GREENFIELD — Hancock County intends to embark on a new comprehensive planning process, 15 years after the last county plan was created.
The Hancock County Commissioners and the county council have responded positively to a proposal to create a new comprehensive plan with a focus on infrastructure and economic development.
Mike Dale, executive director of the Hancock Area Plan Commission, said the county’s current comprehensive plan does not reflect its current concerns. The plan was created in 2005 and was slightly updated in 2012. Since then, the county’s population and industrial development have both grown dramatically.
“These changes were not anticipated in the 2005 comprehensive plan,” Dale said.
County engineer Gary Pool said a new comprehensive plan will help create a vision for county roads that accommodates the needs of county residents. The Hancock Economic Development Council also favored a greater role for economic planning in the document.
The planning process will be a collaboration among the highway and planning departments and the HEDC.
Dale said the county is in the process of finishing a request for proposals and a scope-of-work document and hopes to begin the bidding process for the project early in early 2021. The process would take at least 12 months to complete, he said.
Pool said the goal of a revised road plan would be to create “an efficient, safe road system where people can get to work and to their other activities quickly and safely.”
The beginning of 2021 is a good time to embark on the process, Pool said, because the results of the 2020 census will be available and newly elected officials who will want to know Hancock County’s priorities for the future will be taking office.
As the county continues to grow, Pool said, it is important to both respect people’s individual property rights while also promoting sustainable development.
“Our county’s changing, and we want to try to be ahead of that instead of reactive,” he said.
HEDC executive director Randy Sorrell said he and Dale have had many discussions about how a new comprehensive plan could benefit economic development. In the planning process, economic factors will be considered alongside roads plans and land use planning.
“The idea is that one strategy sort of informs the other,” he said.
The strategy will look at the economic value of various areas of the county, but may not conclude that every area needs to change. Sorrell said the process may conclude that the best use of an area is exactly what it is currently being used for.
A new comprehensive plan could also help site selectors for companies that may want to move to Hancock County, Sorrell said. In the coming years, the governments of Hancock County and Greenfield will be looking for a new tenant to fill the space Elanco intends to vacate for a new headquarters complex in Indianapolis.
Dale estimated a new comprehensive plan would cost “in the low six figures.”
The request for proposal and scope-ofwork documents were to be presented to the Hancock County Council at its meeting today (Wednesday, Dec. 9). Dale said county officials are on board with the project, but the question of how to fund it after bids from potential contractors come in is still open. It could potentially be paid for with a combination of grant money and county funding, he said.
If the comprehensive plan goes forward, its completion would be followed by an update to the county zoning code to bring it into line with the objectives and policies that will be outlined in the planning document.