FAQs

The Master Plan process includes two full plan drafts that will be completed and reviewed before a final draft is voted on by the City Commission. Presently, the first of two drafts is being reviewed by the Planning Board along with public input. Following this review, the consultants will confirm the changes requested with the Planning Board and City Commission. At that point the consultants will prepare a second draft incorporating those changes. The second draft will again be reviewed by the Planning Board, with public input, and confirmed with the City Commission. Requested changes to the second draft will be incorporated into a final Master Plan for adoption. 

Input received to date will be incorporated into the second draft and publicly reviewed later this year. The second draft will be more concise, and a number of recommendations will be modified or removed. In addition to input received during public meetings, the consultants have collected public input provided through surveys, through the project website, and through emails sent to the City. The second draft Master Plan will be written in consideration of all input received.

The first draft Master Plan includes numerous proposed future policies and actions to be undertaken by the City. These policies and actions are broad in nature, and will require future work on the part of the City’s boards, committees, and the Commission to create and adopt ordinance changes, new ordinances, and capital projects. The primary purpose of a Master Plan, by state statue, is to update Future Land Use, described below. Undertaking a Master Plan is an opportunity to evaluate existing policies and vision comprehensively. For this process, the Commission requested that existing City plans created in recent decades be evaluated and coordinated, and that neighborhoods be a main subject of the Master Plan because they had not been part of most other City plans.

Future Land Use is a designation that conveys the City’s intended future character as communicated by the use of land, such as residential or industrial. Future Land Use is more general in nature than zoning. For instance, a future land use of residential may include numerous zones such as R-1, R1-A, and R-2. Future Land Use is the legal basis for zoning, and zoning must align with Future Land Use. Zoning may be more restrictive than Future Land Use, but not less restrictive.

No. The Master Plan will include a Future Land Use map, but not a new zoning map. The Master Plan recommends that the City study and revise its current zoning code, but does not establish any updated zoning. The Master Plan recommends that zoning be updated for two primary purposes: 1) to simplify but not substantively change zoning in the Downtown and Triangle District, and 2) to better align neighborhood zoning with existing houses to avoid new houses that are out of character. Other zoning changes are recommended for further study by the City.