PRESCOTT - Although Yavapai County Development Services Director Chad Daines ranked Big Park's community plan update application as "high priority," the Board of Supervisors on Monday were not happy with some aspects of the county's new community plan policy and tabled Big Park's application to a future meeting.
That made Village of Oak Creek resident Elaine Brown happy.
"Changes in leadership in (the Big Park Regional Coordinating Council) took away the voice of the community," she told the board. "The (community plan) process should start over."
Big Park is the first community to apply for a community plan amendment under the county's new policy. Big Park wrote its plan in 1998.
"I assure you I will abide by the policy you enacted," said Norm Murdock, chairman of the Big Park Council. "We have invested thousand of hours with hundreds of volunteers."
Under the county's new policy, a community must apply to the Board of Supervisors and the board must initiate the process.
After the board approves an application, Development Services would commit county staff and resources to helping a community write, update or amend its community plan.
Daines told the board that the Big Park plan meets the county's four criteria to initiate a community plan:
• The plan conforms to the county's General Plan;
• It meets the definition of a "community" according to the General Plan;
• The county has sufficient staff and resources to work on the plan; and,
• The plan has community consensus.
District 1 Supervisor Carol Springer was not sure of a community consensus.
"If the old plan was written by 57 members, we need to find out if those 57 members still represent the community," she said. "I can see it as somewhat political."
According to the new policy, a consortium of citizens, called the Community Advisory Committee (CAC), must work with the county under a Plan Advisory Committee (PAC). The CAC must represent a cross-section of the community write the community's plan with a majority of its residents' participation and support.
During previous meetings, when the county's policy was still in draft form, representatives of the Williamson Valley Community Organization questioned the ability of the PAC to recognize whether a consortium truly represented a community rather than a special interest group.
"It's very important that we (county) stay involved in this process," District 3 Supervisor Chip Davis said. "In unincorporated communities, you sometimes have a group or organization that portrays itself as representing a community, but it does not."
The county's new policy prioritizes community applications based on a five-category matrix system with a maximum of 11 points. High priority is 10-11 points, medium is seven to nine and low is less than seven points.
The five categories include population growth, significant land for future growth, community consensus, whether a community is amending an existing plan or initiating a new plan, and whether a community meets the county's definition of a community.
Big Park's plan rated a 10. County staff dinged it a point for potential growth because 90 percent of its land area already is built-out.
Before voting to table Big Park's application, the board agreed that it was not that Big Park's plan needed more work, but that the county's plan needs "tweaking" before testing it with a community's application.
Reader Comments
Posted: Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Article comment by:
Dave H
Allowing Communities to have a say in their affairs is the thing the Supervisors will not allow. What Communities want does not matter to them. Special Interests DO Why else would they put 4 layers of Bureaucracy between themselves and a community plan?
