Edinburgh residents will have a chance to make their voices heard during Monday’s town council meeting as town leaders prepare to start the process for a comprehensive plan.
The plan will include the goals town officials have as they look at Edinburgh’s future.
Town officials established the most recent plan in 2011, which was meant to cover the following 10 to 15 years. The plan covers goals for town roadways, bicycle and pedestrian mobility, parks, trails, town facilities, commercial and residential areas, community facilities, growth management, land use and historic districts, among other items.
The public session will serve as the first step in the process to secure funding from the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs, or OCRA. City officials need grant funding in order to hire a firm, which will help put the comprehensive plan together, Wade Watson, the town’s planning director, said earlier this year.
OCRA provides planning grants of $50,000, and while Edinburgh officials tried to secure a grant earlier this year, they weren’t successful. Town leaders will next attempt to secure a grant for the third quarter of this year, Watson said.
“The purpose of establishing a comprehensive plan is to evaluate where the objectives of the community should be long term, to set those goals and objectives and to meet the needs of current land uses, the desire for growth and plan for zoning in those areas,” he said. “The current plan goes through 2026. It’s typical for a community to reevaluate goals and objectives every 10 to 15 years, but we want to make sure as development occurs, objectives are current and we keep moving in the right direction.”
Edinburgh residents can give input during Monday’s public hearing, which will occur during the 6 p.m. meeting. Town officials will then submit an application for an OCRA grant. If they get the funding, they’ll spend the following 10 to 12 months working with a consulting firm to develop a plan, Watson said.
That time will include public outreach, with surveys and meetings to determine the direction of the town involving residents, business leaders and other community members. Once that direction has been solidified, Edinburgh’s leaders will work with the firm to complete the plan, looking at ordinances and the existing conditions of the town to determine how to accomplish the plan’s objectives, he said.
While some of the goals of the current comprehensive plan have been accomplished, they weren’t fully realized because zoning ordinances need to be updated, Watson said.
“Once we adopt a comprehensive plan, we will immediately begin preparing new zoning ordinances to support new values established by the new comprehensive plan,” he said. “The last plan was approved March 11, 2011 and was updated in September 2016 to accommodate some multi-family housing development. Some of the objectives have been accomplished with development, but not significantly, because the plan was not supported by zoning ordinances.”
Other goals listed in the plan that have been accomplished include the development of the Edinburgh Industrial Park on the southern end of town, which currently has about 25 businesses. To facilitate further growth, the town is planning an extension of South Main Street from Industrial Drive South to County Road 900 North.
Additionally, an $8.7 million project to revamp State Road 252 is set to go under construction from 2025 to 2026. The project will include improvements to the road from U.S. 31 to Eisenhower Drive, including the widening of travel lanes, pavement resurfacing, sidewalk construction and drainage improvements.
