FENWICK ISLAND – A timeline for completing and approving the town’s comprehensive plan highlighted a meeting last week of the Fenwick Island Planning Commission.
Last Thursday, commission members continued their review of the Fenwick Island comprehensive plan. During the workshop, commission co-chair Julie Lee presented the group’s timeline for drafting, submitting and, ultimately, approving the new planning document.
“We can use this as a roadmap for mapping out our timeline and how we should be moving forward,” she said.
Earlier this year, the town council agreed to hire consultants to assist the planning commission in rewriting Fenwick Island’s comprehensive plan. And in the months since, officials have worked with University of Delaware advisors to collect data, maps and demographics and develop a vision for the town’s future.
Lee told committee members last week that the town would also be following the state’s PLUS process, which sets the timeline for reviewing and approving comprehensive plans. Once the Fenwick Island Town Council approves a draft plan, the document is sent to the state for review.
“Our goal is to ultimately have it prepared to go onto the agenda for the March 24 town council meeting to vote to approve the draft …,” she said. “The following Monday, we will deliver the document to the state.”
Lee told commission members last week that the review and revision process would also be held in conjunction with public input.
“We’ll be taking input from the community during this PLUS process …,” she said. “It will give us an opportunity to share the document and give the community an opportunity to look over the document and share their input as we await review from the state.”
Lee said any revisions from the state will then be reviewed and addressed by the town.
“We update and revise our plan and submit it to the state,” she said.
Once those changes are approved, she said, the town council will adopt the new comprehensive plan as an ordinance.
“It’s an ambitious timeline,” she said. “But we’ve done a lot of work in the last couple of months.”
Commission members this week also agreed to gather public input before the group drafts a new comprehensive plan. Lee said the commission would send out a survey to community members in the coming weeks.
“I do also think it would be valuable, sometime in early January, to send out a survey to get feedback before we write the draft …,” she said. “This would give us an opportunity to ask them what they think is most important.”
