On Monday, June 3, the Tompkins County Department of Planning and Sustainability invites area residents to participate in a public meeting on the five-year review of the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan. The meeting will take place at 6:00 PM (doors open at 5:45 PM) in the Borg Warner Room of the Tompkins County Public Library at 101 E. Green St., Ithaca. Comments will be welcomed there and may also be submitted to planning@tompkins-co.org.
The current Comprehensive Plan was adopted by the Tompkins County Legislature on March 3, 2015, following extensive public input. It presents a vision for the future of the community based on a set of twelve principles and provides a framework for voluntary partnerships and collaborations to advance this vision. The existing plan includes nine chapters that focus on a particular topic area. Each of these chapters details County policies related to the topic area, for a total of 52 policies, and also identifies actions to be initiated by the County within two years of adoption of the plan, for a total of 28 action items.
The purpose of this five-year review is to determine if conditions in the community have changed to such an extent as to warrant a formal amendment to the plan. Specifically, five questions will be answered by the review:
- What action items have been completed and can be removed from the plan?
The 2015 Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan identified 28 action items that the County would initiate within two years of adoption of the plan. Initial review indicates that 18 of those actions have been completed, nine have been initiated and are underway, and one has not been initiated.
- Is the plan based upon accurate data or have data points changed significantly enough in the past five years to warrant new analysis?
The information in the text, tables, and maps throughout the plan have been reviewed by the staff of the Department of Planning and Sustainability and, while there have been changes in some conditions, staff have not identified any significant enough to materially affect the recommendations of the plan.
- Are the plan’s principles and policies still relevant to the issues facing the community?
Information on the plan’s principles and policies will be available at the meeting and can be found on the department’s website: http://tompkinscountyny.gov/planning.
- Have any important issues arisen in the past five years that are not addressed by the current principles and policies?
- What action items should be added to help achieve the principles and policies of the plan?
The department has drafted new action items to be considered as additions to the plan. Handouts on these proposed items will be available at the meeting and can also be found on the department’s website http://tompkinscountyny.gov/planning.
The public meeting scheduled for June 3rd will focus discussion on Questions 4 and 5. Comments on any element of the five-year review, as well as ideas for new action items or important issues that have arisen in the past five years and are not addressed in the existing plan, are welcome at the meeting and may be submitted to planning@tompkins-co.org through June 30th.