By BRIAN LEAHY
of The Gazette
What do you want Portage County to look like in the future?
Every county resident and landowner will get the chance to provide their input during an unprecedented countywide comprehensive planning process to guide growth and development.
"Clearly public participation is a cornerstone of the initiative under way," said Stevens Point Mayor Gary Wescott, chairman of the Portage County Comprehensive Planning Joint Steering Committee overseeing the project. "Whenever you embark upon writing a master plan for a specific area, you can't write the master plan without involving the public."
The planning effort was created to fulfill the requirements of Wisconsin's Smart Growth Law requiring, that by 2010, all local governmental unit's land use actions must be consistent with their adopted comprehensive plans. The comprehensive plans must address nine elements - issues and opportunities; housing; transportation; utilities and community facilities; agricultural, natural and cultural resources; economic development; intergovernmental cooperation; land use; and implementation.
All 28 units of government in Portage County are involved in the comprehensive planning process. Because of the unified effort, Portage County's grant application ranked the highest of the 103 comprehensive planning grant applications reviewed by the Wisconsin Land Council. Portage County received $504,000 of the $2.5 million in comprehensive planning grants awarded by the state. With a local match of $336,000, the project has a total base funding of $840,000.
Delegates from the city of Stevens Point, the villages of Plover, Whiting and Park Ridge and portions of the surrounding towns of Hull, Stockton, Plover, Linwood and Carson form the Urban Area Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee. Delegates from all 17 towns and the six rural villages of Almond, Amherst, Amherst Junction, Junction City, Nelsonville and Rosholt form the Portage County Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee. The two committees meet together as the Joint Steering Committee.
Wescott said the joint committee has had a frank and candid exchange of ideas and is working together to resolve common concerns.
"The end result will just be exceptional because of this level of input," Wescott said.
Officials working on the project have said no other planning process in the state, and possibly the nation, involves as many local governments working together. Because of that, many outside parties are keeping an eye on the work done in Portage County.
The Joint Steering Committee worked on housekeeping chores in its initial meetings, like adopting bylaws and a public participation plan. It held its third meeting in July and is preparing to move into the issue identification and visioning phase.
"I think the next important role the public can expect to play is there will be a survey sent," Wescott said.
The survey will be sent to every county residence and property owner in the next 30 days. To boost the return rate, the survey includes a return envelope, already addressed and stamped.
Publicity and public education efforts, like the survey, are included in each of the comprehensive planning approach's eight steps - committee formation and initial meetings; plan for the planning; background information and inventory/trends assessment; issue identification and visioning; strategy formation and draft comprehensive plans; plan review and adoption; and plan implementation.
The state's Smart Growth law requires public involvement, and the county's comprehensive planning process recognizes its importance.
"The concept of citizens participating in government decision-making is fundamental to our system of governance," according to the committee's public participation plan introduction. "While it is true that our government officials are elected to represent citizens, it is also true that elected officials need to inform, be informed by, and interact with the public on an ongoing basis if their representation is to be meaningful. Regular and continuing involvement in government decision-making is the very basis for the idea of citizenship. Citizen participation is likely to produce better decisions by utilizing the knowledge of the populous and by allocating part of the responsibility for formulating and implementing decisions to the citizens. Without citizen participation, governments become less 'governments for the people and by the people,' and more 'service providers' for 'taxpayers.'"
The Joint Committee holds regular meetings the fourth Wednesday of the month at 6:30 p.m. in the Courthouse Annex Building. More meetings will be held during the inventory research and visioning process. All meetings are open to the public.
Copies of meeting minutes, plus other information, are posted on the planning committee's Web site, www.uwex.edu/ces/cty/portage/compplan.
The Portage County Planning Department functions as the planning staff of the joint committee. A team of three planners is working on each plan.
Senior planner Michael Hansen directs the rural planning effort, while senior planner Jeff Schuler heads the urban area planning effort. The four other planners were hired as part of the three-year state grant.
Planners are looking for pictures to post on the Web site to depict issues and visual preferences. People wanting to submit pictures can contact Tim Semmann at the county Planning and Zoning office, 346-1334, or by e-mail at Semmannt@co.portage.wi.us. E-mailed pictures should be in a jpeg format.