The committee has met more than 20 times so far to discuss various parts of the city's comprehensive plan and has brought items to the Plano Planning and Zoning Commission four times. Any recommendations for the plan must receive a three-fourths majority vote by the committee as well as a simple majority from zoning officials.
At the most recent Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, review committee members presented six areas of interest and any adjustments that the committee felt were appropriate. The topics covered community design, neighborhood conservation, special housing needs, consistency with neighboring cities and regional education.
Discussions have largely focused on how the wording of plan might affect the city and the way it responds to issues or changes in the coming years. For example, one of the item revisions by the zoning commission was to remove the word "public" from a statement about supporting local education in order to broaden the reach to private and charter schools as well.
Revisions to any of the items are sent back to the plan committee for further review, and they come back to the planning and zoning commission when members reach agreement on accepting or altering those requested revisions.
So far, the Plano Planning and Zoning Commission has approved upward of 80 comments from the review committee and has made changes to roughly 14% the committee's total recommendations, Freese and Nichols consultant Dan Sethco said at the meeting. Four planned meetings remain for the review committee, with the last two scheduled for Jan. 5 and 12.
The committee's process is being documented online, including a page with revisions at each stage and a breakdown of what items are covered in each meeting.
The 16 Plano residents reviewing the city's comprehensive development plan began their work in January. Each of City Council’s eight members selected two residents to serve on the review committee.
The comprehensive plan serves as the foundation of the city’s zoning ordinances, and the findings and recommendations of this committee will guide the city in the creation of a new comprehensive plan. The city is currently following development guidelines that were put in place in 1986, following the repeal of the Plano Tomorrow plan Aug. 5.
