Comprehensive Plan Committee of the Whole
On May 23rd, Council convened for a Committee of the Whole (COW) on the Comp Plan Goals & Objectives!
At this COW, Councilmembers had the opportunity to discuss and vote on the amendments they want to make to the Comprehensive Plan Goals & Objectives (G&O). This is a really big deal!
Why is this a big deal? Because Council could change the G&O in small or very big ways, and as the last stop in the process, these changes will guide many LFUCG policy decisions for decades to come.
So where do the G&O stand now? Planning Commission has already approved G&O that the Council is considering. See more info about them here.
At the last COW, which included a public hearing, Council heard comments from a variety of people across a wide range of topics, but the most popular issues were:
Expansion vs maintenance of the current Urban Service Boundary
Affordable housing and social services
Environmental sustainability and climate change mitigation
These are all topics that we have heard councilmembers discuss in the previous COWs.
The expectation was that Council will make all of their amendments and then take a vote to adopt the amended Goals & Objectives at the conclusion of this COW. These would then be sent back to the Planning Commission for them to use as guidance on the following Elements & Implementation Policies.
Update:
Council did not make it through all of their amendments and have planned another COW for June 1st!
We heard Councilmembers suggest and adopt 23 amendments so far to Themes A, B, and C. While many of those amendments were intended to simply clarify the language being used, some of the new changes have significant policy implications. For example, some of the bigger changes to these goals were:
In Theme A, Goal 1, a new objective was added to consider repurposing undeveloped or underutilized publicly owned land for infill and redevelopment projects related to affordable housing
In Theme B, Goal 2, language was added to encourage LFUCG’s operations and the city as a whole to achieve net zero carbon emmissions by the year 2050
In Theme C, an additional Goal 4 was added which reinstates a goal related to jobs and community prosperity with language that had previously been removed
These changes and others will have big impacts on how the Division of Planning and the planning Commission write the implementation policies.
The Committee of the Whole was held on Tuesday, May 23rd at 5:00 pm in Council Chambers. You can watch the recording on LexTV.
To learn more about the Imagine Lexington 2045 Comprehensive Plan process and content, visit our website!
