The following information
was sent via a link to the Butte County General Plan
2030 mailing list on Saturday, September 22, 2007 @ 11:45
AM
Progress to date & a bit of clarification
Butte County General Plan 2030 is a comprehensive General
Plan Update, which
means our process is intended to encompass a broad
range of areas and to include the identification and
review of issues, land use alternatives,
constraints, development of goals, policies and
programs, as well as the completion of a new Zoning
Ordinance and Environmental Impact Report.
Individual property owner requests and projects
certainly play a role in that process and we
encourage their participation. Because the county
is large and made up of many different communities,
our process was organized to ensure input from many
different planning areas and individual
communities. Development Services staff has engaged
the public through an outreach program that involved
19 Community Meetings to hear input on individual
community assets, issues and future vision.
Chapter 19 of the Setting and Trends Report
includes a detailed overview of that outreach
program should you be interested. Butte County has
established an overarching vision for the County's
future, which is expressed in the
13 Guiding Principles adopted by the Board of
Supervisors. These have been in place since the
outset and have helped to guide and organize the General
Plan
2030 process since that time (and will continue to).
Meeting Series
#2/3 is concentrating on the creation and
finalization of alternatives, and for this reason it
may appear to some that the process is focused
on individual developer requests, which do make up some
of the proposed change areas. In fact, a
total of 43
potential change areas are currently under consideration
and will
receive much more scrutiny in the months ahead.
Only 17 out of the 43 change areas being considered
are based on specific proposals from landowners.
The remainder (i.e., the majority) of each proposed
change area is based on a synthesis of the input we
gathered from the community and the CAC through the
Area-Wide Workshops, the one-on-one meetings with
the Cities, and the public workshop and CAC meeting
in May that kicked off
Meeting Series
#2/3. Prior to Meeting Series #4, and after the
conclusion of
Meeting Series #2/3, the General Plan
Consultant, Design, Community & Environment (DC&E),
and their team of subconsultants will evaluate each
of the three alternatives for each potential change
area for their potential implications in the areas
of the environment, transportation, economics, and
agriculture. Each of the three alternatives will
also be analyzed on how each meets the assets,
issues, and future vision identified during
Meeting
Series #1 – Existing Conditions and Issue
Identification, and the
19 Community Meetings held in conjunction with
this Meeting Series as well as how they align with
the County’s
13 Guiding Principles.
Our outreach effort to individual property owners
included the mailing of over 26,000 individual
postcards inviting people to one or more of the
19 Community and 7 Area-Wide Meetings we have
held in all corners of the County. During these
meetings, contact information was provided, the
County’s General Plan 2030 website address and
information was widely distributed, the
General Plan
2030 Briefing Book was handed out, and other
materials, including a pamphlet specifically
describing the General Plan 2030 process was made
available to the public. We recognized these
meetings as the most appropriate time for outreach
to the County’s communities. For many residents,
landowners and developers, this was their first
introduction to the General Plan 2030 process
(please check out Chapter 19 of the Setting and
Trends Report for a detailed overview of this
process). We also maintain an email listserv on our
website that provides routine email updates on the
General Plan 2030 process to anyone who wishes to
join this list. This list includes well over 400
email addresses and has been instrumental in getting
the word out. Recently, Butte County Development
Services, with the help of the Board of Supervisors,
hosted a booth at the Butte County Fair in Gridley
devoted to the General Plan 2030 process. Tim
Snellings has also brought the General Plan 2030
process to many interest groups around the county in
the form of a PowerPoint presentation that details
the process, what Is going on, and how people can
become involved. All of these presentations can be
viewed at our website, under the ‘ebinder’. We
continue to follow-up on the City/County Summit
Meeting with individual meetings with each city to
work on ways we can plan together more effectively
(the notes from all previously held meetings are
also available in the ‘ebinder’.
Meeting Series #4 will be devoted to the creation of
a preferred alternative. It is during this Meeting
Series that difficult choices concerning the 43
proposed change areas we have received thus far will
be made. The Public Workshop that starts
Meeting Series #4 is tentatively scheduled to begin on
January 24, 2008 (dates for the Citizens Advisory
Committee meetings and the individual Study Sessions
before the Planning Commission and Board of
Supervisors will be made available as soon as they
are finalized). The Board of Supervisors will
provide final direction regarding the preferred
alternative. Based on feedback from the Board of
Supervisors (who will have the benefit of receiving
all the input from the public workshop, CAC
meetings, and Planning Commission Study Session),
County staff and DC&E will make any needed
refinements to create the final preferred
alternative.
Each of the meeting series (a total of 8, including
one entirely devoted to the Housing Element), which
revolve around specific tasks such as the current
Meeting Series
#2/3 –Creation/Finalization of
Alternatives, are also structured to include input
from a variety of
sources during a Public Workshop, a Citizens
Advisory Committee, a Planning Commission Study
Session, and the Board of Supervisors Study
Session. Each of these meetings and entities are
uniquely qualified to provide input into the
process, and that is why the process was structured
in such a way to ensure their involvement every step
of the way. All of these meetings are publicly
noticed with a display ad in all local papers, and
we have had some help with local newspapers and
radio stations in running information about the
meetings, most recently the Citizens Advisory
Committee meeting held in Chico on September 6. We
have videotaped every one of the meetings associated
with each meeting series and this may be accessed on
our website. We have also worked with Community
Access Channel 11 to have these meetings broadcast
periodically shortly after they were held.
Meeting Series #5 will be devoted entirely to the
discussion of Goals and Policies. This Series comes
after the preferred alternative selection so that
the public, the CAC, the Planning Commission and
Board has had the benefit of already considering
different development scenarios and physical
locations, as well as learning all about Butte
County’s issues and existing conditions. They will
then have the opportunity to translate their
opinions about what should or should not be allowed
into policy alternatives that correspond to the type
and location of new growth areas and conservation
strategies/areas they want to plan for.
As you can see there have been many opportunities,
and there will continue to be many opportunities for
people and groups to become involved in the General
Plan 2030 process and that our process is truly a
comprehensive process that is encompassing of the
broad diversity of input from all citizens as well
as interests of Butte County.
Thanks for your involvement in Butte County General
Plan 2030. It may help to see the bigger picture
and to answer questions with the County’s process by
visiting the following links for additional
information:
What’s Next?
Planning Commission Meeting on September 28, 2007 at
9:00 am to receive their input on Workshop
Series 2/3
Board
of Supervisors Meeting on October 16, 2007 at 9:00
am to finalize Workshop Series 2/3
Pre-Register for
the upcoming Butte County Economic Summit on October
15, 2007 at Sierra Nevada Brewery
If you have
any
questions, please do not hesitate to call Dan
Breedon at 530-538-7629 or me at 530-538-6821.
Sincerely, Tim Snellings, Director
Butte County Department of Development Services |
