Constructive conversation: City, county comprehensive plan project is reaching the end of a rare process – Austin Daily Herald

Sometimes timing makes all the difference.

As the City of Austin and Mower County began working on their comprehensive plans, both of which are several years old, the governmental entities began to realize a chance to do something different.

Something that benefits both the city and the county.

“So the outputs are the county will get a full comprehensive plan and the city will get a city comprehensive plan and a downtown master plan update,” said Val Sheedy, who has been representing the county in the process. “The uniqueness is that we’re doing it at the same time with the same consultants so that we can take advantage  of the areas of where we overlap and plan together deliberately.”

It’s not a common partnership and there aren’t many examples of a city and county working together in their comprehensive plans, but in the minds of those doing the work, it’s a process that just works.

Largely, that’s due to an existing relationship between the city and the county, which have already worked together in a number of areas, noted by Brea Grace, senior planner with the consulting firm SEH and who has been leading this process.

“I think it’s that spirit of collaboration,” Grace said. “You already have a lot of sharing going on. It’s building off of that culture and history and so that is why I think it’s working here.”

The beginnings of this process began in earnest with planning conversations starting in September of last year. A few months later, in January of this  year, an open house was held at the Jay C. Hormel Nature Center in order to let the public give voice to what they think should be a part of each plan.

Since then, most everything has been brought together leaving land-use chapters as well as adoption and implementation.

What’s been discovered is that a lot of the work being done and the ideas being included aren’t exactly new, but the process is.

Echoes of ideas

Nick Novotny, head of Impact Austin, recognizes that ideas being discussed as part of the comprehensive plan process are things that have been discussed, but pointed out that they were often discussed in pockets with no crossover.

That’s what lies at the heart of this process. Recognizing that there are things that benefit both entities and finding a way to discuss them in one meaningful way.

“There is already a bit of collaboration that both were very aware of,” Novotny said. “We’ve always run into problems with X. Let’s address this through our planning to avoid that down the line. Because there’s been so much overlap between the city and county, they knew where they worked really well. They knew where they butted heads a little bit. How do you work together so that no matter what Austin ends up doing it’s still going to work for Mower County? Whatever Mower County does, it’s still going to work for Austin?”

During a meeting on Tuesday night, the committee brought up several topics that include housing, property and recreation. Using that small example of conversation as a lens it’s familiar enough to recognize another effort that touched on those types of things.

Vision 2020.

An effort to create ideas for the future that were to be implemented by 2020, the project used work through smaller committees to work on specific areas. From those efforts came realizations like the YMCA at the Community Recreation Center.

However, at the same time, there was a lot left on the table that was undeveloped or simply left unfinished. This process, with Impact Austin and the Development Corporation of Austin acting as a central hub, has been a point for things to turn on.

Once completed, the comprehensive plans will be a foundation for future leaders to look back on.

“This is an extension of that process and Impact Austin really came from that,” said Holly Wallace from the city side. “We just found a way to continue it. Obviously all of these things are going to be ongoing. We’re trying to maybe create, do the groundwork for people to come after us because we don’t have the resources to do everything in a short period of time. Twenty years in the future, where can we get with the plans we put together?”

There’s already been a start as through the process short term ideas have been addressed, which in turn continues momentum forward.

“With all the ideas of implementation there is the low-hanging fruit,” Grace said. “As that gets implemented that creates excitement and continues that buy-in to get to more difficult things and keep working on the bigger picture long-term.”

Further cementing the work is that some who were involved in Vision 2020 are taking part in the comprehensive plan process and that lends to more of a frame to build on.

“We’re baking it in a little harder into the system,” Novotny said. “There’s more structure in place behind these ideas. This is something bigger than what these small groups are talking about.”

Challenges

From the get-go, the process has provided opportunity for the public to be involved, starting with the open house in January and another one that will be scheduled later this year before the official adoption.

That brings with it differing opinions of what the plans should look like, but even that remains an important part of the process because it provides ideas and then deals with those ideas in the present.

“You have a lot of differing opinions and they don’t always agree, but it’s really beneficial to have those conversations now as opposed to something that is right in front of you and wants to do something about it and then the conversation never happens,” Novotny said.

It’s a mindset, Wallace said, that approaches each question now so that in the future there again is something to come back to.

“I always compared us to an ecosystem,” she said. “We take away from one place and then we add to another. Everything is just connected.”

But that’s not the only challenge. The other serious hurdle is making sure that all arms of the community and county are included, something that was brought to life through the date taken at the first open house.

“We had an open house and it was like 90% white people and middle age,” Sheedy said. “How do we get out into the community? Getting into the niche places that don’t show up when you’re having a public open house. That was a challenge early on that we made sure we invested a lot of time and effort into getting feedback from everyone that we could.”

Sheedy said that was where Impact Austin really showed off the benefits of being a hub for the process, taking the time to coordinate efforts to get into the diverse communities as well as schools in the area.

“We can do everything in the world for our output, but if our output doesn’t match our input then we’re not doing it right,” Novotny said. “How does our output support the entirety of the community, not just the people that always show up. It’s being conscious of voices that provide feedback without missing them because they aren’t always there too.”

Ideas going forward, next steps

It’s a reality that all agree on that not all ideas brought forth in this process will be included in the comprehensive plans for either the city or the county, but those involved stress that isn’t necessarily an issue.

Instead, they argue that ideas can be adjusted to fit other places.

“I think sometimes you can plan for whatever you plan for, but times change,” Wallace said. “It’s possible that things could go in a different direction, but are also equally positive.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if people connected dots on the back side,” Sheedy said. “This didn’t go through the plan and get formally adopted, but I bet you at a meeting I heard that idea and I think we should do that over here.”

It’s another reason why community input is important.

“I think it shows too that the city and county are very interested in what the community feedback is,” Grace said. “They are wanting this grass roots conversation and they are inviting feedback from everyone in the community.”

Even the times where perceived mistakes have been made are important. In fact Novotny said they want to hear about such things because it reinforces an idea of the all-encompassing work.

The process taken as a whole has been akin to a mountain. Going up has been long and slow, but once at the peak and going back down the pace is picking up speed. The final work will be taking place on the land implementation and the next public input session will be scheduled followed by the proposed adoption being brought forward and approved by both the city and county, hopefully by the end of the year.

“It’s pretty cool. It was a mountain. It was a big planning process, but implementation is already underway and we haven’t finished and adopted the plan,” Grace said. “There are little spin-offs, low-hanging fruit and a long list of things that collaborations are being made, connections are being made, next steps are being made and that’s unique.”

Wallace agreed.

“I’m excited to use this to support projects and we’ll see how all that goes,” she said. “But also, I’m really proud of all the work everyone has done. I do feel like it reflects very well on our community and the county that we collaborated with and we are getting some attention from organizations that do this kind of work.