Town to hold virtual meeting for comprehensive plan

Black Mountain seeks public input for ‘Elevate Black Mountain’

Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
August 26, 2020

A pair of Thursday, Sept. 3 virtual meetings will provide Black Mountain residents with an opportunity to offer feedback on the proposed vision and goals of the town’s comprehensive plan update. 

Planning director Jessica Trotman and representatives from Chapel Hill-based land-use consulting firm Clarion and Associates will present an outline based on public input gathered in the initial phases of the project, “Elevate Black Mountain,” with virtual meetings at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. 

Trotman’s department set out to update the town’s comprehensive plan in the fall of 2019, with a series of public meetings that included a January presentation that drew approximately 150 residents. An online survey featured on the town’s website solicited additional input. The data collected from the community informed the drafting of goals and plan vision, which will be presented in the virtual meeting, according to Trotman. The livestream will provide an opportunity for attendees to ask questions. 

“We took this information and drafted these goals and this vision for the plan,” she said. “Now we’ll get some feedback on those.”

“Robust update” features multi-phase strategy

A comprehensive plan is not a binding document, but it serves as a key guidance tool for future decisions. The original document was adopted in 2004 and overhauled in 2014. The Elevate Black Mountain project will serve as a “robust update” to the plan, according to Trotman. 

The detailed outline is primarily used to inform town decisions related to growth and development and provides strategies for land use, housing, environmental protection, public infrastructure and economic development. 

The original plan featured 17 vision statements that remain unchanged through the updates. Those statements, which focus on a wide range of goals including small town character and community identity, parks and open space, cultural diversity, economic opportunity, describe ideal conditions in the town that would be realized if the plan were fully implemented. 

Updates of the plan allow the town to modernize the goals and strategies within the document.  

In an effort to maximize public input and allow for the collection of extensive data, Elevate Black Mountain was planned in four phases: research and analysis; plan vision and goals; draft plan and final comprehensive plan and land use map. 

The Sept. 3 meetings will represent the final piece of Phase 2, as project managers move to begin drafting the plan. 

“When we move into Phase 3 we will really start to flesh out the policy framework, and then we will test that with the public,” Trotman said. “That will probably be in late October.” 

The comprehensive plan update is scheduled to be finalized around the end of the year. 

Feedback remains important part of the process

The town will post a link to the meetings on its Elevate Black Mountain web page, allowing those who were unable to participate in the livestream to view the presentation. Links to surveys and materials shared during the session will be included. 

“We will be doing more outreach and education within the community to start informing the recommendations,” Trotman said. “It’s a very iterative process and these surveys give us data we can measure. We do include open-ended questions and we put them through a program that identifies high-frequency words.”

The town provides documents and data collected through the first two phases of the Elevate Black Mountain project on its Comprehensive Plan Update web page. The information includes the 2014 update, educational materials and presentations given during previous meetings. 

“The comprehensive plan is a tool that the planning board, board of aldermen and town staff use to help guide decision-making,” Trotman said. “This process is a really good opportunity for the community to make sure their vision for that is represented.”