TO: Mike Robinette, Economic Development Director
FROM: Marty Kohler, Planning Director
DATE: February 19, 2010

The Middletown Master Plan was adopted by City Council in May of 2005. This was the first city-wide plan for Middletown since 1973. The 2005 Plan was broader in scope than the 1973 Plan in  hat it focused on the economic revitalization of the city in addition to the physical development of the City.

The 2005 Plan contained an implementation strategy and action plan (Chapter 10) which included a recommendation for an update of the plan to be undertaken five years from the adoption of the Plan. The fifth year anniversary of the plan will be in May 2010.

Many things can change in a five year period. Plans needs to also change to reflect current conditions and new opportunities that were not foreseen when the original plan was adopted. An update of a previous plan is much less rigorous of a process than the full preparation of a plan. Updates generally follow the same format as the original plan and re-iterates the priorities and goals that are still valid, eliminates things that have already been achieved, and adds new priorities and goals that are deemed to be of local importance. The update of the plan consists of several key components and questions to be answered:

• Review the underlying data and assumptions under which the plan was prepared.
(community survey, market study, development suitability of land, etc) Has anything
changed that would affect the validity of the plan? Have our basic community values and priorities changed over the last five years?

• Review activities and accomplishments achieved since the adoption of the plan. Have the activities produced the expected results? If not, what needs to be changed to get the correct results? For goals not achieved, are they still realistic or desirable?

• Review external factors or regional trends that affect local development (if any). Do any of these external factors affect our expectations for implementation of our local plan? Are there new opportunities for Middletown that did not exist five years ago? Have we undertaken any local activities that were counterproductive to achieving the goals of the plan? Have there been any additional plans or studies undertaken in the last five years that need to be integrated into the updated plan?

Since the format of the original plan starts with general data and gravitates into vision and goals and on to specific development opportunity areas and action steps, the update could easily be done in the same order as the plan. I would think this could be accomplished in about five Steering Committee meetings averaging two chapters per meeting.

I am not expecting a major deviation from the original goals and objectives of the plan. If the Steering Committee determines that we need to take substantially new directions with the plan, additional research time may be needed to validate the change. I do believe that the market research data is flawed due to the slowing economy, however I believe that the main impact will be on the timing of goals rather than the direction of the market. We do not have a budget to prepare a new market study, but may be able to rely on other resources to make necessary
adjustments to the market expectations.

As with the adoption of the 2005 Plan, I would recommend that a Steering Committee be involved with the update of the Plan. Ideally the committee should consist of about 15 people with a variety of perspectives. Since the plan update should be adopted by Planning Commission and City Council, a representative from each board should be included. In addition representatives of the Board of Education, business community, resident, developer/real estate, neighborhood groups, social services, etc. should be on the committee.

The committee should be diverse in all respects and represent an accurate cross section of the community. We have a few names from the Master Plan Implementation Committee that could be asked to continue with the Plan Update Committee. These were Rev. Bob Stacy, Cathy Newkirk, Dane Donham, Doug Bean, Sam Ashworth, Saundra Pearce, and Valerie Griffin. I would suggest that I contact these people to see if they would be interested in continuing on the Update Committee. To fill the remainder of the Committee, we could ask city Council to each nominate one person for the Committee.

We should also set an internal committee of key City Departments to make sure that plans for the provision of City services are coordinated with the efforts of the Master Plan. This group only needs to provide information regarding long range plans to the Planning Department for integration into the Master Plan as appropriate. They would also need to review the final product of the planning effort to determine if the Master Plan Update is consistent with their long range plans, therefore no formal meetings are needed for the internal group unless interdepartmental issues need to be resolved.

The first step is to establish the Steering Committee. Could you coordinate this with the City Manager to have City Council appoint the committee membership?