LaFayette Comprehensive Plan Meeting develops roadmap
BY KADIE TAYLOR
THE LAFAYETTE SUN
LAFAYETTE — A city of LaFayette Comprehensive Planning Meeting was held on Tuesday, March 10, at the ALFA Building. East Alabama Regional Planning Development Commission (EARPDC) Regional Planners Elizabeth Harkert and Kindall Brown welcomed locals to the meeting and introduced the goals of the meeting: reviewing downtown goals and completing a goal implementation exercise.
Harkert explained how the EARPDC is working to help LaFayette develop a comprehensive plan and said it is important for a city to have a direction as it works to grow and improve.
“The EARPDC represents 10 counties and approximately 85 municipalities, and we are both the local development district and the economic development district for the region,” she said. “Our role is essentially as the facilitator for regional development… A comprehensive plan is basically the foundation for local governments and planning out their future and their goals — it is the foundation that’s needed to implement zoning ordinances, code enforcement and identifying these projects — like we did today. A comprehensive plan gives the city and the people a road map to move forward and to start making progress. It works to address whatever the city wants to see in their future — it is supposed to be a 10 to 20-year outlook.”
Brown said it is important for LaFayette residents to attend and engage with the Comprehensive Plan Meetings because it helps direct her and Harkert to best represent the needs of the community in the Comprehensive Plan for LaFayette — which is expected to be complete in August 2026.
“It’s important because a comprehensive plan is supposed to embody the spirit of whichever town or city that we’re working in,” she said. “So as a regional planner, we can come in, and we can see that a road needs to be paved, but we’re not the ones here living every day. What may seem important to one person is not necessarily as important to another. We want equal voices, so everyone is heard, and [that way], by the time this is put together, it’s one big voice for LaFayette instead of a bunch of different opinions — because it’s hard to get stuff done that way. All of these projects are so important, and they’re all high priority. [The Comprehensive Plan] is supposed to represent what the community wants, and we can’t do that without participation in these surveys, meetings and these activities that we do.”
Brown said she compiled a list of goals from the information gathered from a survey activity at the previous meeting that represent the desires of constituents for the city of LaFayette. Harkert introduced the activity for the meeting, and attendees were given green, yellow and red stickers to rank the importance of different items on posterboards. There were six posters with nine to 10 sub-items covering topics that included: land use goals; economy goals; downtown goals; transportation goals; community facilities, parks and recreation; and housing goals. Attendees ranked the time urgency of the item on a timeline from one to 10 years and the importance by the color of sticker they used. Harkert said the information collected would help her and Brown in writing the Comprehensive Plan for LaFayette.
Two participants said they felt the activity was helpful and shared specific items that they felt were of high-priority for LaFayette in the Comprehensive Plan.
“Through these meetings, they have identified a lot of critical areas that the city needs to address first, [both] short-term and long-term,” said George Green, LaFayette superintendent and building inspector. “For instance, economic goals — we need more economic growth and jobs here. Also, land use, how we use the land now, because that’s going to change tomorrow. Our downtown district is used a lot, so some improvements there are important.”
“I became familiar with this because my mother was a chairperson and was getting ready to step down, and so I stepped in to fill her in on what was going on,” said resident Hope Haynes. “I see how important it is now — you have to be interested in where you live. You want to know what’s going on and help to make it a better place. So, I’ve gotten more knowledge and an understanding of what some of the problems are here, what some of the solutions are here and I feel like I know it a little bit better — it makes it easier to become more involved… Words like ‘change’ and ‘growth’ are important. The way things have been done in the past was good for the past, but we live in a different time now — so we have to be willing to change and to grow. I’m not saying change everything because the charm of a small town is what makes it nice, but economy-wise, people will leave if they don’t have places to work, if they don’t have things to do. That’s one of the most important things — foundationally, the structure needs to be improved.”
The next LaFayette Comprehensive Plan Meeting will be on April 14 at 5:30 p.m., with plans to complete a walkability study downtown if the weather allows. For more information, visit www.lafayetteplan.com.
