Wheeling Charts Path Toward Updating Comprehensive Plan
Photo by Eric Ayres Trending
WHEELING -- Initial steps are underway for the city of Wheeling to develop its next 10-year comprehensive plan that will be adopted next year.
Members of the Wheeling Planning Commission met Monday night to begin discussions about the process that will eventually lead to the adoption of a new blueprint that will serve as the foundation to guide all planning and zoning decisions in the city for a decade.
The comprehensive plan is required by West Virginia law to serve as the basis for land development and use. Based on a community's comprehensive plan, governing bodies under state law may enact a subdivision and land development ordinance, require plans and plats for land development, issue improvement location permits for construction and enact a zoning ordinance.
Brenda Delbert, Wheeling's Building and Planning director, on Monday provided members of the commission a general outline of events that need to take place in order to get the next plan developed and ready for approval by Wheeling City Council next fall.
"A request for proposals has already been published, and it is on our website," Delbert said. "Deadline is Thursday, July 13, at 2 p.m."
The city is soliciting qualified consulting firms to submit proposals to review and prepare an update of the 2014 Envision Wheeling Comprehensive Plan. Members of the planning commission will be selected to serve on an evaluation team to go through proposals as they come in and recommend to council which firm they would like to pursue.
Once a third-party consulting firm is selected, the company will spearhead the effort to develop a new comprehensive plan. Several public meetings are expected to be held over the course of the next year -- from neighborhood meetings to larger public hearings.
A steering committee, expected to include members of the planning commission and four non-elected members yet to be selected, will be put together this fall to help with the process, Delbert noted.
"Pretty much from September of 2023 until November of 2024, the consultant will assist with public meetings, there will be different work groups involved, and there will be various agencies across the city involved during that time frame, and these meetings will be open to the public," Delbert said.
"If they do it like last time, there will be a lot of public meetings," said Planning Commissioner Howard Monroe, who participated on the panel that helped create the city's 2014 comprehensive plan. "Attendance was good last time -- sometimes a little boisterous."
Delbert said that the public will be notified of all of the upcoming hearings associated with the effort. She said in the past, public input has been an important part of the comprehensive plan process.
"We only do this once every 10 years," she said.
"I'm excited to get into the process," Wheeling Planning Commission Chairman Jeremy West said.
Aside from discussing the initial steps being taken to update the city's comprehensive plan, the Wheeling Planning Commission had no actionable agenda items Monday night. The panel did not meet in June because of a lack of business. The next planning commission meeting is scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. Aug. 15 at the City-County Building.