Implementation, the Lost Step in Comprehensive Planning

As the American Planning Association has proclaimed this is National Community Planning Month, it’s appropriate to talk about Comprehensive Plans, the long-range plans for a city. Providing a vision of the direction that community wants to go in the next 10-20 years. Most cities have one. Though the age of their most recent plan varies greatly from city to city based on each community’s perception on their importance.

But they are important, creating a framework for making important decisions, based on the public input process when the plan was developed. The goals and strategies set forth by the plan should be a guide regarding community growth, land use decisions, public infrastructure, parks and services.

Unfortunately, many comprehensive plans sit and collect dust on some shelf, only to be picked up for reference on a random land use decision or potential legal matter. Yet, these plans should be treated as living documents. The comprehensive plan should be continuously referenced in staff reports. It should be modified as the community changes. Hard copies of the plan should be used so much that the pages are tattered and torn, written on with notes and thoughts. It should be in visible reach, not tucked away on a shelf and the back recesses of your mind. Your community has put so much time, so much work, into completing the comprehensive plan that it should be a valuable tool in the daily decisions of the community.

However, that’s not what typically happens. All the work put into the plan. All the public input. All the energy from the process often helps to push the comprehensive plan towards completion. Many towns celebrate the adoption of the plan, announcing it on social media like proud parents. But then nothing. It’s like everything hits a wall because the process is “done”.

But the process is far from done. It has only just begun on the next phase…implementation. Communities spend thousands on consultants to draft their comprehensive plans, but then rarely use it until it gets updated again. That’s like buying a new sports car and leaving it in the garage.

Take it for a spin regularly! Take the plan and read through it occasionally. Think about how your community has changed, does the plan need to change then? Have you looked at the goals and strategies and used them as a litmus test for the community’s push to reach the vision set forth in the plan?

Each year, unless we’re working on an update, I review our Comprehensive Plan with the Planning Commission. Not the whole thing, that would be a mind-numbingly long meeting. Just look at the goals and strategies. List them out. Write a brief synopsis of where the community is at in the process on each specific goal or strategy. It doesn’t have to be long, maybe a couple sentences. If your Planning Commission and/or City Council is engaged that will often be enough to gage the progress. It’s a little work the first time you do it, but keeping the document for use next year, you will only have to provide updates where there’s been movement.

In doing this you’ll find that some of that spark that you saw during the planning process returns. There’ll often be a renewed sense of energy to complete one or more of the goals.