OC Comp Plan Update Nearly Ready

OCEAN CITY — After considerable revisions and changes, Ocean City’s updated comprehensive plan, a blueprint of sorts for the future direction of the resort, will soon be available for public consumption.

For the last year or so, the Ocean City Planning and Zoning Commission has conducted a chapter-by-chapter review of the town’s existing comprehensive plan. The weighty tome outlines Ocean City’s recent growth activities and lays out a plan for its future in a wide variety of areas from land use to economic development and from population trends to housing, transportation and infrastructure, for example.

The Maryland Department of Planning requires jurisdictions to submit revised comprehensive plans in 10-year cycles in conjunction with the U.S. Census and Ocean City’s plan was last updated in 2009. Earlier this summer, the planning commission wrapped up its update of the comprehensive plan and forwarded it to the state for approval. The state reviewed the updated plan and sent it back with comments, or recommendations, on how to improve it.

The next step in the lengthy process is a public hearing in Ocean City, during which residents will have the opportunity to review the planning document and make comments or suggestions of their own. The Planning and Zoning Commission on Tuesday set the public hearing date for September 19, which will meet the obligatory advertising requirements and still leave time for late revisions or updates before the state’s deadline.

Planning and Community Development Director Bill Neville said on Tuesday the process has been a tedious one, but was reaching its conclusion.

“It feels like we’re in a comprehensive plan raft heading toward the waterfall that will be the public hearing,” he said. “Hopefully, we don’t hit a rock along the way.”

There was some discussion on Tuesday about whether to revise the draft comprehensive plan to include the state’s comments in each appropriate section, or simply include the state’s comments in the back of the document so those who attend the public hearing could see the differences. Planning Commission member Palmer Gillis said he favored leaving the town’s draft as it is, including the state’s comments at the end and making the appropriate adjustment after the public hearing.

“In the interest of transparency, I think we should include the state’s comments in the back as an appendix,” he said. “We sent our proposed comp plan to the state and they sent it back with comments. This way, the public can see the comments the state sent back.”

Neville explained most of the state’s comments were housekeeping in nature and included word or sentence changes. However, there were a few areas where the state sought more substantive changes.

“The state said it hopes we really beef up our plans for bicycles and pedestrians and we have done that in some of the sections,” he said. “The other big suggestion was pulling the demoflush statistics out of each section and adding it as an appendix. We’ve been tasked with upgrading the comp plan and not necessarily reorganize it. I’d just as soon wait until the end and do it all at once.”

Another section of the revised comprehensive plan deals with land use and zoning and includes existing and proposed changes to the zoning code. In some cases in the comp plan, the zoning changes do not match the included maps. There was some discussion on Tuesday about the ability of a property owner to call into question the zoning of his or her parcel, or a part of his or her parcel, after reviewing the map. Some on the commission said individual zoning issues should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but Gillis suggested the comp plan public hearing was probably the appropriate time for those individual discussions.

“I would really like to see it opened up,” he said. “They have a right to request a change, just as we have the right to turn it down.”

About The Author: Shawn Soper

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Shawn Soper has been with The Dispatch since 2000. He began as a staff writer covering various local government beats and general stories. His current positions include managing editor and sports editor. Growing up in Baltimore before moving to Ocean City full time three decades ago, Soper graduated from Loch Raven High School in 1981 and from Towson University in 1985 with degrees in mass communications with a journalism concentration and history.