Clear, 63° F
Rebekah Burns is collecting as much data as she can to find out what people in Park County want to see in the future.
The Powell Economic Partnership Executive Director does this for Powell …
This item is available in full to subscribers.
The Powell Tribune has expanded its online content. To continue reading, you will need to either log in to your subscriber account, or purchase a subscription.
If you are a current print subscriber, you can set up a free web account by clicking here.
If you already have a web account, but need to reset it, you can do so by clicking here.
If you would like to purchase a subscription click here.
Please log in to continue |
|
Rebekah Burns is collecting as much data as she can to find out what people in Park County want to see in the future.
The Powell Economic Partnership Executive Director does this for Powell residents, but more recently she is also asking questions to assist in Park County’s new Land Use Plan.
Burns is one of the members of the Land Use Planning Advisory Committee, made up of representatives throughout the county who are tasked with gathering feedback from county residents on what they would like to see in the future. Her main area of expertise, fitting for her economic development role, is the economic representative.
The desires of people vary greatly. She said many business owners will reiterate the need for a reliable, well-trained workforce, while in the Powell area residents want more access to rivers and open space in the rural areas, along with a place to purchase socks — this is actually a frequent request, Burns said.
But as far as the land use plan relates to development, she said access to water is one of the top issues across the county.
“Access to water will become a much larger conversation in the coming weeks, months and years,” she said. “We have plenty of water, the source of water is great and it’s reliable. We’re not in a water shortage. We don’t have access to water — that’s different.”
She also hears concerns from parents about wanting enough good jobs and amenities in the local area to convince their children to come back if they leave for college.
“We need more jobs for our kiddos,” she said. “We need more reasons for them to want to bring their own businesses here. And so what PEP does when we hear that feedback is we take all the feedback and then we bake them into one of our 10 programs. And we work pretty actively on those programs. But from the LUPAC perspective, what we’re doing is we’re trying to relay as much of this information to the planners as possible so that they can write them into the plan. And then the the county commissioners and the staff have really made it very clear that they want this plan to inform the regulations.”
Burns has been committed to giving residents every chance possible to provide input. She’s had boards up at events, such as Homesteader Days, where people can put pins under the categories they value most, or would most like to see, both in town and in the rural areas.
What she’s seen, she said, is that while the planning areas, from Meeteetse to Clark, Powell to Cody, are different, the issues are largely the same.
“They’re facing increased building as far as homes go, more neighbors, more complicated water right issues,” she said. “Everybody’s kind of facing the same challenges but what changes is the language people use to describe them.”
And while for a decade after the last land use plan was developed for Park County in the late 90s demographics didn’t change much. Burns said since 2020 the drastic changes have made this plan, and this work, very needed.
“Land use planning is fun,” she said. “And it’s a challenge.”
Each of the 12 planning areas has an assigned LUPAC member and we have four additional members for important subjects like Ag, Economics, Commercial/Industrial, and Environmental (also Real Estate). If you are not sure which planning area you live in, visit our project MAP PORTAL at bit.ly/3QnsNfe. You can use the search tool in the upper righthand corner to enter your address and highlight your planning area.
