 28 7B3. Station 3: The Economic Future of Our City 29
7B4. Station 4: Our Outdoors & Public Spaces 30
7B5. Station 5: How Our City Works: Infrastructure, Services & Safety 30 7B6. Station 6: What Our City Looks & Feels Like: Land Use & Character 30
8. Community Workshops Feedback 34
9. From Community Voice to City Direction 35
9A. Spring Staff Workshop: April 21, 2026 35
9A1. Internal-Facing Staff Priorities 36
9A2. External-Facing Staff Priorities 36
9A3. Collaborative Development of Strategy Maps & Council Presentation Materials 37 9B. Staff-Council Joint Session: April 30, 2026 38
9B1. The Compass in Practice 38
9B2. Staff Priority Presentations 39
9B3. Types of Support Staff Requested for Success 40
9C. What the Staff Workshop & Joint Session Produced 41
10. What the Whole Process Demonstrated 42
Appendix: Community Workshop Participation Results: March 25 & April 11, 2026 What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 1A. Public Engagement That Works for Everyone Involved
Most government public engagement processes start with ideas, assumptions, and background planning research already framed or written. People are usually invited to react to expert-driven, predetermined options at a public hearing, meeting, or workshop. Often, the loudest voices, of those most comfortable with standard civic engagement processes, shape the record, and then a consultant or staff team incorporates some of that input into a plan. Familiar consequences are plans that don't materialize, take years to develop, and/or gather proverbial dust, goals that change with leadership, and a growing distance between what the community says and what is decided.
That pattern has impacts beyond any one plan. It hardens assumptions — that civic engagement is stressful, participation isn't worthwhile, important decisions are already made, and government is something that happens to people rather than something they direct – and it sows distrust between neighbors as well as between community members and their government.
The Future Fortuna process reversed that traditional sequence. This former mill town in a far corner of Northwestern California, on the bank of the Eel River, had not previously had the chance to reimagine itself since a shift away from a timber-dominated economy transformed the community's identity. This process stepped into that opening.
Before any plan was written, a season of listening came first. During the fall of 2025, open-ended conversations occurred with 63 people: 19 community members, 19 City staff from every department, and all five Council members, a focus group of 8 teens, and a focus group of 12 Spanish-speaking neighbors. The questions were genuinely open. No one was steered toward answers or pre-determined ideas. A detailed process description and results are shared in the City of Fortuna Listening Campaign Report produced in March 2026.
1. Following Fortuna’s Voices:
A Standard Planning Process Redesign
The City really is at a pivot point right now. So having this future goal setting and long-range planning… wow, that's huge.
— Staff, listening campaign
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 1A. Public Engagement That Works for Everyone Involved (continued) What came back — from people of different ages, different backgrounds, different relationships to City Hall — was a consistency that forms the foundation on which the workshops were designed and ultimately the Strategic Plan and GPU Recommendations were built.
The workshops didn't ask staff or community members to react to even a roughly formed plan. Staff first made sense of what they heard and used it to shape shared sense of initial direction. Community workshops were designed to start a civic conversation by establishing common ground before getting into strategic details. Participants were asked to look at what their neighbors, staff, and Council members had already said and then to share what resonated, what was missing, and what the City should do about it now. Everything community-facing was in English and Spanish, since Fortuna has a large and growing Spanish-speaking community – the best population indicator may be that 40% of elementary school students are from Spanish-speaking households.
This is an entirely different process. We felt
heard... helping to address the 'us versus them'
that exists in this world, with staff, in the
community, and with our City government.
— Staff member comments to Council, December 2025
1B. Establishing Common Ground First: A Good Investment One of the most important (often skipped) steps in a successful planning process is to build a shared sense of what a community stands and hopes for, before anyone is asked to set priorities or make decisions.
Without that foundation, every priority negotiation restarts when leadership changes or from a position of protecting personal interests, and plans tend to reflect whoever was in the room rather than what the community holds and needs in common. Though it is understandable that undertaking civic engagement feels messier and riskier than ever, trying to minimize and control it can exacerbate those problems.
Fortuna's most enduring outcome of this process – a tool that represents common ground between the community and City Hall – is a "Compass" of guiding principles. This framework emerged, rather than being drafted in advance, so that the community and government now share a vision, core values, and decisionmaking filters as a driving force for design of the entire process and at the center of the Strategic Plan. As a transparent tool to guide the simplest to most complex decisions, every element of the Compass can be traced to specific things said collectively by community members, staff, and/or Council members during the listening season, then reinforced and refined during the workshops. That traceability matters and is part of what follows, because when hard decisions come before Council, the Compass – in the words of staff, Council, and community members – can be applied with confidence, instead of memorized and cited.
This is great! I'm so excited to see city
leaders and community collaborating!
— Workshop 1 Baby Boomer participant feedback (★3)
1. FOLLOWING FORTUNA’S VOICES: A STANDARD PLANNING PROCESS REDESIGN 2 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
1. FOLLOWING FORTUNA’S VOICES: A STANDARD PLANNING PROCESS REDESIGN 1B. Establishing Common Ground First: A Good Investment (continued) Building this kind of shared foundation takes time. The listening campaign, the workshops, and the synthesis of that work required sustained effort from elected officials willing to support an unfamiliar process, from City staff working beyond their already full days, and from hundreds of community members across many months. The result is a plan the people of Fortuna had a genuine hand in shaping — one that begins with co-ownership rather than needing to earn it.
The intent is that a Strategic Plan built this way is more likely to be used than filed: by staff who recognize their own expertise and priorities in it, by community members who were part of it from the beginning, and by partners who helped shape it. 1C. A Note on How to Read These Results
The listening campaign and workshops were not scientific surveys. They were structured conversations — designed carefully, yet shaped, as all conversations are, by who was in the room and how questions were asked. The numbers that follow in terms of topic mentions, star counts, and polling results are meaningful but not statistical. They describe what a committed and reasonably diverse cross-section of Fortuna residents said when given a genuine opportunity to be heard. They didn’t need to be statistically validated (no local government’s decision–making usually is), but they did need to be generated, validated, augmented, and refined – or co-created – by the community and staff, together.
The same unprompted things surfaced from — and were reinforced by — teens and retirees, business owners and department directors, Spanish-speaking neighbors and Council members, across a full season of listening and six workshops from fall to spring. When the same ideas appear across listening phases, types and settings of groups, and formats of engagement over time without being prompted, they are reliable. And, just as or more valuable, people who take part in these conversations develop an inner confidence in results that are built together, which builds more locally-held value and productivity than standard consultant-driven plans.
Struggles that come out: between the desire for a small town with local character and economic growth, and that the community doesn’t feel heard but they do feel taken care of by staff.
— Reflection on listening campaign results, Community Champions session, February 2026 3 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 Very little in the process surprised anyone, except
perhaps the consistency and clarity of shared
interests from very diverse sources.
Results of the six workshops (two were design or
working sessions) characterized in this report span
six months and represent two distinct types of
work: community-facing sessions that opened
the process to broad public participation, and
internal staff and Council sessions that translated
what was heard into planning, prioritization, and
decision-making frameworks. They were
designed as an iterative sequence with each built
directly on and refining what came before it. Table
1 illustrates the series of working sessions.
Together, two community workshops drew
approximately 150 participants. That figure
includes several City staff and Planning
Commission members who attended as
community members, 15 repeat participants in
the second community workshop, and may
undercount late arrivals. One paper and two
online polls engaged 226 participants during and
between workshops – some of them workshop
participants, some not.
Staff turned a large volume of material into a clear
set of strategic and land use priorities to present
to the Council at a final joint session.
2. The Six Workshops & Polling at A Glance
Event Date & Location
or Method
Participants Purpose
Staff
Workshop 1
November 18, 2025
Monday Club
13 department directors & deputies Turn listening results into early planning frameworks; begin developing the Compass.
Champions
Design Session
February 3, 2026,
Monday Club
8 community and staff leaders who
guided the listening campaign
Provide feedback on draft listening campaign report,
identify findings that need to be explored in workshops, guide agenda and Compass elements, and plan outreach
Community
Workshop 1
(W1)
March 25, 2026
River Lodge
~75 residents
(including several resident staff &
commissioners)
Test and refine listening results for broad co-ownership; test and expand guiding principles; open the conversation about Fortuna's future priorities.
Bilingual
Polls*
1. March 25: paper
Online:
2. March 25–April 2
3. April 2–9
1. n=40 during W1
2. n=162 during + 1 week after W1
(157 English, 5 Spanish)
3. n=24 between workshops (23
English, 1 Spanish)
1. Understand community vision and values priorities to refine the Compass
2. Understand strategic and land use priorities
3. Refine workshop 2 design
Community
Workshop 2
(W2)
April 11, 2026
River Lodge
~75 residents
(including 15 W1 attendees and
several staff residents)
Apply Compass’ draft guiding principles toward indications of community priorities; broaden co-ownership of City
direction; test City spending and land use ideals.
Staff
Workshop 2
April 21, 2026
Monday Club
11 department directors & deputies Translate community results into priorities; develop strategy maps to prepare for joint session with Council.
Staff-Council
Joint Session
April 30, 2026
Monday Club
11 staff, 4 Council members, 1
public
Confirm Compass and strategic and land use priorities;
establish Council's role going forward.
* Not all participants answered every question. An unknown number of Spanish-speaking participants completed polls in English.
Table 1. Overview of Future Fortuna participation opportunities for staff, community and Council members. 4 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 November 18, 2025 • Fortuna Monday Club • 13 City department directors and deputies 3A. Purpose & Design
Thirteen department directors and deputies gathered at the Fortuna Monday Club to consider listening campaign findings, begin developing early planning frameworks from listening results, surface clear opportunities to begin to evolve daily operations, and to practice collaborative sense-making and prioritization. This workshop was designed for participants to work from initial listening results from 19 members of staff – leadership and a diverse cross-section across staff levels and tenure – said during interviews. Nearly all the staff in the room had interviewed multiple community members and staff and had been interviewed themselves, so they had a strong sense of emerging themes. Developing a shared recognition of patterns and building initial strategy together had its own durable value.
3. Fall Staff Workshop
3B. What the First Staff Workshop Produced
3B1. Seeds of the Compass
Staff worked with and refined listening campaign themes into the beginnings of a shared sense of direction for the City. They organized results into the framework of a Venn diagram to visually map common ground among staff’s motivating ideals, core values, driving interests, and organizational realities – with a backdrop of information about common ground with the community. This staff-specific Venn diagram pulled ideas and inspiration from a similar set of results mapped during process design sessions with Fortuna Champions and the initial interview training with a mix of staff and community volunteer interviewers who practiced interviewing each other and mapped the results (for more information, refer to the Listening Campaign Report).
Core concepts that arose as strong common ground from staff listening results organized at the intersection of the diagram included:
• Sustainable public service
• Coherent governance
• Effective efficiency as a revenue and savings tool
Other important elements included: adaptable, nimble government; prioritizing mission before comfort; staff dedication; teamwork and collaboration; service as an identity, not an obligation; competence as care; and engaging with and being an important part of the community. 5 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
3. FALL STAFF WORKSHOP
3B. What the Workshop Produced (continued)
Based on what arose repeatedly during the listening campaign and what emerged in staff’s map of common ground, they drafted early test concepts of core City values, vision, purpose, and decision-making filters to begin to test in their daily work. While a demand for clear direction and sense of vision was articulated as a frequent need during staff and community interviews, we did not begin to surface elements of that vision until Fortuna Champions (a mix of staff and community leaders) had reviewed listening campaign results and identified ideas to test during community workshops (Section 4). 3B2. Values
Staff pulled from the initial map of common ground to build ideas about core values that are uniquely important in the City’s organizational culture for every action they take. An example was used to illustrate why understanding shared values is important: hiring processes. Staff strongly identify with being “scrappy” and highly adaptable – doing a lot with a little and with care, needing to apply a wide variety of skills and knowledge (vs. having the budget for bringing many specialists on staff), and adjusting to changing realities and constraints. They had experienced hiring processes where that reality was not clear to applicants who prefer specialist roles, impacting some new staff’s sense of effectiveness and spurring turnover.
Other important values they identified included: honesty over harmony, community service, providing support for the community by the community, work hours flexibility, dedication or pride in their work and each other, and consideration of how to include a growth mindset in day-to-day operations. 3B3. Purpose
Staff began to experiment with a statement of City Purpose as a tool to support adaptability while staying on track. Ideas like pride in nimbly and sustainably “making civilization possible” – against the odds and together – were popular. Staff also identified regular instances where they would use and refer to a clear statement of purpose such as at the beginning of every Council meeting, job postings, and as a check-in to ensure they are living their purpose. They did not come to conclusions but identified it as a task for the future. 3B4. Decision Filters
Staff developed an initial set of Operational Decision-Making Criteria (later renamed as Decision-Making Filters): questions to experimentally apply to daily decisions, from hiring to budgeting to program development. These were explicitly preliminary, organized around purpose, capability, impact on employees and community, financial reality, and organizational health. 6 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 3B. What the Staff Workshop Produced (continued)
3B5. Initial Priority Planning Sketches
Informed by patterns in listening campaign results,
several (explicitly) preliminary priorities were
generated from across the organization's diverse set
of responsibilities. Staff developed sketches for several early priorities that emerged from the listening
campaign and mapping process on structured
worksheets: long-term cost accounting, streamlining
development to generate revenue, and updating the
department director meeting format.
After the workshop, these priorities were then
considered during day-to-day operations.
In the spring, the list of priorities was revisited,
explored and expanded upon with a similar worksheet
structure, and formalized at the Spring Staff Workshop, after staff better understood how community priorities
converged (Section 9A).
Draft Operational Decision Filters
Staff Workshop 1, November 2025
• Is the mission being prioritized over comfort?
• Are we avoiding a difficult but necessary
conversation?
• What is the financial impact?
• Is this a long-term decision?
• How does this impact the community?
• How does this impact affected employees?
• Who bears the brunt of this decision?
• Is there an alternative?
• Can we say no?
• Do we have the actual, fully-burdened
capability and resources?
• Does it increase or decrease our capacity as an
organization?
• Intended for use in hiring, staff reports,
development proposals, program
development, Capital Improvement Projects
planning, and decisions about using in-house
vs. contract labor.
I’m motivated about asking questions before making
decisions and having more direct conversations.
— Staff November workshop participants
7 of 42
3. FALL STAFF WORKSHOP
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 In early February, Fortuna Champions — a mixed group of community and staff leaders who helped guide and conduct the listening campaign — met for a third and final session. They provided feedback on the draft report itself, used that information to guide their thinking about community workshop design elements, and generated ideas about how to boost turnout in a way that would build broad coownership of the results.
Group insights from the draft Listening Campaign Report informed Champions’ suggested clarifications, a reordering of material, and addition of a substantive executive summary. They then considered what the community needed to explore together during two workshops in March and April.
Champions also reviewed draft vision phrases and core City values that had emerged as themes across community, Council, and staff interviews. They refined those drafts and suggested that they should be part of the emerging Compass to be employed at the Council level. They responded to an early concept for how to share, test, and seek additions to listening campaign results during community workshops — an illustration of beneficial and challenging community and staff experiences and hopes for Fortuna.
Their feedback shaped the decision to organize material into the four tall banners in the format used at all six collaboration stations (Sections 5 and 7).
A way to explore a tension appearing across the listening campaign – how to balance Fortuna’s rich history while becoming a stronger community in the future – was discussed, including how to design it as a self-paced workshop exercise rather than a facilitated exploratory process. The group also honed an outreach strategy, with a focus on generating both broad participation and the kind of diverse, cross-community turnout that would make the results politically durable.
This session is where the Compass moved from a consultant's proposed synthesis in the Listening Campaign Report into a concept that had been shaped and tested by a first group of Fortuna residents and staff leaders. This step mattered both for what the tool became and for who can claim ownership of it.
February 3, 2026 • Fortuna Monday Club • 8 participants
4. Community Champions: Workshops Design Session
Fortuna’s a wellrounded City
— Champions design
session participant
We find a way.
We help each
other.
— Champions design
session participants
8 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 March 25, 2026 • Fortuna River Lodge • approximately 75 participants
5. Community Workshop 1: Imagine Future Fortuna
5A. Purpose & Design
Approximately 75 residents — including a few City staff, Council, and Planning Commissioner who live in Fortuna participated jointly as community members and City representatives — gathered at the River Lodge during a weeknight evening for the first of two community workshops, three weeks apart. The space was primarily organized around six “collaboration stations” representing major themes that emerged from the listening campaign with displays illustrating what neighbors, staff, and Council had said to start the conversation. Most stations were hosted by one or more staff and/or community volunteers. Materials and polling were in English and Spanish. Interpretation and childcare were avail able.
Just before the workshop, about a dozen East High School students added artistic flair to and briefly reviewed station materials about growing up and feeling at home in Fortuna. Because the listening campaign indicated that the wellbeing and future success of youth is a widely and strongly shared interest, participants were provided with participation materials that indicated their generation – a color-coded, folded orientation and survey card with color-matched sticky notes and star stickers inside. While generational information is not a primary result pre sented in this report, it will occasionally illuminate generational patterns.
Participants were welcomed by the Mayor, oriented to materials and stations in the room by facilitators and encouraged to participate fully.
Facilitators paused the proceedings occasionally to prompt participation in an online poll while displaying the responses as they came in (Section 6). The poll in English was displayed in the main hall and the same poll in Spanish displayed in a partitioned room. This Mentimeter platform extended the conversation online during the workshop and for a week after, reaching a broader and younger audience.
Participants were invited to review listening campaign results, add what was missing and place star stickers on what rang true of both printed materials and each other’s contributions. Participants weighed in on “guiding principles” – vision, values and decision filters – a “Compass” for decision-making.
Some materials were presented for information only (full text in Appendix A1–A3). Posters displayed how the listening and workshops process would inform the Strategic Plan and GPU Recommendations, what City governments do and do not do (and where their partners play a lead role), how City revenue is used, and the little-known fact that 40% Fortuna elementary students are from Spanish-speaking households – perhaps a better indication of community demographics than the Census.
One thing this workshop was designed for that is easy to understate: providing a large and diverse group of Fortuna residents with understanding of what their neighbors, staff, and Council members think and feel — together, in one room — before anyone asked them to set priorities or debate solutions. In a community that had not had that kind of collective reflection for a generation or more, if ever, that experience was itself significant. 9 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 5B. Shaping Fortuna's Compass of Guiding Principles: Visioning Exercises The listening campaign surfaced consistent themes about what Fortuna stands for, what it wants to be, and how it wants to make decisions. After having access to the Listening Campaign Report for almost a month, Workshop 1 was the public's first chance to test, confirm, and add to what had been heard. In addition to stars, sticky notes, and polls during the workshop, online polling up to one week following the workshop gave residents another structured way to weigh in on the Compass. See Section 6 for polling information and the Appendix for more visual and detailed results from the workshop.
Near the “neighbor's lounge” area set up for refreshments and visiting at Workshop 1, several poster exercises asked participants for their sense of Fortuna's identity and vision. These exercises ran alongside and fed directly into Compass development polling feedback.
Who Is Fortuna? Participants placed three stars each on items from a grid of two dozen options (plus participant additions) to indicate what best defines Fortuna today. Top choices (from options that were not exhaustive) were unambiguous and crossgenerational: the Rodeo (★23), Fortuna's weather (★18), parks, playgrounds, and trails (★17), small-town charm (★15), proximity to Headwaters and State Parks (★14), locally-owned businesses (★13), Redwood AutoXpo (★12), Apple Harvest Festival (★11), the relationship to the Eel River (★10), and Clendenen's Cider Works (★10). Downtown drew only two stars: a quiet signal that sits alongside everything else heard about the gap between what Fortuna could be and what it currently offe rs on Main Street. An overall picture emerged of Fortuna's identity rooted in events, nature, and local character. See Appendix B1 for a more complete list of star accounting.
The Friendly City. A free-response poster asked what "The Friendly City" means to participants. Responses captured a genuine warmth alongside honest critique: people wave to each other on less-traveled roads, chat with tourists, and pull over to help when someone is stalled on the side of the road (★2), “people living and working together, knowing each other and being kind” (★2). One wrote simply "needs to get more friendly"(★), mirroring feedback heard particularly in focus groups with teens and Spanish-speaking residents. See Appendix B5 for an image and more information.
Vision Drawing & Description: two companion posters – one for "the artsy types" and one for "the wordy types" — invited open-ended visions for Fortuna's future (more in Appendix B4). Written visions included a pitch for the farmers’ market to be moved to the park to avoid the wind and offer more family activities (★8 + yes!!!), creating an outdoor event venue on the Mill Site, small-town and country tourism experiences (horseback rides, nature spas), Spanish taught as a second language in town (★), farm-to-table cookouts, and large community events. Drawings included an indoor sports arena (soccer, basketball, volleyball), a farmers’ market accessible from the freeway, a movie night at the theater, and a fried chicken drive-thru (★2).
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
5B. Shaping Fortuna's Compass of Guiding Principles: Visioning Exercises (continued) How You Feel About the Future? A free-response poster asked participants to share their feelings about Fortuna's future in whatever form they chose (more in Appendix B2). Responses ranged across the emotional register — cautious optimism, genuine worry, and pointed generational clarity. Responses that received stars include a Gen Z-Alpha participant's that was among the most direct of the workshop: “it could go two ways,” either their generation is given the space to contribute and grow the community they have invested in, or they leave for opportunities not available here and Fortuna becomes a childhood memory. A Millennial wrote that they're worried about resistance to change but hopeful that Fortuna will learn to do better. A Gen X participant noted worry, and the need to include younger generation activities and jobs, and that “Humboldt is hurting.” A Millennial transplant from Southern California described themselves as a climate refugee who finds Fortuna lovely and sees its climate drawing more population. The responses reflect a community that cares enough to worry about the community’s future, particularly for younger generations.
What's Up in Fortuna? Participants were asked what's great, what's not so great, and the first three things participants would change – responses that received stars are included here. Great: small town values and relationships (★3), warm, diverse and friendly; kind City staff.
Not so great: need more spaces for young people especially in rainy season (★2), limited job and activity opportunities for teens, no movie theater, no economic vision. First three things to change: big box stores (★2), recruit and support businesses downtown, strategize on reducing the unhoused population, more club sports and activities for teens (“yes!”).
Which Communities Inspire You? Participants named communities they admired and what Fortuna might learn from them. Moststarred: Rio Dell for its clean entry and professional cannabis shops (★4), Arcata Theatre Lounge and Eureka Theatre as inspiration for reviving Fortuna's Main Street theater (★3), and Arcata's town square and Eureka's Old Town were named for their ability to serve both adults and young people (★), a town square with a lit Christmas tree (★3), Silverthorne CO for outdoor space and music (★), Redding and Medford for sports fields and facilities (★). An extended point about Truckee – which developed a tag line ("Basecamp for a Big Life"), a Legacy Trail, outdoor markets, and artist lofts that transformed the downtown — named it as a model for what deliberate investment in identity and infrastructure can produce. A Millennial participant from the Spanish-speaking community wrote that Fortuna is not seen as a place to locate your job or grow up, and asked “what is your motivation to come back or stay here?” Results from the Fortuna Vision Spectrum exercise became one of the most-discussed and referenced workshop results, which, while prompted as visioning, are reported with Station 6, What Our City Looks & Feels Like: Land Use & Character (Section 5C6), as they inform land use planning efforts.
It could go 2 ways. Either my gen and I are given the space to contribute and grow fortuna. Make Fortuna OUR town that we’re investing in protecting. OR… We leave town for opportunities not available here. Fortuna will hold space in our hearts as our childhood town, but it's not where we live. — Gen Z-Alpha participant (★) 11 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 5C. The Six Collaboration Stations: What Participants Emphasized & Added Dominant themes across the entire listening process – from interview training to focus groups to an initial staff workshop – uncovered and shaped a story to display to the community at large. Representative quotes and summary material was drawn directly from the listening campaign and organized into the following categories on long, upright banners at each station, where City staff, consultants, and/or volunteers engaged and encouraged participants to add to material about:
• What's working and worth protecting,
• Where the gaps are,
• Opportunities to improve, and
• A blank space was provided for participants to add “What’s Missing.” At a lobby table providing interpretation support, a handout was available with a Spanish translation of station materials. What follows are quote, theme, and sticky note highlights that received the most stars. The four upright station banners were present at both W1 and W2, therefore sticky note and star contributions are not differentiated by workshop and are all summarized in this section. Results from additional posters and worksheets introduced at W2 are described in Section 7.
5C1. Station 1: Our City Leadership & How We Participate This station surfaced Fortuna's governance tension most directly: deep pride in what staff and Council bring to this community, frustration with the absence of a shared direction that outlasts any one leader and hopes for a more robust array of voices to be engaged in future decision-making. Every group represented across this process — a diverse array of community members, staff, teens, Spanish-speaking neighbors, Council members, and business owners — named both sides of this tension.
What’s working and worth protecting: Appreciation of this process as a productive way to engage and produce a long-range plan (★28). Televised/online Council meetings (★5).
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
The main reason I would come to a workshop like [these] is if I knew I would really have a voice and it would matter. — Teen listening campaign participant quote at Station 1 (★5) 12 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 5C. The Six Collaboration Stations: What Participants Emphasized & Added (continued) Where gaps are: A diverse range of listening campaign and workshop participants share a desire for a clear, lasting City direction — and noted that level of cross-group agreement is rare and meaningful.
Popular opportunities: Interest in improving clarity of the City’s vision, sense of direction, and decision-making received ★32. Ideas about improving City communications and transparency received ★15.
Ideas participants added: Expanding City communications, access, transparency, and civic engagement (★17). Desired business services and the link between a need for economic development and City revenue (★13). At this and other stations, participants shared appreciation for the City hosting this kind of engagement process as a more productive way to be involved. 5C2. Station 2: Growing Up & Feeling at Home in Our City Helping young people feel engaged, stay in, or return to Fortuna was among the strongest cross-station themes, appearing independently at five of the six Collaboration Stations without being prompted. Points that received a lot of stars are highlighted below. Related issues came up at other stations.
What's working and worth protecting: Parks & Recreation programs for younger children and community events (★17), teens care and want to use their voice (★6), feeling safe and supported by the community (★5).
Notable gaps: Teens’ boredom and lack of options including structured activities that drop off sharply after elementary school and limited gathering spaces or businesses with appealing things to do” (★46). Spanish-speaking families and teens independently named a variety of types of interactions making them feel like they do not fully belong as part of Fortuna's identity (★20). —
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
Gathering spaces
teens can actually
call their own, and
families feel
welcome.
— Station 2 listening
campaign finding (★12)
Youth-led projects &
events
— Gen Z & Alpha
participant, Station 2
Embracing diversity in all
forms, so it doesn't feel
like a IYKYK [if you know
you know] club.
— Millennial participant, Station 6
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 5C. The Six Collaboration Stations: What Participants Emphasized & Added (continued) Popular opportunities and ideas:
• Expanding gathering places for teens (★7) and youth
employment and workforce development opportunities (★5). • More family-friendly options, including education and enrichment opportunities like Spanish classes and support groups for moms.
• Sports destination programming (★7) and attractive outdoor activities.
• A street market, social club, and music/event/movie venue/s, especially that welcome teens and young adults.
• Diverse food options, entertainment, and gathering spaces (popular across generations at other stations, as well). • Increasing education and enrichment options (★4) and
becoming a community where its diverse cultural spectrum is welcomed and engaged while honoring Fortuna’s history.
5C3. Station 3: The Economic Future of Our City
The need for economic development activity produced the strongest and most unanimous agreement across the entire process, from the earliest training of interviewers to the last staff-Council session. Every group — community members, staff, Council members, teens, Spanish-speaking neighbors, and 64 businesses in a community survey — said economic development is not optional. Staff underscored that they have cut services so deeply in recent years that business development providing City revenue generation is the only option for providing desired City services and achieving a new vision for Fortuna’s future.
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
Fortuna as sports destination — tournaments
bring revenue AND give youth reasons to stay.
— Listening campaign finding displayed at Station 2 (★7) Develop! Bring people off the 101.
Create jobs and destinations.
— Gen X participant, Station 6 (★)
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
5C. The Six Collaboration Stations: What Participants Emphasized & Added (continued) This widespread agreement is worth emphasizing. It is uncommon for a community and its government representatives to reach this level of shared urgency about anything, including economic development. Listening campaign frustrations named a past inability to attract economic development in the form of large commercial enterprises for fear of political backlash about assumed impacts on Fortuna’s character. Here, a clear message surfaced that pursuing growth and maintaining community history and character is not a dividing line but is a shared challenge of growing the right kinds of development activity in ways that honor what people love about this place while generating the revenue and jobs the City and community need. Highlights from a Station 6 exercise to help participants “balance” this strategic tension is reported in Section 7B, Table 4.
What's working and worth protecting: Adjacency to the freeway, river, forests, appeal to families, and existing historic and small-town character were noted to be and emphasized as strong economic development assets.
Where the gaps are: The need to capture retail (and generate City revenue and local jobs) before it flows out of Fortuna every time a resident leaves town to shop (★51). A need for improved healthcare access (★21), investment in the Mill Site (★19) and Main Street (★16), and easier access to living wage jobs and career pathways (★16) were specific interests. The City’s current permitting process is named by businesses and the development community as a real economic development barrier.
Popular opportunities and ideas about what was missing (many of which are interrelated):
• Development that provides living wage jobs and a career pipeline that starts early and keeps young people connected to Fortuna as a place of possibility (★42).
• Downtown vitality, tourism, increased entertainment options, and design standards for commercial development that preserves character drew multi-generational support (★38). • Developing the Mill Site as a mixed use and visitor-serving attraction for freeway traffic, and/or with facilities for regional workforce development (★30) which was a top-ranking City investment idea referenced in Section 7B1. • Prioritization of economic development activity that increases City revenue (★27). • A desire for greater restaurant variety was a thread throughout the process and across many stations, most prominently among teens and young adults, who named specific chains and food types desired. • Participants across multiple generations (in several stations) asked for consideration of a cannabis dispensary to keep dollars local and provide desired services.
Where does Fortuna's sales tax go?
Material from a City-produced informational poster at Station 3:
images of posters provided in Appendix A2
Of every $1 collected in Fortuna's 9.5% sales tax:
• 63¢ goes to the State of California
• 16¢ goes to Humboldt County
• 10¢ goes to the City of Fortuna General Fund
• 8¢ goes to Measure E (voter-approved local funding)
• 3¢ goes to County Transportation
• About 18¢ of every dollar stays with the City
• Nearby cities Eureka and Arcata collect 10.25% sales
tax — 3/4¢ higher than Fortuna's 9.5%
Need more sales tax revenue in Fortuna!
Music concerts, retail shopping, etc….
— Millennial workshop participant, Station 3 (★3)
Business Incubator to create new jobs.
— Gen X workshop participant, Station 3 (★3)
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 5C. The Six Collaboration Stations: What Participants Emphasized & Added (continued) Business survey highlights: A small poster summarizing results from a communityled business survey with 64 respondents (available as an Appendix to the Listening Campaign Report) found that local businesses' top concerns were consistent with what came up during the listening campaign. Fortuna's business community is engaged and wants Fortuna to thrive — and they have specific ideas about what would help, which participants added stars to: permitting processes are a barrier (★11), Fortuna needs to leverage outdoor access and character assets (★11); housing shortages impacting workforce attraction and retention and a limited labor market for youth (★10), the loss of economic anchors (timber and cannabis) has hurt the business environment (★9), and a lack of downtown vitality leading to retail leakage (★4). 5C4. Station 4: Our Outdoors & Public Spaces
Fortuna's outdoor assets — the Eel River, parks and their redwoods, trails — are a nearuniversal source of pride across every group that participated in this process. This element of strong Fortuna identity and pride is also underutilized as an economic asset and unevenly maintained as community infrastructure.
What's working: Community events are a major part of Fortuna’s identity and pride (★43). Natural beauty, parks, programs and facilities are very highly valued (★38). The volunteer infrastructure around parks, events, and public spaces is strong. Riverwalk trail and Eel River are loved (★33).
Popular gaps, opportunities, and ideas to address them:
• Events like Rodeo, Apple Harvest, and Auto Expo need to capture and extend the economic and social energy they generate (★78).
• Extending and improving the Riverwalk, including concerns about problematic uses and a wish for volunteer maintenance opportunities (★48). • A connected trail system that facilitates access to places people want to go – many outdoor spaces including the river don't feel fully connected to the rest of Fortuna (★21). One idea: becoming and marketing Fortuna as a “trail town”.
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
REAL River Access
— Baby Boomer workshop
participant, Station 4 (★7)
There is a clear disconnect – Riverwalk to town.
How can we connect them?
— Gen X workshop participant, Station 4 (★3)
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 5C. The Six Collaboration Stations: What Participants Emphasized & Added (continued) • While to some extent a topic for Stations 3+6, nightlife and gathering spaces like outdoor (or indoor) music venue/s and markets were popular ideas (★21). • The capability and resources to enable the City to maintain what Fortuna has before building more (★20).
• An infrastructure element for Station 5: improvements to sidewalks, accessibility, and bicycle facilities (★17) accompanied trail system hopes. • Improving river access for fishing and water sports was a popular idea to explore (★10).
• Support for the current pool project led by the Gene Lucas Center and McLean Foundation (★9).
• Capitalizing on Fortuna’s regional sports niche by expanding sports facilities, increasing youth activities, and becoming even more of a family destination – for instance, by improving indoor/outdoor sports facilities and/or providing outdoor activities akin to Eureka’s Skywalk – was noted as both a benefit to residents and an attraction for visitors and their dollars (★8). This came up at other stations as well.
5C5. Station 5: How Our City Works: Infrastructure, Services & Safety
What's working and worth protecting: Public safety drew the most stars of any category (★34) – police professionalism and responsiveness praised often across groups (★10), the community's broadly felt sense of safety (★10), with security as a core community value (★5). Appreciation was affirmed that the community can rely on City infrastructure (★15), that services are delivered reliably by a small, dedicated staff (★13) and, overall, for staff service, loyalty, and how much they do with little (★26). Pedestrian safety and connectivity drew ★15 simply because where sidewalks and paths do connect, people use and appreciate them.
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
Sidewalk & ADA
— Silent Generation workshop participant,
Station 5 (★6: all Baby Boomers)
Hotels are too far away from shops/stores, activities.
Travelers have to drive, can't walk into town.
— Millennial workshop participant, Station 6 (★3)
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
5C. The Six Collaboration Stations: What Participants Emphasized & Added (continued) The gaps, opportunities and ideas to address them:
• Pedestrian safety and connectivity concerns were a common topic throughout the listening campaign, and participants added emphasis to points made about sidewalk system disconnects (★54). A safe crossing at 12th and Newburg was the most-requested active transportation infrastructure fix across the entire process; desire for a connected sidewalk system; and walkability improvements that facilitate economic acti vity instead of customers driving to Eureka. Active transportation and accessibility needs were also listed at Station 4 (★17). Support for a trails system (★3). • Averting loss of more staff – officers lack adequate backup staffing, staff pay is not competitive, and staff are stretched thin with too many tasks and not enough people (★8). Officer retention through competitive pay, framed explicitly as a revenue challenge as much as a staffing one (★16). • Infrastructure: unlocking Mill Site investment (★10), and, like Station 4, an interest in accounting for and covering maintenance costs (★8). • Safety concerns associated with the unhoused population were raised across multiple groups, particularly teens regarding the lack of local services available for them or a need for increased law enforcement activity (★9). • Specific traffic safety needs regarding traffic flow and specific intersections drew ★7. • Asks for improved public or private transportation services drew ★2. • Numerous comments addressed a combination of economic development and land use planning ideas (related to Stations 3+6), and about supports for youth, families and community cohesion (Station 2).
If we want to
attract
professionals
like medical
staff, we
need to
provide
housing they
want.
— Gen X-Alpha
participant,
Station 6 (★2)
Address officer retention
through competitive pay
and to ensure adequate
backup — a revenue
challenge as much as a
staffing one.
— Listening campaign finding
shared at Station 5 (★16)
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5C6. Station 6: What Our City Looks & Feels Like: Land Use & Character The broadest range of material to engage participants was provided at Station 6: four station banners highlighting key land use issues that arose in the listening campaign, plus exercises that explored how to balance growth and character, downtown business type pre ferences, perspectives on housing, and development option preferences.
What's particularly working and worth protecting:
• Community character and identity drew a very high total topical star count across stations (★55), where people emphasized what they love: neighborly, feeling safe, space to breathe, clean, calm, family-oriented, close to nature, and that there is room to grow. • Main Street’s historic elements and events offer a downtown vibrancy that's already proven to build on (★13). • Community vision for Mill Site is strong and includes a lot of interests for mixed use, being connected to the Great Redwood Trail, and/or offering reasons to get off the freeway (★10).
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
5C. The Six Collaboration Stations: What Participants Emphasized & Added (continued) Notable gaps, opportunities and ideas to address them:
• A lack of unified community and economic identity is real, impacting community character and identity with the timber identity is gone and nothing to replace it (★15); fear that growth will destroy the small-town feel has itself prevented growth for more than ten years (★4); "the bigger you get, the more you lose that small town feel" (Council, ★4); clean and safe, but lacking direction (★3). • A tidal wave of support for pursuit of economic development opportunities and business types that enhance quality of life took the day (★75 on sticky note additions).
• Develop a new Fortuna identity and narrative — not a former timber town, not a bedroom community, but something Fortuna chooses (★25).
• While largely the realm of economic development (Station 3), keen interest emerged for greater restaurant and food diversity (★47) here and at several other stations.
• The love of what Main Street was has sometimes made it harder to become what it could be; it is underdeveloped and aesthetically weak, with little invitation to get out and walk and shop (★20).
Reinvigorate Main Street as a vibrant place with character protected by design standards that invite people to walk, eat, and stay (★20). • A shortage of affordable and workforce housing was named directly by the business community; new houses are gone as fast as they're built so young families can't find affordable options to stay; staff housing affordability affects recruitment and retention directly; state housing development mandates are real and Fortuna needs to lead the conversation rather than just react (★18).
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
5. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 1: IMAGINE FUTURE FORTUNA
5C. The Six Collaboration Stations: What Participants Emphasized & Added(continued) • A decade of resisting large commercial development on the Mill Site to protect small-town character has left this site empty and the infrastructure to attract development lacking, highlighting the unresolved tension between what Fortuna wants to preserve and what it needs to become (★18). Pursuing mixed uses on the Mill Site that attract visitors with a community-defined vision as a visible chance to show that protecting character and enabling growth can be the same decision (★28). • Burdensome, jumbled, and ad hoc permitting means developers choose easier options elsewhere; and lack of City vision hampers productive development, leaving staff spinning wheels without clear direction (★9). Streamline permitting with a clear, objective, user-friendly framework that makes Fortuna competitive for investment (★14).
• Housing access and affordability challenges (★18). A broad understanding that successful economic development requires more diverse types of housing, including for the workforce (★20). Lead a proactive housing conversation about growth tradeoffs before state mandates force the issue and there is clear guidance where housing types belong, including workforce housing (★9). • On cannabis policy, there was a lively range of views from "no" to "allow one professional, clean dispensary" to "we need the revenue — be Rio Dell not Eureka." • Many suggestions related to a desire for entertainment and events, like re-opening the movie theater (multiple sticky notes across generations, including ideas for a variety of creative uses for the space like a music venue for teens, open mic, and theater productions), concerts in the park, and a drive-in (noted as rare and a potential tourism draw).
Vision Spectrum Exercise: Participants placed one star along each of seven scales that offered examples of opposing visions for what Fortuna should become. The results were clear and became one of the most discussed and referenced outputs of the first workshop. When staff saw the results emerge, they described a new sense of clarity about community direction for planning efforts.
Results indicated that participants want Fortuna to be walkable, green, vibrant, and character-rich — not the same as it is, but recognizable as itself. Additional exercise posters that examined participants’ land use preferences are reported in W2 results, below. For details, see Appendix Section D1.
Activities, events,
places that will attract
young families.
— Millennial workshop
participant, Station 6 (★4)
Lesson Learned
While many creative approaches
and elements were incorporated
into both workshops to welcome
Spanish-speaking residents and
teens, almost none attended who
needed interpretation, and very
few teens or tweens participated. It
would likely take sustained efforts
to provide more welcoming and
engaging participation than
standard formats to indicate to
these groups that it was worth
their time and safe to participate.
Additionally, “going to them” or to
a space that feels safer to them is
usually a more productive form of
engagement with groups like
these, indicated in part by the
successful turnout of 12/12 people
invited to the fall focus group with
Spanish-speaking immigrant
community members and the large
number of high school students
who participated in online polling.
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 March 25 – April 9, 2026 • During and after Workshop 1 • 226 total participants
6. Community Polls
A combination of paper and online polls provided another format for feedback and guidance from a diverse array of participants. All polls were in English and Spanish, though an unknown number of Spanish-speaking participants completed polls in English, and an unknown number of people participated in more than one of the following polls.
6A. Workshop 1 Paper Feedback Guide Survey
On tri-fold paper cards provided upon entry, participants ranked five vision elements and five values that arose from the listening campaignto inform development of a draft Compass for W2 participants to test. Tables 2 and 3 illustrate some of those results. Survey cards (and participation materials within them) were color-coded by generation. Because the importance of youth often surfaced during the listening campaign as a community priority, there was a desire to understand if younger generations’ contributions differed from that of other generations. For more details, see Appendix Section E1.
Polls at a
Glance
40 Workshop 1 Compass Vision
& Values Paper Feedback
Survey
162
Workshop 1 Mentimeter
Poll (responses during
through one week after the
workshop)
24 Between-Workshops
Mentimeter
= 226
Poll responses
Overall
Rank
Element of Vision Paper:
Avg of 5
Menti:
Avg of 5
1 Vital, high-functioning economic engine 3.9 3.2
2 Community and government that finds a
way, and helps each other in the process
3.5 3.3
3 Leadership with clear direction and service 3.2 2.8
4 Complete connected community for all ages 3.1 3.5
5 Capable government and team that delivers 2.0 2.8
Of approximately 40
cards collected, 25
had complete vision
rankings and 26 had
complete values
rankings usable for
analysis. In space
made available for
suggesting other
ideas and making
comments about
preferred decision
filters, several
participants added
nuance.
Table 2. Paper survey Fortuna vision scores; averages of 5-point scale, 5 highest priority. 21 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
6. COMMUNITY POLLS
6B. Workshop 1 Mentimeter Vision & Values Polling
Overal
l Rank
Core Value Paper:
Avg of 6
Menti:
Avg of 6
1 Quality of Life: safety,
cleanliness, family life, care for
youth, parks, forests, and river
5.4 4.8
2 Connected, Caring Community:
close-knit feel, big community
events, volunteering, showing up
3.7 4.4
3 Economic Resilience: The status
quo isn't sustainable, generating
City revenue is essential
4.3 3.4
4 Clear Direction: Clear what
Fortuna stands for; consistent
decisions that outlast a leader
3.3 3.0
5 Community Character: Keeping
the historic feel, charm, and
access to the outdoors
3.0 3.2
6 Committed Service: Recognition
staff work hard, care about
community, deserve support
1.6 3.0
An online Mentimeter poll ran during and for a week after Workshop 1. It captured a broader and younger audience than the in-room paper cards – roughly 70 Gen Z and Alpha respondents weighed in on the last day the poll was open from Fortuna Union High School (FUHS) for a total of 162 participants (157 in English, 5 in Spanish). A final Mentimeter poll between workshops with 24 participants helped facilitators hone workshop design. See Appendix Sections E2 and E3 for more Workshop 1 Mentimeter results.
Responses to Mentimeter queries asking for “one word to describe the Fortuna of today” and “one word to describe the future you want for Fortuna”
Table 3. Paper survey Fortuna values scores; averages of a 6-point scale, with 6 as highest priority score.
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
6. COMMUNITY POLLS
6C. Between-Workshops Mentimeter Poll
The between-workshops poll was open for one week
between the two community workshops and reached 24
respondents — 23 in English and 1 in Spanish. Its dual
purpose was, based on requests at W1, to 1) provide an
opportunity for people who couldn’t attend the workshops to participate and 2) understand which W2 topics may need more time and space, and whether the direction
established in W1 was holding. See Appendix Section E4 for more Between Workshops Mentimeter results.
When asked to rank seven issues by urgency, "Fortuna
needs a plan” drew the most first-place votes among
English respondents. Healthcare close to home drew the
second, and young people leaving, third.
The single Spanish-language respondent ranked getting
around safely first — pedestrian safety, lighting, and
dangerous crossings — with young people leaving ranked
second. If Fortuna doesn't act, they wrote, interest will be lost. If the City does act on issues of urgency, their son will probably move back. That single response, from a Gen X
resident, represents the youth retention and walkability themes that appeared independently across every other
instrument and group.
Does Fortuna
need a vision?
Yes: 88%
(113 of 128 respondents)
Has Fortuna ever
had a vision?
65% don't know (75% in Spanish)
When developing a
vision, should Fortuna
look to the past, the
future, or both?
Both: 71%
Workshop 1 Mentimeter
n = 162 (English: 157 + Spanish: 5)
The difference between the in-room and online rankings is useful information. It shows thatthe vision is broad enough to hold both priorities:
economic engine and connected community belong together. The high school students' participation moved “connected community” from third place to first on the last day the poll was open — a clear indicator about what matters most to the youngest generation, and an understandable difference from older generations who are concerned about economic vitality and the City's fiscal solvency. The final Compass vision was drafted to hold both.
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
6. COMMUNITY POLLS
6D. Agreement Across Polls
Across three polls, different formats, and different
audiences, findings held:
• Fortuna needs a clear, lasting direction:
unanimous on paper cards, 88% agreement on the W1
Mentimeter, and the #1 ranked “urgent” issue in the
between-workshops poll.
• Quality of Life is the core community value:
ranked as #1 value on paper cards and W1
Mentimeter, across both languages. Defined
consistently as safety, family life, care for youth, parks, and access to nature.
• Economic development and City revenue are
the top planning priority: a "vital, highfunctioning economic engine" ranked top of vision elements in the paper survey. Top-ranking topic for the City’s focus in the W1 Mentimeter. Economic health
dominated responses to the question "If Fortuna gets
this right in the next 5 years, what changes for the
better?" in the between-workshops Mentimeter.
• Youth retention runs through everything:
named at five of six Collaboration Stations
unprompted, “care for youth” was part of the local
definition of “quality of life” and raked at the top by every generational cohort on the paper cards and W1
Mentimeter, and as the third most urgent issue in the
between-workshops poll.
Lesson Learned
The fact that a significant share
of the Workshop 1 Mentimeter
poll's participation was
accomplished in one day by
high school students indicates
both the power of the tool for
youth engagement and an
option for targeted outreach to
engage a broader set of voices
in local government. This type
of effective engagement was
also possible via a deliberate
relationship with the high
school garnered through a cohost of the teen focus group on campus and project
“Champions” that were
convened several times to
provide process guidance. In
addition, workshop participants
of all ages were delighted with
the ease of participation in and
immediate gratification of
visualized common ground via
an online poll. This may be a
tool that a small, capacitylimited City like Fortuna could use more frequently.
Keep that small-town/tight-knit vibe but give non-residents a reason to come to Fortuna.
Values. Put yourself in a young family's shoes today. What would you want and need to survive here?
— Mentimeter responses to: Is there anything the City shouldn't lose sight of, no matter what else changes?
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 April 11, 2026 • Fortuna River Lodge • approximately 75 participants
7. Community Workshop 2: Charting A Course to Future Fortuna 7A. Workshop 2 Overview
The second community workshop was a half-day Saturday working session — doors opened at 10:00 a.m. for participants to review listening campaign results and W1 work, with the workshop running from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Where residents were asked to add their voices to what the City heard during the listening campaign at W1, here, they were asked to share concrete future ideals and specific steps to get there. All materials were again in English and Spanish, and interpreters were available.
On entry, participants provided a draft Compass handout — Fortuna's proposed vision, values, and decision filters plus materials to provide feedback that were color-coded by generation. The draft was generated from listening campaign themes (Listening Campaign Report), refined by staff in November (Section 3) and the Champions in February (Section 4), visioning exercises in W1 (Section 5), and shaped further by polling feedback (Section 6).
Participants were encouraged to apply and test draft Compass principles as they worked through the stations to see if they resonated when put to practical use. The between-workshops poll results also informed W2 design, confirming which topics would need the most time and space and signaling that the Compass direction established in W1 was holding.
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025 -2026
7. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 2: CHARTING A COURSE TO FUTURE FORTUNA 7A. Workshop 2 Overview (continued)
During the opening session, former Eureka
Community Development Director Rob Holmlund
presented a challenge to participants to “manifest
with specificity.” Rather than naming general
aspirations, he explored visuals of Fortuna
neighborhoods alongside images from other
communities and planning concepts, encouraging
participants to describe specific, concrete futures to
provide Council and staff with clear direction. That
framing carried through the workshop's design table
worksheets and land use planning exercises.
Each of the six original collaboration stations was
augmented with a design table— a structured
worksheet asking participants what a great Fortuna
looks like in 2040 and what steps would get there.
Participants at Stations 1 and 6 also worked through
additional exercises to explore spending preferences,
visual preferences, and land use planning scenarios.
Fifteen attendees signed in at both workshops, and
word of mouth was the primary draw for W2 (★10),
significantly outpacing all other channels.
A note on what follows: Workshop 2 reporting covers
design table results for each station and augmented
exercises at Stations 1 and 6. The four-banner
display results (Points of Gain, Points of Pain,
Opportunities, What's Missing) were cumulative
across both workshops and are reported in Section 5.
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
7. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 2: CHARTING A COURSE TO FUTURE FORTUNA 7B. Collaboration Station Design Tables & Exercise Results — Workshop 2 7B1. Station 1: Our City Leadership & How We Participate City Spending Preferences Exercise: The popular centerpiece at Station 1 asked each participant to allocate 10 stars, treating each as $100,000 of a hypothetical $1,000,000 individual budget, across a broad list of options (complete ranked list in Appendix C).
Highest priorities (16–25 stars): trades education in partnership with schools and the college (★23), tourism and city marketing (★21), police (★20), economic development (★18), parks — existing and new (★18), business recruitment and retention programs (★17), support for the pool project (★17), and recreation and youth programs (★16).
Other priorities (11–15 stars): parks maintenance (★15), trails — existing and new (★13), river access (★13), events — existing and new (★13), more restaurants including Jamba Juice, Chick-Fil-A, and Panda Express as a written-in addition (★13), developing the Great Redwood Trail (★11), and services and housing for the unhoused (★11).
The pattern is consistent with what surfaced during the year: economic development and quality of life for families are not competing but complementary ideas. Engagement outreach requests reflected the ongoing Station 1 theme of wanting clearer, more accessible communication from City government.
Station 1 design table participants largely affirmed what the banners showed — that distance from City government is real, that language is a barrier, and that engagement works when it's genuine and informal. There was appreciation for existing online Council meetings (★3),. Additional contributions called for advertising Council meetings regularly with what will be covered and why, actively using social media to promote agendas (not just as a broadcast channel), and using the Chamber of Commerce as an information hub. Several participants acknowledged the need for more staff capacity dedicated to growing what people want to see. Several participants called for more leadership from the Spanish-speaking community, and/or access to meetings in Spanish.
Talk to people and meet them where they are… how do you know what people need if you don't talk to them?
— Gen Z-Alpha W2 participant, Station 1
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
7. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 2: CHARTING A COURSE TO FUTURE FORTUNA 7B. Collaboration Station Design Tables & Exercise Results — Workshop 2 (continued) Spanish
included
during
meetings.
— Silent
Generation W2
participant’s
ideal future at
Station 2
Lesson Learned
The City spending exercise was a very
popular and simple way to gather and
simultaneously illustrate community
interests. This and several other
preference exercises displayed at both
W1 and W2 to augment the core upright
gain-pain-opportunities-what’s missing
banners arose at the last minute. They
would have been even more productive
if the consulting team had provided staff
more time to consider what they
wanted to seek community feedback,
especially after they became familiar
with the power of this form of public
engagement at W1. For instance, in this
case, it would have been useful to gauge
responses on a current hot topics about
whether to continue spending more
than the City generates on popular
facilities like the River Lodge and Depot
Museum, and in the case of W1, to
solicit images that City planners wanted
to test in visual preferences.
7B2. Station 2: Growing Up & Feeling at Home in Our City Station 2 design table participants sharpened the “feeling at home” theme without substantially departing from what upright banner contributions surfaced. The most substantive additions came from Spanish-speaking participants: workshops designed specifically for Latino parents and teenagers, getting the word out about programs and opportunities through channels other than social media, and including diverse community members in events and programming decisions.
Diversity is
encouraged
while holding
onto our
historical feel
and character.
— Gen X W2
participant’s
ideal future at
Station 2
Photos submitted by B. Conley to illustrate
Fortuna from a young person’s viewpoint.
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Theater is closed. No arcade. No music venue. It feels flat and boring here. — Gen Z Teen Focus Group Participants (★15)
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
7. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 2: CHARTING A COURSE TO FUTURE FORTUNA 7B. Collaboration Station Design Tables & Exercise Results — Workshop 2 (continued) 7B3. Station 3: The Economic Future of Our City
Station 3 design tables drew ★42 across pre-printed quotes and summaries that illustrated what the listening campaign told us about residents’ and businesses’ current experiences and examples of hopes for what great looks like, making it among the stronger design table responses.
Sticky note contributions about “What great looks like in 2040” (★20) centered on economic diversification: value-added agriculture and specialty foods (★4), marketing Fortuna as a North Coast gateway leveraging the Eel River, redwoods, and trails (★3), manufacturing and higher-paying jobs rather than just retail (★3), and internships at local businesses willing to take in and teach students (★2).
Naming specifics about “How to get there,” participants specified early career opportunities from companies with a local hub (★2), and one taped a list of suggestions to a worksheet, receiving support for the following points in particular:
• Partner with local education to strengthen work experience and internship opportunities in Fortuna businesses and
promote youth entrepreneurship through competitions,
mentoring and support. (★4)
• Create a community led structure exclusively focused on economic development to develop action plans, attract
resources and monitor progress. (★)
We need to allow
new industry to
come into Fortuna
+ area to create
jobs. There needs
[to be] a balance
so we do not just
become welfare or
retirement
community.
— Baby Boomer W2
participant (★2)
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Partner with local education to strengthen work
experience and internship opportunities in Fortuna
businesses and promote youth entrepreneurship
through competitions, mentoring and support.
— W2 participant, (★4)
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
7. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 2: CHARTING A COURSE TO FUTURE FORTUNA 7B. Collaboration Station Design Tables & Exercise Results — Workshop 2 (continued) 7B4. Station 4: Our Outdoors & Public Spaces
Station 4 design table participants affirmed banner findings and added contributions that were largely cross-station in nature — tourism, accessibility, and trail connectivity ideas that also appeared at Stations 5 and 6. Some additions included: supporting residents who live near the river to visit and care for those areas (★); including diverse community members in all City planning for parks and outdoor spaces (★); developing horse riding stables with wine and beer tasting at the end of the trail, and river campgrounds modeled on the Presidio in San Francisco. Tourismoriented contributions called for creative highway signage to get travelers off 101, and for more marketing that connects outdoor spaces to lodging and dining.
7B5. Station 5: How Our City Works: Infrastructure, Services & Safety Station 5 design table participants largely affirmed what the banners showed. The design table contributions underscored a desire for pedestrian, ADA, bicycle, and trail accommodations, and in river-town connectivity. Tie-ins with economic development included reinforcing a listening campaign observation that visitors are challenged to walk through town (★2). Appreciation for “friendly and helpful” staff was underscored (★6), including a specific mention about the accessibility of police, including visibility at events on foot, bikes, or horseback. 7B6. Station 6: What Our City Looks & Feels Like: Land Use & Character Station 6 was the most complex station of the two workshops, with a large variety of ways to share preferences and ideas that would inform both the Strategic Plan and GPU Recommendations.
Station 6 design table participants named several issues that received affirmation from others, including a vibrant, walkable Main Street: "I remember Main Street was just vibrant — the theater was going, people were on the streets. How do we get back to that?" (★7), and inspiration from Arcata's town square and Eureka's Old Town, for adults and youth alike, drew ★5. Design standards that protect character while enabling economic growth were noted to not be in conflict (★2). Housing requests included: diverse options so that workers at all income levels have places to live (★2), low-cost housing made easy to build (★2), and affordable options for single-parent households.
Participants envisioned the Mill Site developed with combined multi-use commercial, residential, and open spaces alongside public access. One participant called for vibrant colors for downtown with “less beige.” [Connect] downtown + the Riverwalk area (and Mill Site)… to encourage flow between different city spaces.
— Gen X W2 participant (★)
Coordinate large volunteer events to get a lot done in a day – have a benefit at the end, like a BBQ & live music.
— W2 Participant (★)
Get people off
101 to use our
outdoor
spaces, stay in
our hotels, and
eat in our
restaurants.
— Millennial W2
participant
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 7B. Collaboration Station Design Tables & Exercise Results — Workshop 2 (continued) Future Fortuna Vision (Visual) Preference Posters, W1 and W2 combined: Two posters with images representing a variety of community spaces, streetscapes, architecture, landscape design, and activities asked participants to place stars on images that should guide Fortuna's future — five stars per poster (a list of broad categories and star counts is in Appendix D2). Top choices from both workshops were unambiguous and inform land use character goals for GPU Recommendations: walkable downtown streetscapes and storefronts (★77 combined), youth sports and activities (★58), the Fortuna Theatre (★45), historic streetscapes and downtown (★43), Main Street fairs, markets and events (★36), and landscaping and forest integrated into a historic downtown streetscape (★21). Few stars marked large-format retail, distribution centers, futuristic development, and unattractive multi-family housing.
How Residents Feel About Housing: feedback garnering the most support included the following (see Appendix D3 for the range of responses):
• Expensive! ★3
• More owner-occupied less rentals ★3
• Low income and senior housing needed – we all spend money! ★ • Senior apartment housing ★
Commuting map and housing preferences: A printed infographic showed Fortuna's commuting inflow and outflow, drawn from Census data (see Appendix D7 for the poster and participant comments on commuting patterns). Roughly 75% of working residents commute out of town each day, taking their labor and daily economic activity with them.
Participants were asked whether this is a problem: the near-universal response was yes, which some participants connected directly to the economic development urgency.
7. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 2: CHARTING A COURSE TO FUTURE FORTUNA 31 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
7. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 2: CHARTING A COURSE TO FUTURE FORTUNA 7B. Collaboration Station Design Tables & Exercise Results — Workshop 2 Honoring Our Roots Building Our Future
The good
stuff:
we strike the
right balance
Keep the small-town vibe,
make it more walkable and
bikeable ★5
Medical care – invest in
supporting providers to stay ★3
Studio apartments. Preserve
historic architecture, let chain
stores move in but no huge
renovations ★2
We are falling behind on
amenities, trying to chase small
town feel. This is why we can’t
keep doctors, vets, and new
people moving here ★3
Affordable Owner-Occupied
homes ★3
Need to set a goal for growth
that balances these issues ★2
New businesses and jobs, housing
options, amenities for all ages…
[printed examples] ★2
The risk if we
go too far:
we lose the
balance
The town dies, our population
is aging with not enough young
blood to continue the town. If
there is no opportunity, we’ll
keep leaving ★2
Need economics to bring in $$
& keep our kids ★
We lose our roots, but the
town survives and younger
generations will have more
opportunities
Gen Z & Alpha, Millennials, Gen X, Baby Boomers, Silent Generation Table 4. Example responses in the “balancing roots and future” exercise at Station 6.
Design standards that protect
character WHILE enabling
economic growth — they are not
opposites.
— Workshop 2 participant, Station 6
Design Table, ★2
Balancing How Fortuna Honors
Our Roots & Builds Our
Future, Workshop 1 and Workshop 2
combined: A mapping exercise asked
participants to navigate a tension that
has arisen since the earliest
conversations in this project about the
future of Fortuna – how to honor
Fortuna's roots while building its future.
Four quadrants were offered for
participants to place examples within,
representing both the benefits if we
balanced how we “Honor Our Roots”
and “Build our Future” right and the
downsides if we don’t. Participants’
contributions depicted in Table 4
received the most stars.
Lesson Learned
At W2, the upright gain-painopportunities-what’s missing banners on the walls (and some of
the preferences exercises)
continued to attract the most
engagement, with less interest in
the design table worksheets –
evidenced by significantly fewer
sticky notes and stars than on the
banners. Some of this difference
was likely due to a much greater
visibility and access comfort of
engaging with material at eye-level
on the wall rather than on a table
with limited seats. Some
participants understood the
nuanced difference of a focus on
ideating steps to their desired
future, some did not, and the
results were less specific with
fewer stars than the upright
banner contributions.
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 7B. Collaboration Station Design Tables & Exercise Results — Workshop 2 Manifest with Precision: Participants placed stars along spectrums to vote on specific future scenarios to help staff get clear about community land use planning preferences – a table of top-ranking results are included in Appendix Section D4.
Overall, there was a high level of agreement about:
• A desire for a noticeable, but not substantial difference in Fortuna’s look and feel, with new buildings and businesses
• A reasonable number of new housing units that “don’t overdo it” and retain a neighborhood feel with a gentle density (ADUs, duplexes, starter homes in the right places)
• Slightly more jobs than workers in Fortuna
The dominant picture: moderate, intentional growth that can be felt as positive change without erasing what makes Fortuna feel like Fortuna. One interesting tension – which would be helpful to explore in the GPU process – lies in a roughly equal desire for little and significant population growth. Participants do not want stagnation, but they want growth that Fortuna can recognize as itself.
Your Ideals & Limits for Downtown: Two W2 poster exercises at Station 6 asked participants to indicate types of settings that would encourage them to visit downtown, and specific business types they would approve for downtown or that they would prefer vacancy over that use (a complete list of preferences is provided in Appendix D5 and an approve/vacant preference star tally for roughly 30 business types is provided in Appendix D6). The strongest approvals: climbing gym (★13), upper-floor residential (★11), nightclub or live music venue (★9), arcade (★9), microbrewery or craft taproom (★8). The strongest rejections: vape and tobacco shop (★9 for vacant), homeless shelter (★8 for vacant), sober living and transitional housing (★5 for vacant), tattoo and piercing parlors (★5 for vacant), McDonald's or similar (★5 for vacant). Written-in additions:
concert or music venue or theater (★2), cannabis dispensary (★), dance studio (★). This exercise gives the GPU specific, community-derived guidance on what types of uses residents want to see prioritized in downtown commercial zoning.
7. COMMUNITY WORKSHOP 2: CHARTING A COURSE TO FUTURE FORTUNA We need more affordable housing.
Can't afford housing in Fortuna.
Cost of rent is too high.
Home ownership — not more rentals
— Baby Boomer & Millennial participants, Stations 5 + 6 (★2) 33 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025 -2026
Feedback received across stations, on posters
designed to collect feedback, and via
Mentimeter included: • This is great! I’m so excited to see city leaders and community collaborating!
(Added:) YES!! ★3
• It’s nice to have the opportunity to be heard • Well marketed + delivered, thank you for the childcare
• Bringing the community together to share
goals and visions
• Thank you! So much effort to help our
people. We needed this.
• [Email address] has ideas to share on
outreach the city could do
• More general public surveys like this • Love my town :) • Wow! Strong work Fortuna Town! • We need direct input from our Latin American, Central American, and immigrant
communities.
• Continue surveys and events like this every
year to understand our desires and needs as
things change quickly.
March 25 & April 11, 2026 • Fortuna River Lodge • approximately 150 participants
8. Community Workshops Feedback
It’s nice to
have the
opportunity
to be heard. —Millennial, W1 feedback
One participant attached a list of tangible
improvements that could be made regarding
specific workshop logistics, encouragement to
get a (participation information or Mentimeter)
QR code to more high schoolers, and the
presence of too much signage.
One of the interpreters also shared suggested
improvements for engaging more Spanish-
speaking community members, including
outreach ideas and logistical suggestions for this
type of free-form workshop design. A posted
question echoed by several verbal requests --
“is there an online participation option for this
workshop?” -- inspired quick action to design
and publicly release a second Mentimeter poll.
Word of mouth was indicated as a successful
outreach medium(★18), as well as Facebook
(★10), flyers (★5), and other social media (★4).
Thirteen participants said they would return for
the second workshop – and 15 did.
This input evening is VERY fantastic! Continuing these gatherings as a close-knit community is vital for common growth.
— Silent Generation, W1 Feedback Card
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 The work to date and coming out of two community workshops produced a clear body of direction. The Fall Staff Workshop and Staff-Council Joint Session were designed to receive that community direction and turn it into something the City can act on. Altogether, the four sessions over a one-month period — beginning March 25 and concluding April 30 — formed a single arc, where community voice informed staff judgment that was confirmed by elected leadership before going into the Strategic Plan and GPU Recommendations. This arc was planned in rapid succession deliberately, to avoid the common planning process failure of being drawn out over too many months (or years), allowing momentum, memory, and energy to dissipate, frustrating everyone’s ability to track what is happening and why.
Staff Workshop 2, April 21 • Staff-Council Joint Session, April 30
9. From Community Voice to City Direction
9A. Spring Staff Workshop: April 21, 2026
Fortuna Monday Club • 11 department directors and deputies Ten days after Community Workshop 2, eleven department directors and deputies gathered to translate the full year of listening plus two public workshops and polls into the beginnings of future guidance. The task: take clear community priorities and begin to translate them into actionable steps for each department. Staff knew enough about community needs and preferences to map what was most urgent and most impactful, and to begin developing strategy maps into priorities that would be presented to Council.
Staff mapped priorities into two matrices – one for internal-facing and another for external-facing – to organize them by urgency or importance and the level of meaningful impact. Items in the urgent- and high-impact zone became immediate Strategic Plan commitments. Items in the important-but-not-urgent zone informed a longer-term horizon. Staff starred the priorities they felt most strongly about and collaboratively moved sticky notes across the matrices. These were rapid exercises, not meant to be precise, but to concentrate limited staff availability to generate a first cut of their collaborative thinking. The emerging priorities were translated by department teams (or groups of departments that work closely) into more specific strategy maps by issue, which informed the spine of the staff presentation to Council just over a week later.
Help us help the community understand what it
takes to get what they want.
We need to be able to charge the full costs of
projects, including maintenance over time.
Competitive pay is critical — Council needs to
treat this as a priority, not a wish.
— Staff recommendations of Council’s role for joint session 35 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
9. FROM COMMUNITY VOICE TO CITY DIRECTION
9A1. Internal-Facing Staff Priorities
The internal matrix — organizational work that needs to happen inside City Hall for the community-facing work to succeed — produced a sharp picture of where staff energy concentrated. Those priorities are outlined in Table 4, below.
The sales tax measure drew the most stars of any single item on either matrix (★9, highest impact), positioned firmly in the urgent-and-high-impact zone. Staff retention drew ★7 (tied for highest impact) as did protection of the four-day work week as a specific retention strategy. Applying the Compass as an operational tool drew a very urgent ★5 — a signal that staff wanted the guiding principles they helped build to show up in how they run meetings and make decisions, not just in planning documents. Incorporating the true cost of deferred maintenance drew ★4 and was also tied for highest impact.
Lesson Learned
While this crucible-style succession
of workshops was productive, it
would be better suited to a project
with a budget for more consulting
staff to process this quantity of
information rapidly, especially
considering late additions of
generationally-coded feedback
mechanisms and a substantial
number of preference exercises.
While AI is sometimes reliable to
assist in tallying large amounts of
information, in this case checking
and revising its initial work may have
required more labor, on balance,
especially when it comes to counting
stars and assessing generational
color coding. As it was, the Strategic
Plan and GPU Recommendations
were produced with an overall sense
of the workshop results; however
this detailed report was completed
the following month so that the
large amount of detail could be
better organized and truthed.
Revenue growth: develop a roadmap, what milestones
unlock what City investments?
— Staff external priorities mapping exercise, April 21 (★5) 9A2. External-Facing Staff Priorities
The external matrix captured priorities requiring community-facing action, permitting, funding, partner engagement, and/or Council authorization. The most-starred external priorities: in the position judged to be both the highest importance and impact by a wide margin was making a decision about the River Lodge (★8); permitting audit and timeline compression were noted to be more urgent (★8); generating revenue, increasing the City’s social media presence and expanding Spanish language access each received ★5, all noted as somewhat urgent, with the language access receiving the highest impact assessment on the map. Many of the priorities mapped here were tasks that would be tackled by administratively-focused staff, indicating how important “getting the house in order” is for external-facing staff to feel effective.
When faced with strategy maps to populate, they generated more external-facing priorities related to infrastructure, parks, and so forth (Table 5 in Section 9C, below).
9A. Spring Staff Workshop: April 21, 2026 (continued)
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What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
9. FROM COMMUNITY VOICE TO CITY DIRECTION
9A. Spring Staff Workshop: April 21, 2026 (continued)
9A3. Collaborative Development of Strategy Maps & Council Presentation Materials
Staff worked in department pairs to develop and refine strategy maps — structured sketches that prompted them to briefly outline the priority, its lead and team, conditions of the current reality and ideal future, near-term commitments, longerterm aspirations, specific questions the General Plan Update process should answer (if relevant), and the related role for Council members to play for each priority. Strategy maps covered staff retention, the sales tax measure, long-term cost accounting, and organizational capacity, economic development, revenue generation, development process streamlining, pedestrian safety and access, youth programs, parks and trails, design standards, housing, infrastructure and maintenance, public safety staffing, and community communications and outreach.
Staff then provided feedback on each other’s maps for refinement — adding stars for emphasis, surfacing coordination opportunities, naming gaps, and refining their work. Staff discussed what they most needed from Council to be successful. The highest-starred Council roles were to provide grant writing capacity (★10), support for tax measure outreach per polling results including canvassing and a volunteer committee (★9), the need for an economic development-focused staff role, understanding the costs of deferred maintenance, funding for Mill Site infrastructure prerequisites (roundabouts, interchange improvements, utility capacity) as a condition for attracting development (all ★4).
After the workshop, the consultant and City Manager turned staff strategy maps into a framework for staff to complete presentation content over several days before the joint session with Council. Several priorities were added when the group realized they were missing from important topics that arose throughout the year, like public communications (Table 4).
We need Council to understand the real
importance and costs of deferred maintenance,
the cost of not having a maintenance plan, and
to be clear about making deferred
maintenance decisions.
— Staff recommendations of Council’s role, preparing for joint session 37 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
9. FROM COMMUNITY VOICE TO CITY DIRECTION
9B. Staff-Council Joint Session: April 30, 2026
Fortuna Monday Club • 11 staff, 4 Council members, and one member of the public The final workshop of the Future Fortuna series brought together the staff leadership team, several deputies, and four of five Council members for the first time in this process. The design principle was for staff to present what had emerged throughout the year as clear top interests and opportunities, and for Council to ask questions, signal where they stood, and make commitments.
City Manager Amy Nilsen opened by walking through the year-long process "trail", including 63 listening campaign interviews across community, staff, and Council, two focus groups, polling, two community and two staff workshops, and the contribution of a community-led business survey of 64 businesses. The results are built on the vision and priorities that arose from community, Council, and staff together for a successful future Fortuna. 9B1. The Compass in Practice
Early in the session, the group reviewed Compass elements and recommended uses for it as the guiding principles framework built from listening campaign and workshop results, and to transcend and inform City priorities and decision-making. Near the end of the workshop, after priorities were reviewed, the group returned to exploring examples of how to use the Compass as an operational tool, and fielded questions about where key elements of the tool arose. One Council member shared that the core values felt too general to be of use as a decision tool and asked for more specificity. The response produced a useful exchange — that the supporting detail about where each key element came from in the process was included in the W2 participant handout cards, is included in the Strategic Plan, and that the Compass is a field tool, not a substitute for the full document.
Having the core values at the center provides a foundation for future Council members as opposed to just [for] us. It’s not us making the decision — it’s the Fortuna community telling us what to do. We’re just implementing it. — Council member, joint session on April 30, 2026
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We have to go further than just paying our bills. We need this [tax measure] to pay our bills and we need this to invest in our future. — Council member, joint session on April 30, 2026
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
9. FROM COMMUNITY VOICE TO CITY DIRECTION
9B. Staff-Council Joint Session: April 30, 2026 (continued) Staff presented a real scenario to test the Compass together: the Vancil forest acquisition. The City had received notification that a Land and Water Conservation Fund grant had been awarded, requiring a lot line adjustment, decisions about surrounding land, and a commitment to maintaining the acquisition. The group worked through the Compass decision filters applied to that specific project: Can we afford to maintain it, not just acquire it? Does it honor what makes Fortuna, Fortuna? Does it help young people see a future here? The exercise surfaced a genuine question about whether accepting a grant and acquiring new parkland is the right move when maintenance capacity is already stretched — and what the alternative, the land developed into housing, would cost the community in terms of what it was trying to build. 9B2. Staff Priority Presentations
Staff presented priorities to Council by department, touching on the current reality, future ideals, and key tasks to get from here to there (Table 5). On the economic development priority, one Council member drew the connection between retail leakage and job creation explicitly: the 75% of working residents who commute out of town each day (referenced in Section 7B6) are not just taking their labor elsewhere, they are taking their grocery runs, their hardware purchases, and their evening spending.
On infrastructure, the discussion of long-term cost accounting turned concrete: staff described how the City had been charging below full cost for water and sewer installations, subsidizing development from rate-payer funds without a transparent policy decision to do so. The rest of the priorities presented are illustrated in Table 5, below, and the details became part of the Strategic Plan and GPU Recommendations.
A conversation about the ¾ cent tax measure was candid. A Council member raised the political difficulty directly: the City had asked voters before, and the problems it was meant to address were not completely explained and supported. Staff acknowledged the history and made the case for why this time is different:
there is now a plan, a community mandate behind it, and a clearer connection between the revenue and specific outcomes. Staff named what they needed: Council members to champion the measure publicly, to support the formation of a volunteer campaign committee, and to ensure that all City representatives speak consistently to the plan and the rationale as informed by polling results. 39 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
9. FROM COMMUNITY VOICE TO CITY DIRECTION
9B. Staff-Council Joint Session: April 30, 2026 (continued) 9B3. Types of Support Staff Requested for Success
The closing portion of the workshop was explicit about what roles staff needed Council to play going forward to achieve the priorities discussed:
• Champion the tax measure publicly and back it with a volunteer community committee.
• Name economic development a City priority and provide staff the capacity and support they need, including dedicated grant-writing capacity.
• Support competitive pay as an essential budget priority, not a wish. • Allocate funding for and approve infrastructure projects aligned with the plan.
• Trust staff to exercise ministerial judgment on design standards and permitting decisions — and resist softening requirements when applicants push back in public meetings.
• Lean on the community mandate that emerged through this process as backup for making hard decisions.
• Consistent, transparent treatment in every decision-making situation, with no exceptions.
Staff also noted that embedding the Strategic Plan in staff reports, performance evaluations, and the annual staff-Council review would give the Plan institutional staying power beyond changes in City Managers or Council composition. One Council member observed that having core values at the center leaves a foundation for future elected officials who were not part of building this Plan.
We have to go further
than just paying our bills.
We need this [tax
measure] to pay our bills
[and] we need this to
invest in our future.
— Council member, during joint
session on April 30, 2026
Dedicate staff time to economic
development and grantwriting.
Support the tax measure with
poll results, outreach, canvassing
and a volunteer committee.
— Staff identification of Council roles in
pursuit of the City’s financial security
Mentimeter poll responses between workshops: if Fortuna doesn’t act on my top issue in the next five years? Does act?
40 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026
9. FROM COMMUNITY VOICE TO CITY DIRECTION
Table 5. Staff priorities presented to Council as they were organized into the Strategic Plan and GPU Recommendations. 9C. What the Staff Workshop & Joint Session Produced
Staff Workshop 2 and the StaffCouncil Joint Session completed the democratic arc this process
was designed to traverse into a
new era for Fortuna leadership,
where what the community
wants and what the City is doing
are the same thing, making the
possibilities much more realistic.
The strategy maps produced at
the Spring Staff Workshop and
shared with Council became
direct inputs to the 2026–2036
Strategic Plan and the GPU
Recommendations.
Table 5 maps each staff priority
sketch to the Strategic Plan
priority it informed and the GPU
element it connects to.
Staff Priority Sketch Strategic Plan Priority GPU Recommendations Staff retention & pay Organizational Resilience, Staff
Retention, Pay & Succession
Staffing capacity assumptions in implementation programs Economic development & revenue
generation
Economic Vitality & Revenue
Generation
Economic Development Element; Mill Site priorities; design standards
Sales tax measure Fiscal Sustainability Revenue-generating land use policies Long-term cost accounting Fiscal Sustainability Maintenance feasibility requirements for new development Infrastructure & safety Economic Development & Pedestrian Safety & Connections
Public facilities and services; health and safety;
transportation and circulation
Development process streamlining Economic Vitality Ministerial approval pathways; permit process reform Design standards Community Character & Land Use Objective design standards; GPU design policies Pedestrian safety & access Infrastructure & Connectivity Pedestrian and trail requirements in new development Youth & recreation programs Youth Opportunity & Retention Zoning for youth-serving uses; safe routes Parks, trails & outdoor spaces Outdoor Recreation & Environment Trail corridor policies; maintenance funding mechanisms Housing Housing ADU support; workforce housing types permitted outright Community communications &
outreach
Civic Engagement & Communication Public engagement standards; Spanish-language requirements
Public safety Staff Retention, Pay & Succession Health & safety, public facilities and services 41 of 42
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A focus on economic development is urgent and not optional. Young people must be able to see a future here. Fortuna’s outdoor identity and town character are genuine assets worth protecting, investing in, and leveraging. The City needs clear direction that outlasts any single leader. And the people of Fortuna, when given a genuine chance, show up to be heard.
That kind of harmony across a wide range of voices over time is not common. It is meaningful to see the same unprompted values, ideals, and priorities surface from a teenager in a focus group, a multi-generation Spanish-speaking neighbor’s sticky note at a community workshop, a survey of businesses, a City department director mapping it on a priority matrix, and a Council member articulating the same thing in a one-on-one interview — all without having heard each other’s responses.
This is what the Strategic Plan 2026–2036 and the GPU Recommendations are built from. Every priority traces to specific, verifiable needsthat specific people, across a variety of groups, expressed. The Compass — Fortuna’s vision, values, and decision filters — is drawn from the same well and should serve City representatives and communities alike for years to come, no matter the changing conditions on the ground or in funding streams. When hard decisions come before Council, the record documented here is the backup.
This isn't meant to gather dust. Put it to work — City and community alike!
10. What the Whole Process Demonstrated
Bringing the community together to share goals and visions.
Thank you! So much effort to help our people. We needed this.
Love my town :)
Wow! Strong work Fortuna Town!
— Workshop participants’ feedback
A thread runs through every step, every session, and every group in this process: when Fortuna residents, staff, Council members, teens, Spanish-speaking neighbors, and business owners were each asked open questions independently, they said the same things. Not approximately the same things. The same things, broadly, repeatedly. What emerged from the full arc is what Fortuna said, as a small yet diverse and representative sample of the community doing the speaking.
The process was designed to surface and then test whether that consistency was real and turn it into clear strategic guidance . The listening campaign asked open questions. The workshops showed participants what others had said and asked them to respond and emphasize. The polling ran in parallel and engaged significantly more young people. The staff sessions translated what was heard into operational terms. The staff-Council session handed the translation to elected leadership for confirmation and a clear articulation of the role they are requested to play in seeing it through. At no point did any single voice or group get to set or redirect the agenda. 42 of 42
What follows are images of workshop and working session products and/or more detailed compilations of results not included in Sections 5–7 about community workshop results in the What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026.
Most participant contributions were handwritten on sticky notes or directly on posters and are represented in italicized text. Illegible or uncertain handwriting is shown in [brackets]. One or more ★s indicate where participant/s “liked” a sentiment with star sticker/s – (★5) indicates how many stars were applied to a specific sentiment or observation.
A color-coding system was used as an experimental effort to identify generational interests and preferences due to the prevalence of concern for younger generations. Because these specifics were not critical to development of City strategy, this information is only tallied in some instances. Challenges this experiment presented were the difficulty in discerning colors of some types of star stickers in a range of photographic lighting, and in processing the sheer amount of content (the reason this report followed the associated planning documents).
A colored box icon indicates a sticky note comment from someone of the corresponding generation. “Likes” or votes for a given sentiment or observation are represented by black stars in most cases, or in limited instances, by generationally representative colors of hearts where that information was tallied. Color-coding key:
Red sticky notes and hearts (stars) for Gen Z & Alpha
Green sticky notes and hearts for Millennials
Blue sticky notes and hearts for Gen X
Yellow/gold sticky notes and hearts for Boomers
White sticky notes and hearts (in images, silver or black stars) for the Silent Generation □ Written directly on a poster
Community Workshops Appendix:
What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025 - 2026 APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A1 of A17 Table of Contents
A. Informational Postings A2
A1. What a City Does & Doesn't Do A2
A2. City Spending Posters A4
A3. Station 2: Did You Know? A4
B. Visioning Poster Exercises A5
B1. Who Is Fortuna? A5
B2. How do you feel about the future? A6
B3. Help The City Do Better A6
B4. Your Vision of Fortuna: Drawings & Words A6
B3. The Friendly City & What's Up in Fortuna A8
C. Station 1: Our City Leadership & How We Participate A8 D. Station 6: What Our City Looks & Feels Like: Land Use & Character A9 D1. Vision Spectrum Results Detail — Broadly Categorized A9 D2. What's Your Preference? Visual Image Posters A9
D3. Which Communities Inspire You & How You Feel About Housing A11 D4. Manifest With Precision A12
D5. Your Ideal Downtown Fortuna A12
D6. Your Ideals & Limits for Downtown A13
D7. Commuting to Work: Fortuna's Inflow & Outflow A14
E. Polling & Workshops Feedback A15
E1. Write-In Responses on Paper Survey Cards A15
E2. Vision Word Clouds: Workshop 1 Mentimeter A15
E3. Vision & Values Poll: Workshop 1 Mentimeter A16
E4. Inaction & Possibilities Word Clouds: Between Workshops Mentimeter A17 Area What This Includes
Streets & Sidewalks Local road maintenance, sidewalks, storm drains, streetlights, local traffic signals, pedestrian infrastructure Parks & Recreation City parks, recreation programs, facility rentals (Monday Club and River Lodge) Public Safety Fortuna Police Department, code enforcement, emergency preparedness Water & Sewer Water system, wastewater treatment, utility billing Land Use & Planning Implement state law and guidelines, including for environmental permitting; zoning, building permits, General Plan, development review, design standards Economic Development Business attraction, development incentives, Main Street/Mill Site planning City Facilities City Hall, community buildings, public spaces Communication City website, public notices, community engagement, Council meetings A. Informational Postings
A1. What a City Does & Doesn’t Do
Working Together for Fortuna's Future: Understanding Who Does What — And How We Can Partner Fortuna's future depends on many organizations working together. The City plays a vital role, and so do our partners. This guide helps us focus our energy where it can make a difference — and where partnerships are key.
What the City of Fortuna Does
The City provides local services, manages local land use, and shapes community investment priorities.
At Today's Workshop
When you have an idea or recommendation:
If it's something the City can act on directly: Jot it on a post-it and share on the “What's Missing” sheet at any station! That's what we're here for.
If it requires a partner: Name the partnership needed. The City can't do it alone.
Both kinds of recommendations are valuable. Knowing who needs to be at the table helps good ideas become real action.
The City's planning tools:
• General Plan — Long-term vision for land use, housing, circulation, community character • Strategic Plan — Organizational priorities, service levels, resource allocation APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A2 of A17 APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A3 of A17 Priority City Role Partner Role
Youth Retention Parks & Rec programming, public gathering spaces, pedestrian safety
Schools (career pathways), CR (workforce training), Employers (jobs), Businesses & Nonprofits (youthtargeted services) Mill Site Development Zoning, local permits, incentives Caltrans (interchanges), PG&E (utilities), Developers (investment) Housing Affordability Land use policy, permit streamlining County (assistance programs), State (funding, RHNA), Developers (construction) Career Pipelines Economic development, youth engagement Schools, CR, Employers (internships, jobs, training) Healthcare Access Zoning for facilities, economic development Healthcare providers (recruitment), County (public health) Partner What They Handle
Fortuna Union High School District & Fortuna Elem. With local property taxes: K-12 education, school facilities, after-school programs on school sites, youth sports leagues College of the Redwoods Higher education, workforce training, career pathways, adult education Humboldt County Social services, mental health, public health, housing assistance programs, Sheriff (unincorporated areas), elections, property assessment State of California & Caltrans Highway 101, state highway interchanges (Kenmar, 12th Street), state regulations (e.g. housing development requirements), Great Redwood Trail development oversight
Chamber of Commerce, Local Employers & Businesses Private business development/investment, jobs, career opportunities, workforce needs Healthcare Providers Hospital, clinics, specialist recruitment, medical services Nonprofits & Faith Organizations Food assistance, youth mentoring, crisis support, community programs, houseless support, Gene Lucas Center PG&E Electricity and gas service
Special Districts Fortuna Fire Protection District, Harbor District, Rohner Community Recreation and Park District, Palmer Creek, cemeteries Bear River Band of Rohnerville Rancheria Tribal services, potential housing/amenity partnerships What The City’s Partners Do
Many community priorities require collaboration with organizations that have their own governance, funding, and expertise.
Where Partnership Makes the Difference
Some of Fortuna's biggest priorities explored here today require both City action and partner collaboration:
A2. City Spending Posters
City staff created and displayed two posters explaining City revenue and budgeting at Station 2.
A3. Station 2: Did You Know?
40% of Fortuna elementary students are Hispanic/Latino, signaling that a major portion of the community is, as well, even if some are undocumented and relatively invisible to the Census.
APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A4 of A17 B. Visioning Poster Exercises
B1. Who Is Fortuna?
Workshop 1 only, image in Section 5B. Participants were asked to place three stars on items that best describe Fortuna today.
Highest star counts Moderate to few star counts
The Rodeo ★23
Our weather ★18
Parks, playgrounds, and trails ★17
Our small-town charm ★15
Proximity to Headwaters & State Parks ★14 HUGE!
Our locally-owned businesses ★13
Redwood AutoXpo ★12
Apple Harvest Festival ★11
Our relationship to the Eel River ★ 10
Clendenen's Cider Works ★10
Written in:
The redwoods — tourism
Gene Lucas Community Center
Pool
Our friendly residents ★6
Fortuna Fireworks Festival ★6
Fortuna Museum Depot ★5
Our restaurants ★
More restaurant diversity ★4
Get city people, tourists from the avenue into town. expand! Our schools ★3
Add more sports tournaments ★★
Music venue for teens
OTHER: Gene Lucas Community Center ★
If utilized to its fullest
Downtown ★★
Residential neighborhoods ★★
Our Chamber of Commerce ★★
Daffodil Festival ★★
The Brewery ★★
Our logging legacy ★
Important to know who we are
and what made Fortuna unique
and special. What are proven
successes? What makes people
come, where do they go to spend
their time and money?
— Baby Boomer participant, Station 1 (★3)
APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A5 of A17 B2. How do you feel about the future?
It could go 2 ways. Either my gen and I are given the space to contribute and grow fortuna. Make Fortuna OUR town that we’re investing in protecting. OR… We leave town for opportunities not available here. Fortuna will hold space in our hearts as our childhood town, but it's not where we live.
I’m worried about resistance to change, but I’m also hopeful that we will learn to do better More tourism, attractions visible from the freeway
I’m somewhat worried in general. Need to include the “younger” generation (in) activities, jobs. Humboldt is hurting
□ Skeptical
Our economy has cratered with the lose of pot & timber. Need to fund anchor business to replace I see the climate attracting more population. As a SoCal transplant, I consider myself a climate refugee living in Fortuna. It is lovely ★
Not good with the Democrat regime in Sacramento
Good! Keep the small town feel!! Walkable + bikeable
B3. Help The City Do Better
Make it easy to build low-income houses
More general public surveys like this
How many staff have urban/city planning degrees or education? We’re a good home base, but why? Who are we?
B4. Your Vision of Fortuna: Drawings & Words
Workshop 1 only. Participants were asked to share what they envision, in words or images. Written descriptions:
• Teach[ing] Spanish as a second language is needed to be available in fortuna ★ • Revitalized without losing the community feel
• Farm to table food
• Town cookouts
• More large community events
• Farmers’ Markets: Move them to the Mill District - expand it and make it visible from the freeway. In winter, convert it to a food truck mall • 10th street is a wind tunnel, even on sunny days. Please move them to the Park. We can enjoy shopping, and kids can play. Vendors won’t have their canopies blown away. ★8 +(yes!!!)
• Small town/country experiences in tourism: horseback rides, nature spas, nature tourism • Use the Mill Site as an event space for outside activities/events, like circuses, so all the work of putting on frequent events doesn’t fall to the town government APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A6 of A17 APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A7 of A17 B5. The Friendly City & What's Up in Fortuna
Workshop 1 only, “What’s Up In Fortuna” image in Section 7B. Participants were asked to share what they think is going on in Fortuna, and expound upon what “The Friendly City” means. • People wave to each other when driving past on less traveled roads. People say “hello” or “excuse me” when passing on the sidewalk. Locals are willing to chat with tourists. People will pull over to help when someone is stalled on the side of the road ★★
• People living and working together, knowing each other, and being kind. I love our community! ★★ • Needs to get more friendly ★
• We are supportive of every worthy fundraiser and work parties • Ownership, community, safety, friendship, home
• Inclusivity, diversity, getting to know one another
Highest star counts: Moderate star counts:
Partner with schools/college to develop
trades ed. + Facilities ★23
Tourism/Marketing ★21
Police ★20
Economic development ★18
Parks (existing + new) ★18
Business recruitment-retention programs
★17
Support pool project ★17
Recreation/youth programs
(existing + new) ★16
Parks maintenance ★15
Trails (existing + new) ★13
River access ★13
Events (existing + new) ★13
More restaurants: Jamba Juice,
Chick-Fil-A, Panda Express ★13
Developing the Great Redwood Trail ★11
Services/housing for homeless ★11
Staff recruitment + retention ★10
Library / Biblioteca ★10
Water & wastewater infrastructure ★9
Sidewalks ★9
Improved ped/bike facilities ★9
Public art ★9
Code enforcement ★8
Enhanced local transit ★8
Destination sports facilities ★8
Street trees/landscaping ★8
Infrastructure readiness at the Mill Site ★8
Street pavement maintenance ★7
Outdoor event space/venue for events (free)
★7
Street lighting ★6
Stormwater/flooding infrastructure ★6
C. Station 1: Our City Leadership & How We Participate
City Spending Preferences Star Tallies
Workshop 2 only, images in Section 7B. Participants placed 10 stars, each worth $100,000 on their top ten priorities for City spending.
APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A8 of A17 D. Station 6: What Our City Looks & Feels Like: Land Use & Character D1. Vision Spectrum results detail – broadly categorized:
Workshops 1 and 2, image in Section 7A. Participants were asked to place a star on each of the following items on the end of a spectrum that matched their preferences:
Invest in art and murals: ★23 agreed vs. ★2 preferred to not waste time or money on art Change with the times: ★20 agreed, vs. ★3 preferred a focus on sticking with traditions A cute commercial riverfront: ★20 agreed vs. none preferred an industrial riverfront Prioritize walking and trails: ★17 agreed vs. ★3 slightly preferred a focus on cars and parking Busy and bustling community: ★16 agreed vs. ★5 preferred cozy and quiet Investing in street trees and landscaping is a waste of money: ★16 disagreed vs. ★1 agreed D2. What’s Your Preference? Visual Image Posters
Workshops 1 and 2, images in Section 7B. Two posters where participants placed stars on images they want to guide Fortuna's future: 5 stars per poster, 10 total. What follows are general interpretations of types of depictions, and in many cases, those descriptions incorporate multiple images. 20 or more stars on images that depict: 5-15 stars on images that depict:
Walkable downtown streetscapes and storefronts ★77
Youth sports/activities/training ★58
Fortuna Theatre ★45
Historic streetscape/downtown ★43
Main Street fair/market/gathering ★36
Landscaping/forest integrated into historic downtown streetscape ★21 Fortuna AutoXpo ★15
Agree more community gatherings
Mid-century storefront ★10
Modern, multi-story mixed-use downtown ★10
Historic home ★7
Futuristic development ★7
Suburban residential ★7
RV park ★5
Amazon warehouse/distribution center ★5
Dangerous game
APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A9 of A17 D
3. Which Communities
Inspire You & How You Feel
About Housing
Workshops 1 and 2. Participants were
asked to share about communities that
inspire them and about how they feel
about housing.
Housing: how do you feel about it?
Low income and senior housing
needed– we all spend money!
Senior apartment housing
Expensive! ♡
□ More owner-occupied less rentals 3
Reliable options for transportation!
Important that elders can still feel a
sense of [illegible]!
Affordable housing, Habitat for
Humanity model
More affordable utilities or included
Too many vacant houses, just empty,
not selling
More single-family housing
More clean, maintained friendly
housing at an affordable cost
Affordable “owners” housing i.e.
townhome for 1-2 people, buildings in
walkable communities, upstairs owner
[illegible] etc… So many renters, not
enough owners
APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A11 of A17 D5. Your Ideal Downtown Fortuna
Workshop 2 only, image in Section 7B. Are you ready for Fortuna's downtown to evolve? What would get you there more often? Or deter you? Two axes:
• Vertical: whether downtown activity and setting are attractive to you or repel you • Horizontal: examples of businesses and/or settings you prefer or would avoid I would visit downtown: Type of Business
Wheelchair supply & maintenance — plus accessible lot 2 Events — street vendors, children's activities, music, festivals Food Market, Gym, Office Supply / Photocopies (Mercado de alimentos, Gimnasio, Material Oficial / Fotocopias)
Disco/dance venue, art store, galleries/museums, microbrewery restaurant, artisan tasting room, free co-working spaces, (Discoteca, tienda arte, galeria/museos, restaurante microb[rewery}, sala de degustacion artesanal, espacios co-working free, [illegible]) I would visit downtown: Type of Setting
• Better lit at night
More walkable: create a car-free/ped friendly road
As a non-Fortuna resident, I would shop there if it was more unique: markets, concerts in the parks, but it has to earn it in general! 2
Allow UBER or TAXI for more nightlife
I'll avoid downtown: Type of Business
Nightclub — avoid
Pet Store; Vape Store
Autozone and O'Riley's have an auto tool loan program.
I'll avoid downtown: Type of Setting
Loud with too many bars with unlit parking and unmaintained walkways.
Interests: Types of Businesses
Café/diner
Hardware store
Food market Natural foods
Toy store
Office supplies/copying
Co-working & Maker Space
Axe Throwing Bar
Indoor Vertical Farm
Tool Lending Library
Repair café
Food trucks
APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A12 of A17 D4. Manifest With Precision
Workshop 2 only, images in Section 7B. What exactly do you want in Fortuna’s Future? Category Ideal Future State (categories with highest star counts) Stars City look &
feel
I notice a difference — new buildings and businesses we didn't have before. Not substantially different, but I can feel the change
★10
New housing Don't overdo it — a good new number of housing units, but keep it reasonable
★10
Jobs Fortuna has slightly more jobs than it has workers ★9 Housing
density
Gentle density: ADUs, duplexes, starter homes in the right places — keep neighborhood feel
★8
City growth The City has grown and changed a lot — new buildings, housing, businesses; architecture is new and contemporary ★5
Population A little population growth ★5
Population Significant population growth ★4
Housing
types
Mix it all up — apartments, condos, townhouses, shops, highend, low-end, workforce★4 D6. Your Ideals & Limits for Downtown
Workshop 2 only, image in Section 7B. Star Voting Table – Left: Approve for Downtown; Right: I'd rather a storefront was vacant Type of Business Approve Vacant
Write-in ideas:
□ Concert/Music Venue/Theater (Teatro) ★2
□ Cannabis Dispensary ★
□ Dance Studio ★
□ Downtown Xmas tree decorating, window display contests, potted planters in front of stores ★ □ Bank, Hardware store, cafe
□ Boutique bodega, art supplies, cat cafe
Skateboard store / Tienda de patinetas ★6 0
Vape & Tobacco Shop ★ ★9
Pawn Shop / Casa de empeños ★4 ★2
McDonalds or similar ★2 ★5
Funeral Home / Funeraria ★2 0
Upper-floor residential / Viviendas en plantassuperiores ★11 0 Microbrewery or craft taproom ★8 0
Sober living–transitional housing facility ★ ★5
Liquor store / Licorería [Handwritten note] we are an old lumber town ★ ★2 Axe Throwing Bar ★7 0
Tattoo and piercing parlor ★2 ★5
Private School / Colegio privado ★3 ★
Nightclub / Discoteca ★9 0
Adult/Elder Daycare Center ★6 0
Climbing gym / Gimnasio de escalada ★13 0
Podcast Studio / Estudio de podcasts ★6 0
Chain Dollar Store ★ ★4
Large Retail Chain / Gran cadena minorista ★4 ★5
Tow truck and impound lot ★2 ★4
Drug Rehabilitation Center 0 ★4
Automotive Repair Shop ★2 0
Payday Loan Center / Centro de préstamos a corto plazo ★2 ★2 Dog Boarding center / Residencia canina ★5 0
Laundromat / Lavandería automática ★2 ★
Homeless Shelter / Refugio para personas sin hogar ★ ★8 Postal Shipping Center / Centro de envíos postales ★4 0 Bail Bonds Office / Oficina de fianzas 0 ★3
Salvage Items Store / Tienda de artículos recuperados ★6 0 Accounting or Law Firm ★4 ★
Arcade ★9 0
APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A13 of A17 D7. Commuting to Work: Fortuna’s Inflow & Outflow
Workshop 2 only.
Is this a problem?
YES 4 4 4 3 3
NO 2
Any study on the profiles of inflow? Our guess, lots of family/friends/visitors (esp grandparents & grandkids). How can Fortuna serve them better and attract more coming to visit and stay?
We need more businesses hiring people in town
Are the inflows coming from smaller towns? Are the outflows going for professional jobs? Office Work? Our housing/community is better than Eureka’s so I’d live here either way.
Bring people into the city to work also bring in $ [illegible], etc… Downside is gas pollution.
How do we work w/County to solve common problems like limited transportation for people working outside Fortuna?
Inflow may also include retirees and work-age transplants from various areas. They bring in $ and resources as well. What helps them settle in and invite more to come if so desired? Overall, county wages are peanuts. Many have to have second homes to make good wags far away.
Employers only offer under 30 hr jobs, forcing workers to piecemeal jobs. NOT GOOD This means we’re not offering opportunities to our residents so that they can work those jobs. It also means professionals can’t find housing here.
Bedroom community households tend not to participate in the town, they tend to be spectators. Is that good for community development?
APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A14 of A17 E. Polling & Workshops Feedback
E1. Write-In Responses on Paper Survey Cards
Workshop 1 only
Other/missing core values:
Education
Unity – we are currently a divided community
Housing (as part of quality of life)
Respect for diversity
All (listed values) are important and all are connected Other/missing elements of vision for the future:
People want access to land to practice land-based economics and build seed-totable economics More activities for kids, especially in winter. Variety and nightlife for adults.
Need thoughtful bold leadership, not same old same old
Questions Council should ask when making decisions:
Will young people consider building family here?
How do we fit in the state's larger economy?
How do we allow diversity to flourish and ensure belonging for BIPOC community? Comments provided:
YouTube meetings very helpful! Thank you!
Insane leadership in Sacramento is wrecking Fortuna
This input evening is VERY fantastic! I’m grateful it happened! Continuing these gatherings as close knit community is vital for common growth.
E2. Vision Word Clouds: Workshop 1 Mentimeter
Responses to “one word to describe the Fortuna of today” Workshop 1 Mentimeter | n = 141 respondents in English, n = 5 in Spanish Boring (29), sunny (10), small (10), friendly (7), beautiful (7), wet (6), cold (6), fun (5), lacking (4), good (4), clean (4), wonderful (4), nice (4), sleepy (3), welcoming (3), potential (3), lovely (3), amazing (3), calm (3), family (3), lively (3), progressing (2).
Responses to “one word to describe the future you want for Fortuna” Workshop 1 Mentimeter | n = 123 respondents in English, n = 3 in Spanish Fun (15), thriving (13), vibrant (5), safe (4), clean (4), happy (4), alive (3), destination (3), diverse (3), beautiful (3), friendly (3), successful (2), family (2), prosperous (2), active (2), welcoming (2), educated (2), exciting (2), innovative, welcoming, child-friendly, safe, diversity.
APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A15 of A17 E3. Vision & Values Poll: Workshop 1 Mentimeter
Is there anything the City shouldn't lose sight of, no matter what else changes? (English n=89, Spanish n=3) Substantive responses (filtering out entries like "idk," "no," "Dc," and a lawn care advertisement):
• Change is inevitable. Don't get stuck holding onto the past because there's no space for future generations there. • Keep that small-town/tight-knit vibe, but give non-residents a reason to come to Fortuna. • Part of what makes Fortuna what it is are the events and the "hometown" feel. • Keep the old-timey feel, as well as the beautiful murals. • How much we work together as a community. Youth are our future, they are who we are passing Fortuna onto. If we do not make room to engage youth, Fortuna will have no future. • Values. Put yourself in a young family's shoes today. What would you want and need to survive here? • They need to do more or have more available to teenagers to help keep them out of trouble. • The youth (La juventud)
• Keep kids from doing drugs.
• The city needs more reliable and consistent income without continuing to raise taxes. We need to encourage better choices for shopping — we are now forced to go to another town oronline.
• Small business is great but we shouldn't have to travel three hours for all the big items we need or rely on Amazon. We want local shopping options that don't break the bank. • Support locally owned businesses and finish the pool as well as bring back the theatre. • Bringing in community events and tourism. Make recreational areas open and inviting to youth. Keep the streets clean and safe . • Community voices. Continue surveys and events like this every year to understand our desires and needs as things change quickly. • Include more of the Spanish-speaking population (Incluir más a la población hispanoparlante) • Respect for diverse and vulnerable populations.
• We need direct input from our Latin American, Central American, and immigrant communities. (originally in Spanish: Necesitamos la opinión directa de nuestras comunidades latinoamericanas centroamericanas e inmigrantes.)
• Land-based livelihoods and value-added processing.
• Reliable transportation systems for students to get to school, jobs, or activities. • The Farmer's Market and the auto expo.
• The schools, public library, Rohner Park, and museum. • Keeping parks open and as parks. Our town is small — enjoy the homey feeling. Restore what we once had and possibly add more. • We need to keep things safe and well-designed before we expand our city limits. • Abandoned sites and locations.
Single-word responses: Downtown, employees, safety, parks, rivers, Main Street, the nature, the people, the community, the trees, hope.
APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A16 of A17 E4. Inaction & Possibilities Word Clouds: Between Workshops Mentimeter If Fortuna doesn't act on my top issue in the next five years, what is the result? Between-Workshops Mentimeter | n = 20 respondents in English, n = 1 in Spanish • Decline cluster: population decline, economic collapse, loss of tax base, loss of city services, broke, continued recession • Exodus cluster: Fortuna becomes a bedroom community, leave to spend money, go to Ferndale, businesses will not thrive • Identity/safety cluster: no character, loss of city revenue, less community, less safe, less attractive, less retail traffic • General: failure, decline, stagnancy, lost opportunities • Respondent in Spanish: interest will be lost
If Fortuna gets this right in the next five years, what changes for the better? Between-Workshops Mentimeter | n = 18 respondents in English, n = 1 in Spanish • Economic health: economy (3), progress (2), jobs, revenue stays in Fortuna, increased tax base, stable population growth • Quality of life: health (3), housing, livable wages, atmosphere, income, liveability, healthcare, sustainable employment • Community vitality: a great place, a busier downtown, more focus as a community, welcoming, prosperity, advance • Population: population increase, viable community, increase in city services, character, tourism, expansion • Respondent in Spanish: my son will probably move back APPENDIX -- What We Built Together: Future Fortuna Workshop Results 2025-2026 A17 of A17 Change is
inevitable. Don't
get stuck
holding onto the
past because
there's no space
for future
generations
there.
— Workshop 1
Mentimeter
participant in
response to "Is there
anything the City
shouldn't lose sight
of, no matter what
else changes?"