Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By James W. Robinson

Staff Writer

During their Oct. 16 work session, Suffolk City Council held two updates for their draft 2045 Comprehensive Plan as well as the draft Master Transportation Plan. During the meeting, Suffolk Comprehensive Planning Manager Keith Cannady shared changes that have been made to the draft plan since Aug. 16, which saw amendments and language changes.

“I want to identify a couple of changes. As I mentioned earlier, fairly minor, but important to recognize these will be in the document that we propose for your public hearing in November,” Cannady said. “And these were largely brought to us by the Suffolk Peninsula Community Partnership after that Planning Commission and City Council meeting. And so, we went through their comments and have made these recommended changes…”

Pages 4 and 5 have seen Metropolitan Statistical Area defined as “…delineated by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as having at least one urbanized area with a minimum population of 50,000,” as well as serving “group counties and cities into specific geographic areas for population censuses and compilations of related statistical data.” Along with fixing the spelling on page 11 for “achieve,” comment numbers were updated for page 14 and 20 (7,500+) and the transportation project Godwin Bridge Expansion was added to page 98 and 99.

New language was also added to L.4.2 of “Objectives and Actions” regarding “Prepare or update village area plans to facilitate long-term decision making for Suffolk’s historic villages.” Language includes “and their adjacent neighborhoods” and “Zoning along the transportation corridors serving the City’s greater village areas should be carefully reviewed to ensure development is compatible with existing land use patterns…”

VHB Engineering Senior Project Manager Kirsten Tinch provided a draft of the Master Transportation Plan. Tinch says that the plan came about as a “recommendation” coming out of the 2045 plan.

“And the goal of this Master Transportation Plan is really to set the vision, what [are] the transportation needs of the city now and into the future? And it considers three main areas, land use: meeting the land use conditions of today as well as the vision for the land use in 2045. Improve mobility: improving mobility for all members that use the transportation system. That’s pedestrians, bicyclists, passenger cars, freight, transit, all of those elements are considered. And then promote sustainable growth of the city.”

Tinch detailed Chapter 4 of the 2045 Comprehensive Plan, which includes existing conditions, such as corridors of statewide significance, functional classifications and volumes, funded, planned and visionary transportation projects, and objectives and actions in the section. On the overview of the Transportation Master Plan, Tinch expressed that the plan adjusts city congestion, safety and connectivity as well as its goal to be “a living document” to review and update annually as part of the Capital Improvement Plan project.

Following the presentation, Council Member Timothy Johnson asked they would receive a copy of the Transportation Plan showing what would be included in the 2045 plan, due to the presentation not answering “any of my questions.” Director of Public Works Robert Lewis followed by saying that the transportation plan would be a “standalone document.”

“The COMP plan already has Chapter 4 in there that addresses all the things required. Our vision of this, this is going to become a standalone document,” Lewis said. “So essentially, we pulled Chapter 4 out, we’ve added to it. Eventually we’ll bring that back to council [so] you all can adopt it, but the idea is to keep it a living document. So each year as you update your CIP, we’ll go back and add those projects back in, they’ll go from visionary to funded or planned, and again this becomes a living document.”

Lewis continued.

“So yes sir, I believe the intent is for you to see this prior to November, but I am not sure at this point we really intend for this to be a document that’s adopted by council that night because, again, there’s still some work to be done,” Lewis said.

Johnson followed, saying he had “a little problem with that.”

“…The whole document is a living breathing thing Robert, we all know that. It can change on a whim. It could change tomorrow if the weather changes. I am not sure that we weren’t asking for a section in the COMP plan that actually identified where we’re heading roadwise,” Johnson said.

Lewis followed saying it was all in the COMP plan and that it does not set alignments, emphasizing that the plan is “30 year lookout vision.”

“One of the things we cannot do, we kind of draw straight lines and you’ll notice a lot of those map lines are straight lines, they’re from point A to point B. We don’t try to really put an alignment in there because if we go to that, it almost becomes an official map and when you get to the point of doing that, we have essentially inversely condemned property and we’ve tied people’s hands and tell them that the city’s taken your property, we’re going to put a road there. That is not the case.”

Lewis continued.

“This is a vision and the idea is we work with property owners and developers as they bring plans in to figure how to fit these roads through these properties,” he said. “We don’t tell them exactly where it has to go and how it has to fit. We give them the ability to work their plans around our vision for these roads. That’s the way we’ve always done it and again, otherwise, and I think the attorney can weigh in on this, we may get ourselves in pretty significant legal issue if we go to the point of trying to create an official map that shows these alignments set in stone.”

The City Council public hearing for the draft 2045 Comprehensive Plan will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 20 at City Hall.