Tuesday's Changing Population Summit might be the last event of its kind in Columbia County, but Kathleen Haas hopes it's not the end of an in-depth conversation about the county's future.

Haas, educator for the University of Wisconsin-Extension Columbia County, said this is a follow-up of a similar countywide summit held three months ago, and of three informal brown-bag discussions that followed the first summit.

Although there are no plans now for a third summit, Haas said she believes the connections that county residents made, through the summits and the brown-bag sessions, will create continued, in-depth discussion and planning for dealing with a county whose population is expected to both increase and age in the coming years.

At the first summit Jan. 21, more than 100 people - including elected officials, business leaders, educators, religious leaders, librarians and others interested in the county's future - gathered at Bethlehem Lutheran Church near Portage to hear a presentation from Terry Ludeman, retired chief economist with the state's Department of Workforce Development, about Columbia County's demographic profile.

Among Ludeman's observations: The county's population has increased by about 15,000 people between 1970 and 2005, but in coming years, projections call for a 113 percent increase in the number of Columbia County residents age 65 to 74 between now and 2035,

Also, Ludeman noted, the fastest-growing communities in Columbia County - including the villages of Fall River and Arlington and the towns of Lodi and West Point - are growing so rapidly largely because of their proximity to Dane County, where thousands of Columbia County residents work.

When the demographic information was first presented, Haas said, Extension employees who had planned the summit didn't know how attendees might respond to the numbers, or how they might be interpreted.

Some of that information became apparent, however, at three brown-bag sessions in February and March, in which a handful of attendees from the first summer got together at the Columbia County annex to talk about issues such as education, employment and quality of life.

It was these sessions that helped shape the conversation topics for Tuesday's summit.

Haas said all participants will be invited to participate in two small-group break-out sessions, with each participant choosing which topic he or she wishes to discuss.

For the first small-group session, topics will include building an employable workforce, transportation, high-speed Internet access, developing youth and adult leaders and enhancing regional synergy.

The second group of topics will focus on what came to be called "human capacity" issues, which mainly address the quality of life for Columbia County residents outside the workplace. Those topics will include ways to help citizens know what's going on in their communities and in the county, connecting people to resources, matching volunteers to opportunities and developing cross-generational opportunities.

Keynoting the summit is Mark O'Connell, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of Counties, who spoke to the Columbia County Board of Supervisors in December about the need to plan ahead for what could be a challenging future.

Haas said she expects O'Connell will sit in on the small-group sessions and help facilitate the whole-group discussions that will follow.

What will happen after the second summit breaks up, Haas said, is largely up to the participants.

The summit process has helped connect people with common interests in the county's future, and Haas said it's likely that these people will continue to cultivate their relationships and work together toward solutions to the challenges that they helped define.

"Now," she said, "it's

up to those who participate in the second summit to say, 'What do I want to see happen here?' and 'How do I connect with other people who are interested in the same goals?'" she said.