POCATELLO — Seven hundred and nine. That’s a big number.

And until the end of March, that’s the number of flag submissions for the city of Pocatello’s Flag Design Contest that are available for the public to observe, review and comment on at the Marshall Public Library in Pocatello.

Tuesday on the second floor of the library, Logan McDougall, chair of the Flag Design Ad-Hoc Committee, was joined by Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad and the Pocatello Chiefs for a ribbon-cutting that kicked off the public display.

“There’s all different ages, abilities and ultimately interpretations of Pocatello represented in these flags,” McDougall said before cutting the ribbon. “If you had told me we would have 709 flags when we started this, I wouldn’t have believed it.”

The committee started accepting submissions in September. By the Dec. 2 deadline, people from all over the world had submitted 709 flag designs. Between convening with a panel of flag and design experts and combing through the various submissions to help select 15 flags — three from each age category — chosen for recognition by the committee, it’s been a long, fun and worthwhile journey.

“It’s been amazing,” McDougall said. “When I started out with this process, if we got 100, maybe 200 flags, I thought we would have been doing great. But as the momentum got rolling and things picked up and people’s excitement for this project really got going, I couldn’t help but get excited.”

McDougall encourages members of the community to look at each flag, which is accompanied by the artist’s reasoning and inspiration behind their design, and make their remarks. At the library, there are sheets people can fill out to select their three favorite flags, say what they’d change about them and describe how they think they represent Pocatello. Folks that are unable to go to the library to weigh in can do it online at flag.pocatello.us.

Once the public has had a chance to view and have input on the 709 flag submissions, McDougall says the panel of experts will get back together sometime in April to analyze the community’s feedback. From there, the panel and committee will put together 10 flags to send back out into the public for citizens another round of input.

After everything is said and done, McDougall hopes the city can unveil its new flag sometime this summer.

While the effort to replace Pocatello’s old city flag — which was designated as the worst flag in the country by the North American Vexillological Association before becoming an example of what a flag shouldn’t look like during a TED Talk presentation in 2015 — has resulted in many great submissions, McDougall has also noticed the sense of community the project has created.

“It’s had residents think about what exactly Pocatello means to them, what they like and what they see Pocatello to be in their own eyes,” he said. “It’s not very often you get a chance to really look inward in a situation like this as a city.”