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| All About De Leon | P & M Festival | D. H. S. | Toward 2000 |
While there appears to be a strong desire within the city of De Leon to develop and maintain a separate identity from surrounding areas, it is important to remember that you must not alienate these areas in doing so. Rather, focus on your unique strengths to identify your individuality while building on your relationships with the rest of Comanche County to strengthen De Leon's economic base. The City of De Leon has many assets on which to build a more viable economy.
De Leon needs to do some things to identify and promote its uniqueness, develop sound strategies to expand its economic base, and improve city services--all of which will greatly help De Leon feel good about itself. There is too much truth in the statement that "despair breeds despair." De Leon needs to turn this around to "success breeds success." Start small, with easy steps that can be accomplished rather quickly. At the end of each successful step, celebrate! Publicly recognize what's been accomplished.
The elements are all here for De Leon to have a successful future. To become a growing, vibrant community takes only a few people willing to roll up their sleeves and go to work. Once this nucleus begins to exert effort, it will begin to show some successes. Then this nucleus needs to expand to include more and more of the community until the entire community is involved. But the work is not on big jobs, it is on small ones that can be achieved quickly. The big ones come later after De Leon has seen the results of the smaller efforts and sees that it can accomplish things.
De Leon's problems have evolved over a period of time, and it will take both time and a plan to accomplish your desires for De Leon. A plan must have small, easily accomplishable steps, with tangible results that can be measured. The plan must encompass the entire community in its design and implementation.
There are a number of short term, accomplishable recommendations that the review team has provided. As noted above, the most important thing is to get the entire community involved in trying to find ways to accomplish its goals. We want to repeat, "success breeds success." A few celebrations at the successful conclusion of an activity which has involved a large number of citizens will lead to a feeling of accomplishment that will carry over into other activities. Look through the short-term suggestions, pick out one that you know that you can do, and get started!
Each of you individually must decide what it is that you want to do--what kind of project you want to tackle. There are enough tasks for everyone. Each small step, every accomplishment, no matter how limited, is movement in the right direction toward achieving De Leon's goals. It can be done! There is no problem facing De Leon that cannot be solved by the people living in the community. It is your choice, your decision; you can do it. ne Texas Rural Development Council can only help you to help yourself.
