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After nearly two years of conversations with residents under the Envision Prince George's initiative, residents have made it clear to county planning officials that they want less crime, better schools and a more affordable county to call home.

The results of the project, in which a consulting company used a series of polls, town hall meetings and Internet posts to help brainstorm future goals for the county, were announced Friday at a breakfast conference at the University of Maryland, College Park. The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission spent about $700,000 on the project, a commission spokeswoman confirmed.

Planning officials hope to use the results, which will be posted online at www.envisionprincegeorges.org, to work in "implementation teams" to address the 47 goals for the county, which consistently places near or at the bottom in statewide education and crime statistics.

In a copy of the report, organizers list 14 "priority goals" on economic development, improving schools and making a more responsive elected government.

"A lot of people have been highly involved in this," said Steve Brigham, whose Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization AmericaSpeaks was paid to run the outreach effort during the last 20 months. "Something important is happening and has happened."

In a single-page vision statement outlining program goals, Envision writers noted several strengths that Prince George's has to help lift itself in the future, including "safe and flourishing" communities, a "high-performing public school district" and a "responsive government."

No county elected officials were featured at the planning group's four-hour event. In the most recent round of school performance statistics, Prince George's schools were at the bottom or second-to-last on state ranking lists, and the event took place the same day an off-duty state trooper was shot and killed in the county's 40th homicide of 2010.

Though crime reached a 30-year low in the county in 2009, Prince George's County was only beaten by Baltimore city in violent offenses in the state.

Envision Project Manager Crystal Prater said planners wrote about their long-term hopes when they listed the county's strengths in the statement.

"This is the vision the community wants going 10 to 20 years in the future," she said. "It's what the county wants."

Participation in the latest program has been immense by county standards, Brigham said. More than 1,100 people attended a special weekend town hall series on March 20, and he noted that the group has a vast online presence, including a mass e-mail list of 20,000 people.

Prince George's County has a population of 834,560, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

"We had a great website. We had people follow us on Facebook and Twitter," Brigham said. "We blogged almost every single day. ... People were engaged by this."

Council Chairman Thomas E. Dernoga (D-Dist. 1) of Laurel, who attended the event, said the county input was "great."

"It's great to see so many people engaging in a discussion of the county's future and how to achieve the best future possible," he said.

The final Envision Prince George's report was not posted to the group's website Monday morning.

M-NCPPC plans to spend another $390,000 in the next year on "implementation teams" that will begin working on the goals, two spokeswomen said.

"We can't do all 47 out of the box," Brigham said. "We'd drive ourselves crazy."

County Councilman Samuel Dean (D-Dist. 6) of Mitchellville praised the effort, which he called the greatest he has seen in years of reports and studies.

"The goals are almost the same," Dean said. "But the difference is we now have citizen involvement. This is going to get us to where we want to be as a county."