GREENFIELD — Dwight D. Eisenhower was quoted as saying, “Planning is everything,” while Ben Franklin said, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”
Greenfield city officials have taken that mindset to heart as they undergo a rigorous season of planning for the city’s future.
On April 1, about 60 people gathered at the Hancock County Public Library in Greenfield to provide feedback to update the city’s 20-year comprehensive plan.
The City of Greenfield is also working on a city-wide arts plan with the goal of creating an arts district, and the Greenfield Parks Department approved an updated five-year master plan last month.
Meanwhile, the Community Foundation of Hancock County is working with community partners to develop a county-wide quality of life plan.
“Planning is a process in which we’re able to generate a lot of ideas. Some of them are attainable and some are not, but they’re all worth looking into,” said Greenfield’s mayor, Guy Titus.
He was happy to see such an enthusiastic crowd at the April 1 public forum at the local library, where attendees were given the chance to point out areas they feel are the city’s strengths, weaknesses and areas of opportunity. They marked various charts with post-it notes, ranking areas from least to most important.
Greenfield’ planning director, Joanie Fitzwater, said it would take a couple of weeks for a consulting company to assess and organize all the input, but that the goal was to update the city’s 20-year comprehensive plan this year.
“It’s a 20-year plan that’s supposed to be updated every 10 years. The last one was updated in 2015, but we’ve blown through most of the goals we had,” said Fitzwater, who has served as planning director since 2009.
“Because we have a new mayor and a lot of new council members, we thought it was a really opportune time to see where we’re headed into the future,” she said. “With how fast we’re growing, we really need to try and get a lead on how development will play out. Rather than let the developers lead, we can determine our destiny if we really have a solid comprehensive plan.”
With Hancock County being the fast-growing county in the state, Fitzwater said the comprehensive plan update is taking into account the desires of current residents as well as the needs of new residents to come.
“As far as economic development goes, you have to attract talent to your community, which means creating a community and quality of life that will attract young professionals,” she said.
Fitzwater said one of the youngest consultants in the room at the recent public forum was impressed by the energy and input that occurred at the meeting.
“She said, ‘This was the best public workshop I’ve ever been in,’ which is great to hear,” said Fitzwater.
“We thought the turnout was great. We saw a lot of familiar faces in the room as well as a lot of new faces, so we really appreciated that. We also had local high school students there to share their input,” she said.
Attendees shared what they thought were the most pressing matters for the city, including the development of attainable and diverse housing, infrastructure services, economic opportunities, and placemaking and programming, including the ongoing revitalization of the downtown commercial district.
Many expressed concern for responsibly managing the city’s rapid growth.
“The number one thing everybody says is that we need another grocery store,” said Fitzwater.
The public forum is the city’s latest step in a lengthy process to gain public input in updating the comprehensive plan, which serves as a road map for the city.
“Our first public outreach was at the Community Night Out at the county fairgrounds last summer. Since then we’ve done focus groups, steering committee meetings, a public workshop and two pop-up events last summer during concerts at Depot Street Park,” said Fitzwater, who said the public’s input is the backbone of the comprehensive plan.
Titus was excited to see such a large, energetic crowd at last week’s public forum.
“I was so happy to see that room full of people. I told them, ‘I work for you guys, so I want to hear what your opinions and thoughts are,” he said.
“Comprehensive plans are important, so that we as elected officials can be proactive rather than reactive to the needs of our community,” Titus continued.
“We don’t want to wait until we’re behind on police and fire protection or the sidewalks are falling apart to take action. If we plan ahead we can stay ahead of the game and also look into what kind of fun things we want to focus on like parks and trails,” he said.
