How Plans Shape Places,” a One Community Project blog series, helps us understand practical uses of comprehensive plans. From city councilmembers to planning and zoning commissioners, Leadville and Lake County locals explain how they use the City and County’s comprehensive plan to make decisions that shape the look, feel, and function of our community places and spaces.
For the Leadville Planning and Zoning Commission, the City’s comprehensive plan serves as our north star, guiding decisions both big and small. For our proactive work – like short-term rental regulations, updates to the land use code to make affordable housing easier to build, and getting rid of private parking signs and making more diagonal parking spaces – we use the comprehensive plan to provide policy direction. For our reactive work, like reviewing applications for new development, “consistency with the comprehensive plan” is one of the primary criteria used in our decision-making process. Overall, the comprehensive plan serves as a check and balance for both the Planning and Zoning Commission and developers.
I think of a comprehensive plan as a once-in-a-decade chance to take a pulse on the community. Where are we headed? What are the current struggles and tensions? What brings people together? What are residents afraid of? Creating a comprehensive plan with robust public engagement, allows the Planning and Zoning Commission to rely on the plan as a source of community guidance in the long-term.