Sunbury Master Plan process getting underway

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

The Vil­lage of Sun­bury is seek­ing sev­eral res­i­dents to sit on a Com­pre­hen­sive Mas­ter Plan Steer­ing Com­mit­tee. The vil­lage recently con­tracted with the Delaware County Regional Plan­ning Com­mis­sion to update a 2004 mas­ter plan, also the result of a part­ner­ship with regional planning.

The 2004 doc­u­ment made var­i­ous rec­om­men­da­tions based upon assump­tions that have now changed. Since 2003 the Nestlé prop­erty has changed, the Kroger site has changed, there have been down­town streetscape improve­ments, addi­tional side­walks through­out the vil­lage, the Granville Street Bridge was built, there was a major san­i­tary sewer plant upgrade, and the vil­lage is no longer in the water business.

For a vari­ety of rea­sons, the 2004 Vil­lage of Sun­bury Com­pre­hen­sive Mas­ter Plan Draft was never for­mally adopted.

Dur­ing 2008 Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil mem­bers con­sid­ered a res­o­lu­tion to con­tract with Bird-Houk Col­lab­o­ra­tive to pre­pare a Vil­lage of Sun­bury Com­pre­hen­sive Mas­ter Plan. That res­o­lu­tion was tabled and finally defeated fol­low­ing the Octo­ber 2008 col­lapse of the sub-prime mort­gage mar­ket that drove the econ­omy into reces­sion. Vil­lage coun­cil mem­bers decided they could not afford to pay $100,000 for a mas­ter plan that required an addi­tional $25,000 traf­fic study, while they were also dis­cussing elim­i­nat­ing employee pay raises.

On Feb­ru­ary 27 of this year, DCRPC Direc­tor Scott Sanders attended a work ses­sion one hour before the reg­u­larly sched­uled Vil­lage of Sun­bury Plan­ning & Zon­ing Com­mis­sion to dis­cuss options for updat­ing the 2004 doc­u­ment. At that ses­sion Sanders said since Sunbury’s 2004 doc­u­ment included a Vision­ing phase the old doc­u­ment could eas­ily be updated by hold­ing steer­ing com­mit­tee meet­ings open to the public.

Fast for­ward to last Wednesday’s Sun­bury Vil­lage Coun­cil meet­ing when steer­ing com­mit­tee dates were agreed on, and the com­po­si­tion of the com­mit­tee announced.

“The steer­ing com­mit­tee will include two mem­bers of vil­lage coun­cil, two mem­bers of the plan­ning and zon­ing com­mis­sion, a mem­ber from the (Big Wal­nut Area) His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, a mem­ber from the Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict, and a cou­ple of at-large mem­bers from the res­i­den­tial com­mu­nity,” said Sun­bury Mayor Tommy Hat­field. “The first meet­ing of the steer­ing com­mit­tee will be held at 6:30 p.m., on Thurs­day, Novem­ber 1, and the first Thurs­day of each month after that for at least six months.”

Hat­field said the steer­ing com­mit­tee meet­ings would be held in third floor coun­cil cham­bers in Sun­bury Town Hall; and vil­lage staff mem­bers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the BST&G Fire Dis­trict would also be invited to the meet­ings as needed for addi­tional input.

“Any­one inter­ested in serv­ing on this com­mit­tee needs to under­stand that this is a com­mit­ment that will take a lot of time read­ing and review­ing plans,” Hat­field said.

Vil­lage solic­i­tor David Brehm said coun­cil mem­bers would have to deter­mine a selec­tion process for the at-large steer­ing com­mit­tee applicants.

“You will define the rat­i­fi­ca­tion pro­ce­dure,” Brehm said. “There may be few choices or there may be a lot. We’ll have to wait and see how much inter­est there is.”

Appli­ca­tions to become a mem­ber of the Vil­lage of Sun­bury Com­pre­hen­sive Mas­ter Plan Steer­ing Com­mit­tee are avail­able on the vil­lage web­site at < sunburyvillage.com >, and at the Sun­bury Admin­is­tra­tion Build­ing, 9 East Granville Street, Sunbury.

For addi­tional infor­ma­tion call 740–965-2684.

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.