The Oglethorpe Echo
Oglethorpe County officials are preparing to update the county’s comprehensive plan for the first time since 2017.
Mark Beatty, director of planning and government services for the Northeast Georgia Regional Commission, said the process will be expedited since the plan is more than a year overdue, with a deadline in October 2021. Updating a comprehensive plan usually takes eight months, but this process will be condensed to a few months.
“We're going to kind of do a rapid fire on this,” Beatty said.
Comprehensive planning is a process that determines goals for local governments. The plan guides public policy relating to transportation, utilities, land use, recreation and housing. According to The Georgia Planning Act, comprehensive plans must be updated every five years.
Beatty said the comprehensive plan will answer three questions: Where are you at now? Where do you want to be? How do you get there?
The county’s upcoming comprehensive plan, set to be finished early next year, will be the first to include a broadband element. Oglethorpe County’s most recent comprehensive plan identified unreliable and unavailable broadband as one of the county’s needs.
The upcoming comprehensive plan has five required elements:
- Community goals
- Needs and opportunities
- Broadband element
- Future land use element
- Community work program
Beatty emphasized the importance of the future land use element to local officials at a meeting on Dec. 1.
He said the updated comprehensive plan will include rezoning the county, so that it is parcel specific, since the first draft was not based on parcel boundaries.
The budget for the new plan is $25,000. Arnoldsville, Crawford, Lexington, Maxeys and Oglethorpe County will each have a maximum budget of $5,000.
“I am in no way expecting this to cost $25,000 for us to do,” Beatty said.
Oglethorpe County residents are encouraged to attend a public hearing at 5 p.m. Monday, Dec. 19 at the Crawford Depot. Attendees will be briefed on the process for developing the comprehensive plan, and will have the opportunity to share input on the planning process.
Following the initial public hearing, officials will take into account community input and then will conduct a SWOT analysis — examining the county’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
A second public hearing is planned for next March, after which the final comprehensive plan will be submitted for review and adoption.