Boulder wants your feedback on its Comprehensive Plan draft

“A comprehensive plan, most simply put, is a community’s vision for its future,” says Vivian Castro-Woolridge, Planning Engagement Strategist with the City of Boulder. “It’s kind of a guiding light for future decision making for a community.”

KGNU spoke with Castro-Wooldridge and other city and county staff on Mar. 10, at the draft release of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan.

The plan is essentially a roadmap for how the city of Boulder and the area around the city will change over time. It influences land use, transportation, housing, climate action, and more. Over the last 18 months, the city and county have collected feedback “to hear what matters to people, what’s working and what’s not working, and what kind of future our community wants us to build together.”

The plan itself isn’t law, but its meant to influence future legislation. It addresses things like affordability, creating community gathering spaces, and preserving the area’s cultural natural treasures.

Hannah Hippely is the Long Range Planning Division Manager at Community Planning and Permitting with Boulder County.

“I think the refreshed document is really exciting,” says Hippely. “The existing plan was really quite long. It’s quite dense. And I feel like the plan that’s been put out as a draft today is a little bit easier to read. I think it’s more accessible to a lot of people. It’s more easily understood, and that’s exciting. I mean, a plan should be read and understood by the community.”

This time, the city and county set out to have an especially inclusive input-gathering process. It included traditional tactics, like open house events and questionnaires, says Castro-Woolridge, “but we also wanted to reach different people, new people who don’t necessarily come to these kinds of events. We partnered with organizations that have deep networks with harder-to-reach populations.”

They also organized a community assembly, wherein group of randomly selected participants gather in person to examine a specific issue, and develop recommendations for the government to consider and implement. The assembly’s topic was 15-minute neighborhoods.

Two members of that community assembly were at the open house event: Ellen, the oldest member of the group, and Amelia, one of the youngest.

“The whole process has been absolutely fascinating,” says Ellen. “The processes that they used were so effective and the fun of just working until we came to agreement was really amazing…roughly a little bit less than 50 people with that span of ages was incredible.”

“It was really great to look across and be like, well, this is a small cut, but hopefully it can represent Boulder as a whole, because it’s difficult to do,” says Amelia. “But I think having people whose voices want to be heard and advocate for the minorities or the things they identify with was really powerful.”

The public can submit feedback on the draft plan until Apr. 6. After that, the plan must be approved by the City Council, the City Planning Board, the County Commissioners, and the County Planning Commission.

This story was reported by Ethan Ginsburg and Abby O’Brien.

This story aired on A Public Affair, KGNU’s weekday morning show featuring in-depth discussions on local news issues. Click here to listen to other episodes of A Public Affair.