The city of Sandy Springs is branding its Comprehensive Plan revision as “The Next Ten” and will launch an in-depth website about the process as soon as next week at thenext10.org.
Sharon Kraun, the city’s communications director, announced those developments—part of an overall outreach strategy—at the Sept. 1 City Council meeting. It involves using just about every medium available to get input from just about every demographic in the city.
Along with traditional meetings, that will include everything from social media to festival appearances, and outreach to harder-to-engage populations—including, Kraun said, the roughly 12,000 residents who don’t speak English.
The Comprehensive Plan is a 10-year visioning document for city development. The current plan was finalized in 2007 and and has been criticized by city officials and some residents as outdated and in conflict with current uses, while some other residents express concern that it is not being followed closely enough. The new version must be ready by 2017, and the process will include revising the zoning code, too.
The city jumpstarted the process with some public meetings early this summer. More stakeholder meetings are underway, and another round of community meetings will come this fall. The outside firm Rhodeside & Harwell will run the process and complete the formal revision.
Kraun’s full presentation to the council can be viewed here.
Too little, too late. The damage is already done to the City of Sandy Springs. What good will a NEW CompPlan do when city officials don’t pay attention to it. What does”It’s just a guideline” actually mean? It will always favor the developers and their mega developments with “traffic” studies that show little impact to the area.