The Park County Land Use Plan is getting close to a first draft.

At last Tuesday’s county commission meeting representatives from land use consultant Clarion spoke with commissioners in person about the next steps in process while in the midst of a week of public comment sessions. 

The week of input sessions ended with a meeting at Heart Mountain Hall last Thursday. There was also a virtual meeting on Wednesday and a survey running through the end of the month.

Darcie White with Clarion Associates said they’ll have a draft plan to give to county commissioners and county planning and zoning Dec. 9. She said depending on how many changes are needed to be made to the plan, the tentative date to share it with the public is March 31. 

There will be similar public input sessions once the plan is released to explain the aspects of it to the community, which will also have time to make public comments when the final plan goes up for adoption. 

White said this final round of public input prior to the first draft will be one of the final pieces of the puzzle used to put together a draft plan. There will also be meetings of the technical working group and Land Use Plan Advisory Committee to gather all the input provided. 

“Once we have the whole body of feedback assembled, we’ll bring that back to the board and say, ‘Here’s where we have clear direction, here’s where we need direction,’” she said. “It’ll shift from an update, to ‘we need your help.’ We need your direction on certain issues to kind of help get to a place where it makes sense.”

White said in a lot of areas there would be clear recommendations in the plan, while in some where the population has been more split, there will be options to consider. She said she also wanted to differentiate this plan from the last one the county put together in the late 90s. 

“It’s a ‘should’ document not a ‘shall’ document and so we’re going to try to capture as much of the specifics that need to be embedded in the regulations,” she said. “But our recommendation is not to have, ‘prohibit this or prohibit that,’ embedded in your opinion. Because if you don’t actually have that regulation, it creates a false expectation that the county has control over that.”

What the county should have control over has been one of the themes of the series of public input sessions, as well as some facets such as a shared Western culture and the importance of ag, open space and wildlife have garnered broad support. But, White said a couple issues, such as how to solve housing issues, has led to more mixed opinions and contradictory desires.

“People are wanting a limited involvement in terms of government deciding what the housing mix should be, but we heard people want the county to come and be more proactive in terms of addressing housing needs,” she said.