GRANVILLE — The Town of Granville needs community help.
Through a survey, the town is seeking opinions from citizens to help decide what their future community will offer.
Chief of Police Craig Corkrean said about a year and half ago he approached town council about building a community center.
With council’s blessing, Corkrean worked with Jim Nolan, a WVU professor, and his sociology students, to create a survey asking people within the community what problems might need to be addressed in town.
Brooke Bleisfus-Hennen, an intern with the police department, helped organize the survey and made it available to the public so the town can get the feedback it needs.
“When everyone answers, we’re going to go through all the survey data and kind of focus on what are the most important issues that need to be addressed with the community center when it gets up and running,” she said.
The survey is available on Granville’s website and Facebook page. Corkrean said it is mainly for Granville residents to answer. Visitors, employees or anyone who has connections to Granville can also participate.
“We need to know what the physical building is going to look like and what we want to accomplish with it. The ultimate goal is to build a stronger community. We think we can with a centralized location,” he said.
Corkrean hopes to see forums, classes and mediation between community members and town employees. He said he believes it will be a way to solve community problems.
“I want the community to tell me what they think their problems are. Just because I think of it as a problem they may not, so we may not being seeing eye-to-eye on our issues,” he said.
Brittany Kowalski, a doctorate student in sociology at WVU, helped create the survey. She said questions range from infrastructure problems, crime and interpersonal issues residents might experience in their town.
As of Feb. 5, Kowalski said there were already 81 responses with the survey being launched for about a week. Nolan’s students will continue to work with the town on future projects.
“I know he’s going to continue on to help bridge between different classes and different students who are working on it, which is kind of cool because then you get different groups of students at WVU getting to help on what could be a really beneficial project,” Kowalski said.
She said the process could be powerful for the community. With public input, she said she believes the community center can be a longstanding presence in Granville.
“I love seeing that the knowledge base that I’m learning in my Ph.D. program is able to have an impact on an actual community and help make a difference in the lives of people who live there,” she said.
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