Emmitsburg Times
October 25, 2009
From Emmitsburg Mayor Jim Hoover
The Town of Emmitsburg’s comprehensive plan was originally approved in 1998; it is a twenty year plan that should be review and or updated every six years. The Emmitsburg Planning Commission finalized their review of the comprehensive plan in October 2008, since then the Emmitsburg Town council has been reviewing and making modifications to the draft plan based on staff and public comments. At the October 19, 2009 town meeting the Town Council closed the comment period on the draft comprehensive plan. The town council directed staff to make the final edits and prepare the draft for final consideration at out next town meeting. The town council will vote on the comprehensive plan at the November 2, 2009 town meeting.
Taking a very meticulous approach in reviewing the entire document, the town’s planning commission worked on the comprehensive plan for several years before providing the town council with several recommendations. During the planning commission’s review period there were several changes in members on the planning commission. With the amount of changes in members to the planning commission much of the planning commission’s time was spent on briefing new members. Most of the planning commission members had particular points of interest in the comprehensive plan but, as a group, the planning commission always held on to one principle; they created and took every effort possible to take public comment every step of the way. Continuing to take public comment as often as they did obviously delayed the review process but to the planning commission’s credit, they stood their ground and anybody that wanted to speak, got to speak.
Completing the finial edits and assuming the comprehensive plan will be approved at the next town council meeting; I believe the Town of Emmitsburg will have a very good plan in place. Obviously not everyone agrees with everything in the plan, but overall, I believe the comprehensive plan represents a very realistic, professional and technically sound approach for planning our town’s future. One key element of the plan that I believe is not very well understood or taken into consideration is the cycle of the plan. The comprehensive plan is designed to project long term assumptions, up to twenty years or more in some cases but, the town is expected to review the plan every six years. The purpose for review the plan every six years to consider if the assumptions previously made are still considered as best practices and if needed updating the plan section by section as needed. This year the State of Maryland added a water resource element as a new requirement to comprehensive plans. Simply put, the new requirement meant that a municipality could not propose or project more growth than its resources and infrastructure is capable of servicing. This new requirement created the need for the Town of Emmitsburg and other municipalities to change land use allocations to properties within their corporate boundaries. In other words we had to down zone some properties. It was not a very popular decision to down zone properties but, knowing that there is an expectation that the comprehensive plan will be reviewed and possibly updated in six years and knowing that the State of Maryland added the water resource element requirement it is obvious that those decisions had to be made. In previous years communities were allowed to make decisions and recommend growth beyond their means. The new state requirement was not implemented to prohibit growth; it is intended to hold municipal officials more accountable for managing growth.
I want to thank everyone that was involved in updating the comprehensive plan; you created a professional document.
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