Last Updated on October 26, 2018 by Adam Rude
The City of Shelbyville Planning and Building Department has been awarded Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding through the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs (OCRA) to help fund an update to the City’s Comprehensive Plan. A city’s Comprehensive Plan is intended to take a holistic look at the community and generally plan out how and where development should occur in the next two to three decades. While this plan looks out 20 – 30 years, it should be reviewed and updated every 5 – 7 years to ensure the vision described in the plan is still the vision the citizens have for their community. The City’s existing Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 2010, and since that time many of the goals in the plan have been completed and new opportunities have presented themselves, so we feel as though it is time to review and update this document.
City staff spent the last few months of 2017 preparing documentation for this grant application while at the same time interviewing qualified teams to help the city through this update process. At the January 2018 Plan Commission meeting, planning staff announced that they would partner with HWC Engineering out of Indianapolis to lead the efforts in updating the city’s existing Comprehensive Plan. This is the same firm that will also be updating the Comprehensive Plan for Shelby County in 2018. HWC Engineering has been involved in a range of different projects that more than qualify them for this update; some of those projects include: A Comprehensive Plan Update for the City of Franklin, A Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan for Whitestown, and The City of Rushville’s first Comprehensive Plan just to name a few.
During this time when the City is updating its Comprehensive Plan, Shelby County will undergo a similar process in updating their Comprehensive Plan. This was an intentional effort to further clarrify the community’s vision at both a city-scale and a larger county-scale, while at the same time bringing a deeper sense of continuety to many of the goals established in these two plans. Shelby County has also chosen HWC Engineering to assist in their Comprehensive Plan Update.
Over the next year, we will periodically have public meetings and listening sessions were we will ask for public input and feedback on the plan update as it is developed, and all members of the public will be invited to those events. Currently we are asking that everyone take a short online survey to help us get started on this process. To access the survey, click here.
To stay informed with the progress of the plan and how you can get involved along the way, follow the Planning and Building Department Facebook Page, or visit the Project’s website.
