Monday, September 27, 2010
FAYETTEVILLE — The city of Fayetteville is updating its comprehensive land use plan, giving residents several chances to say how they want their city to look in 20 years.
“It affects decisions that are made by staff and elected and appointed officials regarding growth and development,” said Karen Minkle, director of strategic planning and internal consulting for the city. “It’s critical, especially in an area that’s one of the fastest growing in the country.”
The city will launch a series of public sessions in October designed to update what’s been known as City Plan 2025. More than 800 people participated in drafting the city’s current plan. With the update, it will become known as City Plan 2030.
There will be several opportunities to provide input, including two public meetings, a webinar and online input on the city’s website.
Mayor Lioneld Jordan said longterm planning allows citizens to have a say in balancing growth with other issues.
“The thing is you want to preserve the quality of life of the city without, say, just coming in and bulldozing down every tree,” Jordan said. “You’ve got to preserve that landscape while you allow growth as well. That’s where the balance comes in.”
Plan 2025 was successful, Minkle said. Developers use the document as a guideline when planning their projects and regularly reference it when arguing their cases for approval before the Planning Commission and City Council.
The document also spawned several development and land use ordinances, such as curb cut regulations and regulations about how street cross-sections are designed in the city, Minkle said.
City Plan 2025 called for the city to discourage sprawl and make infill and revitalization the highest priorities. What changes are made to create Plan 2030 remain to be seen.
“I think it’s an update that will reflect, partly, what’s on the community’s mind, what do they feel is important, things we’ve seen over the past five years we think needs to be clarified just to eliminate confusion and to help with the decisionmaking process,” Minkle said. “Then, of course, we’re getting public input so we’re open to a lot of new ideas and there may be things out there that we haven’t thought about yet that we’d be happy to include.”
Planning Commissioner Tracy Hoskins said a comprehensive land-use plan allows the city to use form-based zoning as opposed to fearbased zoning.
“I think City Plan 2030 is an opportunity for us to look back and see the elements of the 2025 Plan that worked and the elements that didn’t work so good, or the things that need to be adjusted that make those elements work,” Hoskins said.
Hoskins added other city ordinances and regulations need to be reviewed and possibly modified as well to make sure they are not at odds with a Plan 2030 philosophy.
Ward 3 Alderman Bobby Ferrell said the city needs to look at its long-range strategic plans regularly.
“We need to figure our course, so in that respect it’s better to have a plan for where we want to go and what we want to do,” Ferrell said. “But, a vitally important thing to remember is that the master street plan, the 2025 Plan, soon to be 2030 Plan, these are all, capital letters, tools for the consideration of the council.”
Ferrell said the plan is one factor of many that the city should use in making city growth decisions, including comments from staff and citizens and the planning commission.
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