The LaFayette Planning Commission votes to approve plan

BY KADIE TAYLOR

THE LAFAYETTE SUN

LAFAYETTE — At the June 15 Planning Commission Meeting, community members were invited to bring their perspectives to the public hearing portion of the meeting. 

Eric Wright, Director of Planning and Development for the East Alabama Regional Planning and Development Commission, reviewed the meetings and information gathered from LaFayette citizens to craft a comprehensive plan for LaFayette. 

“This has been a really engaging process over the last 18 months,” he said. “We started in April, and we did our swab analysis. We looked at the things that people saw as strategies, opportunities and threats. We then kind of broke down into several of those sessions that y'all remember, where we looked at different community facilities and parks and recreation. We did several pieces of healthy engagement, where we met at the food truck festival and got feedback from folks. We had a nice tour of the community as well to see where all some of the some of the spots of interest were. We spent a lot of time working on that future land use map. If you guys remember, a lot of you broke out the colored pencils. We looked at where we thought where future development should go and what it should look like. We then kind of dove, in October of last year, into the survey results. We had a community survey, we had over 100 responses to that community survey, a lot of really in-depth feedback about that, and then we looked at those housing goals and how to meet some of those needs.”

Wright continued to describe the meetings until current, and shared how the community input was taken into consideration while the commission developed the comprehensive plan. 

“In May, we did the draft presentation and the public hearing to get all that concerted feedback,” he said. “We've taken that feedback that we've gotten so far, we've rolled it together and that's where we are today. So, as we mentioned, especially at the public hearing last month, this was a CDBG-funded project, so a grant-funded project, and we're really excited that we are on at the adoption phase of this plan.” The community members in attendance and the LaFayette Planning Commission members were invited to give feedback, but no direct feedback or perspectives were given. 

“This document that you have a copy of will be approved in accordance with state law, that'll be effective upon its approval by this commission, and then it will be forwarded to the LaFayette City Council, where people have real authority with that,” said LaFayette City Attorney Mac Tucker.

The commission voted to approve the Comprehensive Plan as presented.