Planning Commission sets the city's comprehensive plan project in motion

Bob Lewis, left, Jackie Carlson and Sarah Downing, Shafer, Kline & Warren consultants, take notes while Jim Liley, planning commissioner, tells them what he thinks are some issues to be considered during their update of the city's comprehensive plan during Tuesday's planning commission meeting. --Ralph Pokorny/Daily Mail

City planning started out looking at land usage as a means to protect the general welfare of the public and over the years has evolved to include every aspect of a community, Sarah Downing, a planner with Shafer Kline & Warren Inc., told the Nevada Planning Commission Tuesday evening during their kick-off of the process to write a new comprehensive plan for Nevada.

A master, or comprehensive plan sets the foundation for local planning, she said.

"It tells the people and developers where the city is going in the future. They are used for a lot of different things today," Downing said, adding that Missouri statutes give any municipality the authority to adopt and carry out city planning.

Jackie Carlson, director of the planning department at Shafer, Kline & Warren, said that they are currently collecting information on the main issues they will present to the public in three public meetings in May, June and July to get public input for the comprehensive plan.

"We need this group to whittle this down," Carlson said.

When they finish collecting information for the plan she said that they will then use that to create a detailed plan outline.

"We will bring the outline back to the planning commission to see if we missed something and then take it back and tweak it," she said.

The next step will be for them to create a draft of the plan and bring that back to the planning commission at another public meeting. If the planning commission approves the draft plan, it will be time to write the final plan, which will be presented to the planning commission in late 2010 and finally adopted by the city council in 2011.

Carlson told the planning commission, city staff members and Bill Erwin, the only member of the public present at Tuesday's meeting that she wanted them to take about five minutes to identify five issues and five assets of Nevada that should be considered during the public meetings.

"We try to hold the meetings on a more neutral location than the city hall," Carlson said.

"The new community center would be great. It will pull even more people who will want to see the facility," planning commissioner Randy Akers, said.

The commission also suggested that they one to two hour public meetings should be held on Monday, Tuesday or Thursday at different times: midday, after work and evening.

"This needs to be a document that's actually used and doesn't sit on the shelf and collect dust," Blake Hertzberg, planning commission chairman, said when the commission was asked what their goal was for this plan.

In other business the commission voted to send a positive recommendation to the city council to relocate a water line easement at the Nevada Municipal Airport at the request of the city.