About 130 residents intend to take a look at their dreams for Carroll County today and begin molding them into a comprehensive plan for the year 2000 and beyond.

Carroll 2000 -- sponsored by the Carroll County Chamber of Commerce and Carroll Community College -- intends to create a vision of what the county will be six years from now, what issues will affect residents and how to achieve the community's common goals, said chamber executive director Helen Utz.

Edward D. Barlow Jr., who is internationally known for helping groups and communities foresee problems and plan their futures, is scheduled to speak during the morning on how the future will affect Carroll County, she said.

The program, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Wilhelm Ltd. Catering in Westminster, will switch to small group discussions in the afternoon and talks on "Creating an Agenda for Action" and "Celebrating the Future," Ms. Utz said.

The cost is $50, which includes breakfast, lunch, a snack and all conference materials. Participants registered last month.

"This is more than Carroll County government and the services we want to see," Ms. Utz said. "This is education, human services and business.

"It's a total, cooperative effort of what we want to see and what we have to do to make Carroll County look that way," she said.

Participants will be encouraged to join "action teams" to work on plans for issues raised during the discussions, she said. From there, the teams will prepare a comprehensive county plan and present it to the incoming Board of County Commissioners in December or January.

"All these entities have their own strategic plans for the future," she said. "But nowhere are they collected into one large plan where everybody knows what everyone wants to do."

Mr. Barlow, who is being paid $3,000 for today's seminar, was chosen to speak after several Carroll County government staff members heard him address the Maryland Association of Counties conference in Ocean City last year, said Maggie MacPherson, county communications manager.

He has a master's degree in management from the University of Notre Dame and is a member of the graduate school faculty with the University of San Francisco.

Mr. Barlow has also taught more than 500 seminars, including ones for the Monsanto Co., Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Sara Lee, the American Farm Bureau and the Florida Attorney General's Office.

"He's done work with any kind of industry you can imagine," Ms. MacPherson said. "He has a broad spectrum of experience."