Open house gathers public input for comprehensive plan

An open house was held Monday in the Mary Wise Room of Hotel Greenfield as Greenfield city leaders get started on updating the town’s comprehensive plan and zoning mapping.

The city council hired MSA Professional Services of Ankeny recently to handle the work, which updates a comprehensive plan last updated in 1998. A comprehensive plan is a long-range planning document that expresses a community’s overarching vision, goals, objectives, policies and strategies for future growth.

At this open house, community members were able to participate in individual and group activities designed to generate ideas and feedback that professionals will be able to use in working on the comprehensive plan.

Feedback may still be given by going to the City of Greenfield Facebook page and following a QR code there for the comprehensive plan.

Mayor Jimmie Schultz remarked that the open house, attended by over 20 people, saw a good start, but he hopes more people will engage with this important endeavor.

“This is long overdue, so hopefully we can get some good input, good or bad. Just as long as we have input,” Schultz said.

MSA assistant planner Jenna Gilliam explained that a draft comprehensive plan document should be presented to the public sometime early 2025.

This process has been kicked off in the past several weeks with an initial meeting, interviews and this open house, which are all designed to kick off a process that produces an end result of a document that is beneficial for the community to use for a long time.

Stakeholder interviews will continue next month while draft existing and future land use maps will be formed and current development regulations will be reviewed.

A growth and development workshop will be held sometime in December as edits are completed and a final comprehensive plan is written.

Another open house and subsequent public hearings are held in January and February for final adoption of the comprehensive plan by the city council, while draft development regulations become more final and are presented.

In March and April, final steps require the planning and zoning commission to have a hearing and make a recommendation to the city council to pass the new development regulations that accompany the new comprehensive plan and map. The final adoption of development regulations are then passed by the council.

While she is relatively recent college graduate, Gilliam said there’s a lot of potential on the table for Greenfield as leaders and the public embark on this project together.

“This is my second comprehensive plan since I’ve been here. I will say every community is different. This was a good turnout [for this open house]. We’ve had certain scenarios where only a few people show up,” Gilliam said. “This is the initial phase of public engagement. We’ll have another event, probably in mid-November before the holidays, and then in early December we’ll have another open house. We want to continue pushing this, getting more and more public input.”