PILOT MOUNTAIN — Local government meetings have been postponed or canceled in Pilot Mountain right now, but that doesn’t mean town officials don’t have a decision to weigh in the meantime.
In the last regular meeting of the Board of Commissioners, two firms gave presentations in the hopes of landing a contract to be the one to help the town create a new comprehensive plan.
The land-use plan was completed in 2005. The town is looking for an overall plan that takes into consideration the land-use plan, downtown streetscape plan, recreation and tourism.
First up was Benchmark Planning, represented by Jason Epley and Vagn Hansen, both with AICP certification (American Institute of Certified Planners). Epley and Hansen have worked with the town in the past on zoning and streetscape planning.
Epley said Benchmark is headquartered in Charlotte and has 35 years of experience as a company.
Andy Goodall, the Mount Airy planning director and Pilot Mountain town planner, attended the meeting as he also works for Benchmark.
“Andy obviously works with you on day-to-day planning and zoning, and will be very involved in the planning process,” noted Epley
Creating this plan, said Hansen, “It’s about helping to inspire people to do things with their property. Not by giving them a bunch of money, but by showing them what the future can look like and helping them find a vision for their vacant land or their vacant building that can revitalize or reinvigorate the community.”
Epley said, “One of the things we think is very important during the process is community engagement.”
Referring to a project in Concord, he said, “We had a few little workshops during the downtown streetscape plan, but … there are a variety of ways to get public input during the process, whether it’s through a kickoff event, design workshop, interviews with key leadership.”
“One of the tools we like to use is audience polling. We actually have our own software and hardware to do this.”
Epley said he liked polling the crowd “if you have a room of 30 or 40 people — which it may be a few months before you can get 30 or 40 people together.”
Looking at the scope of the project, Epley said, “We propose a 14-month … 6-stage process.” Obviously that timeline would be affected by the state of emergency across the county.
The first phase would include meeting with the town staff, town planning board, meeting key stakeholders in the community such as those who might own a significant amount of property in town or local real estate experts — anybody who can give Benchmark’s team good background on the town and community, he said.
“This is a really good time for us to get our foundation of information.”
During this phase they would come up with a public engagement plan and a website for the downtown project.
In Phase Two Benchmark would get into the community survey.
“We really want to dig in and find out what the community feels about certain topics. We’ll spend time with you to determine what those questions and topics should be,” Epley said.
“Phase Three we start to take all of that information and look at the objectives and strategies for moving ahead. There will be a midpoint presentation to you. We will continue to meet with the planning board. The planning board will serve as a steering committee.”
Over Phase Four, Benchmark would keep moving forward with ideas and preparing the draft plan.
For Phase Five, once the consultants have a draft plan, it is a good time to meet with the community again to gauge the public reaction.
“All along the way, we will have the project website, so people can go to the website and stay informed during the process,” Epley said.
Phase Six would be moving forward to initiate the plan.
Mayor Evan Cockerham said, “The downtown plan the town is updating is 15 years old. What is the lifespan of a comprehensive plan?”
“We strongly believe as a town you should review it every year at a minimum at workshops. Look and see how you are achieving your goals,” said Epley.
“We’ll give you a set of goals and strategies that can be implemented over time,” he added. “There will be things to do in the first year — because you obviously want to have some progress coming out of the gate. Nobody wants to say, ‘Oh, we spent this money. What are we doing?’ … What are some practical things you can do?”
Epley said there would be goals for the first year, then things to do for years 2-5 and then some long-term goals after that.
Plans usually need to be pretty heavily updated every five years, added Hansen. Some things won’t change, and some others will have in that time.
Commissioner Hilda Willis asked, “How often do you check in with a client once a plan is adopted?”
Town Manager Michael Boaz spoke up and said, “Benchmark’s case is a little bit odd. … Andy, who is our planner, works technically for Benchmark, so they’re going to be involved regularly in the implementation of it.”
Second group
Next came Mosaic Civic Studio with Taylor Gupton Broyhill, planning principal, and Teresa Buckwalter, design principal.
Buckwalter said that Mosaic Civic Studio is a female-owned firm based in Boone. The core team has worked together for six years, but has 57 years of work experience.
“We are a group of creative professionals working together that are passionate about rural place-making, small town planning and comprehensive planning as well as recreation planning.”
Mosaic gave a similar answer to Benchmark on Phase One: gathering information and history.
“Simultaneously, we will begin research on existing conditions and emerging trends that are, and will continue, to affect Pilot Mountain,” said Broyhill. “So, we’ll couple GIS analysis with an in-depth review and research of demographic and economic trends that are affecting the town.”
“Phase Two is we begin to draft vision statements and policy goals for the town.”
Broyhill said this phase is about looking at where you are now and where you want to go.
Phase Three brings in community engagement and visioning.
“Public engagement is at the heart of every successful project. It gives you the opportunity to build public trust … and to address concerns up front,” Broyhill said.
“It also allows you to tap into the knowledge, the ideas and the skills of your community, so that when we begin developing recommendations and concepts that they are well grounded in the community context and community character.
“And then all of that information that we learn in Phase Three in community engagement is going to directly inform policy and plan development in Phase Four. This is developing those policy recommendations, those detailed action steps for achieving that 2040 vision … and also refining the future land-use map.
“This is the phase where the bulk of plan writing and development is going to take place.”
For Phase Five Broyhill said, “Final plan and adoption is really putting the finishing touches on those things, finalizing recommendations, those visuals and the future land-use map in order to create a document that is cohesive, accessible to the public, highly visual plan that clearly communicates that vision.
She said the total time once the firm gets started would be 11-13 months.
The town manager asked the duo a question. If community engagement is important, how would they do that, online surveys? “Given that we’re live streaming our meeting, you know, how do we build that in?”
Broyhill said that at some point the firm would like to have two public workshops. “One early on in the process to gauge perceptions and opinions and really serve as a learning session.”
Once some facts have been gathered and details of a plan are coming together, she said, “The second public workshop we envision using to provide those back to the public and get feedback. Kind of like taking our temperature. ‘Did we get this right?’ Before delving into full-fledged policy recommendations.”
Because of the virus restrictions, however, she added, “We have extensive experience with online surveys.”
Buckwalter added, “We can get creative with phone calls and Zoom sessions. I use Zoom sessions all the time.”
At the end of the meeting, no decision was made by the Pilot Mountain board so that the members could consider the proposals.
The board will have to wait for an open session to make a vote, which may again come with live streaming to keep the public from gathering at Town Hall.
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Source: https://www.mtairynews.com