Public hearing set for town’s comprehensive plan
‘Elevate Black Mountain’ will go before town council June 14
Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
June 13, 2021
A two-year process updating Black Mountain’s comprehensive plan is nearing a conclusion, with a public hearing on the document scheduled for the Monday, June 14 regular monthly meeting of the town council.
The final draft of “Elevate Black Mountain,” which sets the long-range vision for transportation, housing, development, environment and local government services and facilities for the municipality, was presented to town council in a May 20 special call meeting.
The town’s planning department, led by director Jessica Trotman, began work on the comprehensive plan with consultants from Clarion Associates and Chipley Consulting in the summer of 2019. The revision of the document, which was adopted in 2004 and last updated in 2014, provides the “highest-level expression of the community’s future,” Nate Baker of Clarion Associates told council members to open the presentation of the final draft.
“It really answers three key questions,” Baker said. “One, where are we as a community? That was a big topic of conversation, the changing aspects of Black Mountain. Two, where are we going, or what do we want to be as a community in the future? And finally, how do we get there?”
The first in the four-phase process of creating the plan focused on research and analysis, according to Baker. Consultants assessed existing conditions by meeting with various stakeholders in the community.
“We met with environmental advocates, business leaders, town department heads, church leaders and others in the community and had robust conversations about what was going on in Black Mountain,” he said. “This helped give us an understanding of existing conditions here from various different perspectives.”
The second phase, community engagement, included a series of public workshops that began in January 2020 at the Black Mountain Church of God of North Fork Road. The initial meeting was attended by approximately 100 residents. Phase two of the comprehensive plan development, through in-person interviews and workshops, online meetings, online surveys, paper surveys, planner office hours and emails, engaged approximately 300 residents, according to the document.
“This is a citizen-driven plan, and resident input really forms the foundation of both the process and the document itself,” Baker said. “The language in the plan is intended to be in the voice of community members.”
Four key planning trends were identified in Black Mountain: the town is increasingly interlinked to the growing region, with residents and workers commuting between jurisdictions; all newly constructed housing units since 1997 have been single family houses or duplexes; households, on average, spend over 50% of their income on housing and transportation and the town is undergoing demographic changes that include an aging population.
“Some of the themes that came out of the engagement process were protecting open space, enhancing and replicating Black Mountain’s cherished downtown pattern, addressing cost of living and affordability of housing, investing in parks and community spaces and expanding local and regional transportation options,” Baker said.
The collective vision of the town, according to the comprehensive plan, values accessibility, walkability, environmental conservation, civic engagement and a vibrant economy. The chapters within the 71-age document, which can be viewed here, and on the town planning department’s Projects page, include goals for each of the topics. Each goal is accompanied by corresponding policy recommendations.
An implementation matrix at the end of the plan offers a “blueprint for action” supporting the goals of Elevate Black Mountain while functioning as a tool to help prioritize actions.
Councilmember Pam King was “excited” about the plan and lauded the work on the project, but expressed concerns about the level of staffing needed to address high-priority goals.
“The priority on almost all of these actions is high, and it gets a little tricky because if everything is a high priority then how do you decide what to do first?” she said. “It’s my observation that our staff is maxed out, and I’d really hate for this to just become a fun thing we did that gets stuck on a shelf.”
Implementation of the plan, she continued, would likely require additional town staff.
“By and large, the residents clearly spoke and a lot of them participated in this process,” King said. “I think this could be a wonderful tool for us going forward, every time there are decisions to be made. Not just this council, but into the future.”
The document, which Trotman called “more concise” than past comprehensive plans, is designed to provide actionable recommendations to town leaders.
Mayor Larry Harris suggested that the town council revisit the plan yearly in an effort to identify areas that could be addressed in the budget.
The comprehensive plan will be presented in one of five public hearings Monday.