Advanced Topic Workshops

These one- to two-day specialized sessions offer detailed information to help communities that are ready to explore specifics types of smart growth and conservation tools and implementation. In addition to presenting scheduled workshops across the West, the Sonoran Institute will work with local governments or organizations to offer these workshops locally on a fee-for-service basis.

•Planning for People & Wildlife Workshop

On June 7th and 8th, 2011, a workshop was held at the Best Western Great Northern Hotel in Helena, Montana to provide wildlife managers, elected officials, planners, citizens, rural landowners, and the conservation community with the tools they need to effectively plan for development while protecting wildlife and their habitat, and conserving ecologically important lands.  Click here for more information.

• Rural Community Design Workshop
Currently this workshop is only available in the Northern Rockies region. Read more at Building from the Best of the Northern Rockies. 

• Community Visioning and/or Public Engagement
Participants gain skills in public process design, public engagement strategies, workshop facilitation, and community visioning processes. This workshop can help any agency or community group that plans to engage in a lower-budget visioning process or to develop effective community engagement for planning processes. 
Community Visioning Tool Kit (coming soon)

• City/County Collaboration
Intended for local jurisdictions interested in improving or initiating city and county regional collaboration, this workshop includes the reasons to collaborate, intergovernmental agreements formalizing cooperation, and a facilitated working session on how to initiate cooperation.

• Planning for Hazards
Wildfire and flood are major concerns in the West. This one-day session covers the basics of implementing hazard ordinances and how to ensure your land use code meets your community goals.

• Regional Collaboration
Increasingly, local governments and agencies must look beyond their own jurisdictional boundaries to solve community problems such as transportation, affordable housing and watershed protection. This workshop includes information on best practices as well as significant group time for identifying possible next steps.

• Public Lands Disposal 
Most communities are unfamiliar with navigating the complexity of public land agency land disposal processes. This training is designed to prepare citizens and community leaders to evaluate and advocate on behalf of federal land disposal proposals that ensure the public interest is both served and represented.