What is a Comprehensive Plan?
Planning for the growth of the City is an important process in creating and maintaining a desirable atmosphere. By creating a well-planned community, the City’s economic vitality is enhanced, making it a better place to live and shop. The forethought and planning the City is currently engaged in, coupled with the high standards placed on residential and commercial development will help ensure the community has quality growth that will be sustainable into the future. The Comprehensive Plan is a tool used to guide growth and development within the City. The Comprehensive Plan is a community effort facilitated by the Planning Commission that lays out guidelines on how the community would like to grow and how to achieve that growth. The Plan takes a look at the community’s strengths and weaknesses in an effort to address the development and redevelopment issues affecting the City. This in-depth analysis helps anticipate future issues or trends, and it lays out the land use plan that helps
A Comprehensive Plan is truly a “blueprint” that provides guidance on where and how the community will grow in the next 20 years. Comprehensive Plans typically consist of maps, policy statements, and goals and objectives addressing a number of issues relating to growth, housing, economic development, transportation, environment, parks and open space, aesthetics, community character, and historic preservation and conservation. The primary emphasis of the document is to provide long-range guidance to property owners, citizens and decision makers on land use issues, such as where residential, commercial and industrial development should occur in the future, and at what densities.
A comprehensive plan is an official document that contains the collective expression of community values that form the character the community hopes to achieve. It is also a general policy guide for the physical development of a municipality and it serves as the framework upon which all administrative and regulatory documents are based.
Weld County’s Comprehensive Plan provides guidance for a variety of issues that directly affect the quality of life of County residents, including creating a sense of community in existing and new development, providing services, and planning for transportation and water needs, for example. The community vision contained in the Comprehensive Plan guides decision-makers and helps prioritize community values. Generally speaking, comprehensive plans are a key tool in the tool belt of land use planning. In Colorado, state law requires most jurisdictions to do master planning and produce a comprehensive plan. The Weld Comprehensive Plan is a document that serves as the foundation of all land use and development regulations in the County. The first Weld County Comprehensive Plan was written in 1974, and the Plan was last revised and adopted in 2002. The Comprehensive Plan is the basis for the rules and regulations that govern planning, zoning, subdivisions, and land use. Supplemental to the
A comprehensive plan is an officially adopted public document that establishes policies aimed at guiding the growth and development of the community for the next 25 years. The plan contains many coordinated and consistent elements including issues and opportunities, agricultural, natural & cultural resources, transportation, utilities & community facilities, housing, economic development, land use, and implementation. The purpose of the plan is to guide decisions concerning the physical development of the community. It is a statement of how the city should develop over the next 25 years and what can be done to increase the likelihood of that happening. The plan will be used to guide the location, development and maintenance of the many facilities and services provided by the city, and will be used by decision makers when reviewing development cases. In preparing a comprehensive plan a diverse set of tools are used. Planners examine population, land use and development trends, and gathe
