"The City Council's response is usually no more than 'Thank you very much. Next. Thank you very much. Next,' " Councilwoman Barbara Hanna said. "That's not what's going to happen today."

In the ballroom of the Sun Lakes Country Club, 80 people spent three hours Wednesday in small groups discussing their ideas for the city.

Some were officials. A state assemblyman, three Banning council members, the city manager, and the school diastrict superintendent. One was a retired showgirl.

But most came because their main attachment was to Banning itself.

Schools and the image of the city of 25,000 dominated the topics, with mass transit, code enforcement and hospital access also in play. "We can come up with solutions and not just talk about problems," said Lou Dunn, 72. Nothing happens when you just talk about problems.'

Hanna organized [and facilitated] the meeting to break from the norm of public discourse, borrowing from a model called open-space technology that developed in the 1980s and has been used by such entities as Shell Oil, the Pentagon and AT&T.

The morning began with everyone sitting in a large circle. One-by-one, participants wrote topics on white paper and taped them to a mirror. Similar ideas hung together in clusters.

Each idea meant a different small group, also arranged in circles.

Dunn sat with a group talking about beautification and Banning's image.

Amy Herr, 36, took notes. She lives in her childhood home and spoke clearly on reinforcing a sense of unity among Banningites.

"People could pick one house where the people are disabled or elderly and fix it up better than new," she said.

"Get a business to donate supplies and get 15 volunteers. If you can blow out one house and it helps one person to that degree, everyone around there has more pride in where they live."

Among the more lively discussions was one about schools, with Banning Unified School District's Superintendent, Kathy McNamara, offering her perspective. On the table: Merging Banning Unified with the neighboring Beaumont Unified School District, or at least reshaping boundary lines to conform to those of the respective cities.

"Beaumont is not really interested," McNamara said. "We used to have joint events of the band, the choir. We used to share personnel. Not anymore."

Beaumont Unified Superintendent Frank Passarella, preparing Wednesday for a groundbreaking ceremony for his district's fourth elementary school, was unavailable for comment.

Daisy McCleary, a Banningite for 10 years who gave her age as "senior" said the boundary-line issue was at the heart of civic identity.

"It isn't right to try and teach a child to have pride in their city when they get educated somewhere else," she said. "This is about more than tax dollars."

At the end, ebullience flowed through the Swiss accent of Agnes Merz, 76.

"OK, we've changed the world," she said, laughing. "On paper, at least."