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While Comprehensive Plan stakeholders appreciate the efforts of city staff to elicit robust public comment during its update, the rush to get the most recent draft approved and the failure to provide full transparency of revisions belie those efforts as insincere.

Granted, we have collectively been at this since March 2022, when the steering committee first met, and it is time to complete the task. City staff are justifiably proud of the more than 7,500 “discrete” comments they collected through online and paper surveys and multiple in-person events, but voices are left unheard.

When Suffolk citizens received the first draft in February, they were unhappy with the tremendous expansion of the growth area and believed that lip service was being given to citizens’ desire to see Suffolk’s agricultural heritage preserved. Also concerning was the document’s failure to address the environmental, traffic, school, and infrastructure challenges of the growth it proposed and what the city was already experiencing.

The draft was the focus of a rare joint Planning Commission/City Council work session on May 1. Several participants voiced their concerns that echoed those of citizens, letting city staff know that more work was needed and the growth area needed to be reduced.

On June 18, city staff updated the Planning Commission on the revisions it had made in response to this commentary. Keith Cannady, Comprehensive Plan Manager, highlighted three “substantive” changes to the document, specifically on pages 50, 67, and 100, and “proposed” a schedule that had a Planning Commission public hearing and vote on July 16, an update to City Council on July 17, and a City Council public hearing and vote on August 17. The revised draft document was posted on the Comprehensive Plan website (https://suffolk2045.org/) the following day.

Although we have not heard that the Mayor approved the “proposed” schedule, the public hearing for the Planning Commission on July 16 was announced on July 3.

Particularly troubling is the lack of transparency in what changes have been made to the draft released in February, leaving stakeholders and our elected and appointed representatives in the dark. In response to our request for a document that shows all changes made to the original, Mr.

Cannady reiterated that the only “substantive” changes were those highlighted on pages 50, 67, and 100. We have heard from city council representatives that they do not have an edited first draft either. A request for a printed copy for our organization, which was available for the February draft, was also denied.

Nevertheless, concerned community groups have identified multiple changes that deserve scrutiny and public discussion. For example, an addition on page 68 proposes amending the city’s regulations so that “exceptional growth opportunities outside of the growth boundaries” can be reviewed and pursued. This may or may not be beneficial, but without public airing, it appears to be a way around a preference for more limited growth and preservation of agricultural land.

Citizens want to know the financial impacts of ongoing and proposed growth, both pro and con, on the taxpayers who support it. This wasn’t in the original draft nor in the revision, so this new addition seems particularly troubling.

Mayor Duman and City Council members should slow this process down and demand that we are provided full transparency on changes made to the original draft before this is put forward for a vote. Suffolkians have demonstrated they understand why the Comprehensive Plan is important, and they deserve an informed final say.

We urge Suffolk citizens to contact your city council representatives to demand that we see all the changes, not just the one’s city staff want to highlight, and be provided time to thoroughly review them before a public hearing. The Comprehensive Plan is too important not to care.

 

Denise Murden is an Executive Board Member of Citizens Voice