PITTSBURG — At an event hosted Thursday evening to discuss future infrastructure and economic development, Deputy City Manager Jay Byers used an analogy from “Alice in Wonderland” to explain the city’s need for long-term planning.

“We know about the Cheshire Cat in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ right?” Byers said. “The Cheshire Cat asks Alice where she’s going and she doesn’t really know, and he says ‘Well it doesn’t really matter which path you take, then.’ I want to avoid the Cheshire Cat situation. If we have a plan, we need to know where we’re headed with that and where we want to be as a community 5, 10, 20 years from now.”

The event, titled “Imagine Pittsburg 2030: A Community Conversation” and held at Block22 in downtown Pittsburg, also featured other speakers including Brian Coomes, a civil engineer with Olsson Associates, as well as Blake Benson and Susan Cook, co-chairs of the Imagine Pittsburg 2030 (IP2030) Economic Development Task Force.

(Read more: News – Butler County Times Gazette)