Planning commission says they expect more from comprehensive planning process

Members of the Nevada Planning Commission let Jackie Carlson and Sarah Downing, planners from Shafer, Kline & Warren, Inc., know Wednesday that they are not pleased with what they have seen so far of the process of updating the city's comprehensive plan.

Planning commissioner John Flynn said that what he saw during Wednesday's open house meeting to pick projects to be included in the updated plan was mostly "boiler plate."

At the mid-day Wednesday open house meeting at the Franklin P. Norman City/County Community Center, Carlson and Downing had display boards with lists of possible projects for the city to focus on. Each of the estimated 30 attendees was given 10 beans representing the city's finite resources and asked to vote for their choices using the beans. Those choices will be used to prioritize the projects in the comprehensive plan update.

Flynn said that after viewing the choices, which included such things as improving streets, offering economic development incentives, expanding the hours at the recycling center, he felt that most of the projects were things the city was already doing or was in the process of implementing.

"I like to get to the meat of things. I'm in a hurry and want to get right to the end," Jim Erpenbach, planning commissioner, said, adding that he wanted to know what that end is going to be.

One of the items under discussion, for example, had to do with the future of U.S. 71 Highway and the notion of a bypass.

Jackie Carlson said that there are no plans for additional work on Highway 71 in the Nevada area.

While a bypass could help with some of the congestion on Austin, it can also have other unintended consequences.

"I worry about the impact of a bypass on the downtown," Carlson said.

"If we're looking at bypass, we should be talking to the Department of Transportation now," Erpenbach said.

He said that with the improvements planned for U.S. Highway 71, they would need to express the need for an interchange for a bypass now, Five years would be too late, he indicated.

"Austin is a huge accident waiting to happen. It's something that needs to be addressed," Flynn said.

He told Carlson and Downing that perhaps they could look at other options to address the problem without building a bypass.

"I don't know the answer, but we have a problem," he said.

Carlson told the commission that they have expanded their effort to gather information beyond the original scope of the work to include talking with the Vernon County Commission, Nevada R-5 School District, Nevada Trails Coalition, Nevada Regional Medical Center. Osage Prairie YMCA, the Nevada-Vernon County Chamber of Commerce and Cottey College.

She said they had visited the county commission Wednesday morning and would talk to the other organizations on Thursday.

Following Wednesday and Thursday's field work, Carlson said they will start working on a first draft of the comprehensive plan which they will bring back to the planning commission for further comment. They will then write a second draft of the plan and bring it back for public review at an open house.

Then they write the finished plan and present it to the planning commission which will have a public hearing before they either accept it or reject it. If the planning commission accepts the updated comprehensive plan it will go to the city council for their consideration later this year.