The much anticipated Vision Long Island workshops took place this past week. The Village of Farmingdale and Vision Long Island invited residents, business owners, community members and other "stakeholders" to help shape the future of our community. The group effort, Farmingdale's Future, was the start of a public visioning to fuel Main Street improvements and to shape the master plan of the village for the next 30 years. On behalf of the Village Board of Trustees, I would like to thank all those who attended the meetings, especially those who braved the elements on Saturday morning to participate in the walking tours of our town. At the opening meeting the participants were asked to tell us their hopes and horrors of our community and their favorite and least favorite areas in Farmingdale. The walking tours gave the attendees firsthand looks at many of the areas of interest and concern. The participants then returned to Howitt where they reported on their experience to the other groups. They then broke up into design teams where they had an opportunity to put their ideas onto paper and then make a presentation to the group. The amount of thought and effort that they put into their designs and presentations was truly remarkable. The members, young and old, spent a great deal of time laying out what they thought would make our town a better place to live. While many of their wishes were "pie in the sky", involving major capital projects and multi-jurisdictions, many were simple and definitely possible. The Vision LI design team will take these ideas and the results of the other exercises and assemble them into a collective vision for the Village of Farmingdale. It was very rewarding to witness the cooperation and teamwork that took place. While opinions on what was good and bad, what should be changed or left alone varied, the resounding message was clear, Farmingdale is a great place to live and they all want to see it get better for the future. There were many very good ideas presented, ideas that will be looked at very seriously as the board develops our master plan. I hope all those who participated will continue to stay involved in the process by coming to the future visioning meetings as well as our trustee meetings. The future plans of Farmingdale are off to a great start thanks to Vision Long Island and the special group of stakeholders who took part.