Members of the Plymouth City Council discussed MACOG’s Comprehensive Plan proposal. 

City Attorney Sean Surrisi said there has been some discussion in the last year or two to revisit the city’s Comprehensive Plan.  The plan is 9-years old and general guidelines say it should be reviewed for updates about every 5 years and totally redone every 10 years.  Surrisi said last year there was a committee that solicited some proposals from private consultants, but the price tag was higher than expected which put a pause on the discussion. 

Recently the city has had some discussions with MACOG which has a lot of planning staff in their organization to see if they had an interest in giving the city a proposal to complete a Comprehensive Plan update.  There is interest and Surrisi said MACOG has done Comprehensive Plans for LaPaz and Bremen, Bourbon, Argos, and Culver.  While MACOG hasn’t ever done one for a city, Plymouth isn’t that large and the process isn’t much different from a town. 

The proposal presented from MACOG is not-to-exceed $41,000. It is about a one-year process that would begin in early fall.  As for the funding, Surrisi said they can work with MACOG on a way to budget most of the expenses for the plan in the 2023 budget.

During the discussion, Planning Consultant Ralph Booker said the only other alternative would be to have a committee complete a page-by-page update.  He said the format would stay the same and the update wouldn’t be as professional as what MACOG can offer.  Booker also said the proposed cost is about half what other professional firms would bid. 

Booker said one idea would be to reestablish the steering committee that worked on the current Comprehensive Plan and replace those who are no longer here or want to work on the plan with new members who are interested in the city’s growth.    One recommendation was to include someone from the Complete Streets committee on the steering committee. 

The City Council was supportive of the presentation from MACOG for the Comprehensive Plan. The City Attorney will work with MACOG to work on the billing and a draft contract.

It was also noted by Mayor Senter that he loaned his copy of the Comprehensive Plan to someone, and it wasn’t returned.  He’s hoping whoever has it will return it to him soon.