The City of Palm Coast today announced the start of Phase 2 for the Imagine 2050 comprehensive plan update, marking a significant milestone in shaping the city’s future.
A comprehensive plan is essentially a roadmap that guides the future growth and development of a community. It’s like a big-picture plan that outlines where new homes, businesses, parks, roads, and other essential city components should go and how they should all fit together. Think of it as a blueprint for building a better Palm Coast that meets the needs and desires of its residents, now and for generations to come.
During Phase 1, which was the community outreach phase, the city engaged with residents, stakeholders, and community leaders from October through February to gather valuable insights and perspectives. It did so in dedicated forums, at city-sponsored and other public events and festivals, and online. Based on this collaborative effort and the input from residents, the city developed a draft Vision Statement and Guiding Principles that reflect the aspirations and priorities of the diverse community.
Those results were presented in detail to the City Council on March 12 (two days before the latest Census Bureau figures showed Flagler County’s population to have reached an estimated 131,500, after a 14 percent increase in three years, most of it in Palm Coast.) Residents are chiefly concerned with the city’s pace of growth and overcrowding, preserving the city’s green canopy, fostering more business activity and more art and cultural choices, and improving transportation nodes.
Now, as the Comprehensive Plan rewrite moves into Phase 2, the city is eager to hear from residents once again. That feedback, the city says, is crucial in refining and finalizing the Vision Statement and Guiding Principles that will guide the development of our city for years to come.
The draft Vision Statement and Guiding Principles are now available for review and feedback on the City of Palm Coast’s interactive website at PalmCoast.gov/imagine2050. The city invites residents to visit the website and share thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. Residents’ identities are not revealed–in other words, residents may share their thoughts anonymously.
“This is an exciting time for Palm Coast as we continue to work together to shape our future,” said Palm Coast Mayor David Alfin. “The Imagine 2050 Comprehensive Plan Update is a community-driven initiative, and your input is essential in ensuring that it accurately reflects the values and aspirations of our residents.”
The vision statement is to be finalized at a workshop on May 14 and through a community conversation on May 15.
While the city has gone to great lengths to solicit and include residents’ participation, the plan so far remains very unclear on enforcement mechanism. In other words, while it is certain that a Comprehensive Plan will be in place by October, when the plan is formally adopted, neither the city administration nor the council have yet explained how the plan will be more than a document on a shelf that, as its predecessor, may be amended at will–how its vision and blueprint would hold against subsequent councils’ desires to change it, or to ignore it: two of the council’s seats will turn over in November, and possibly three.
To provide your feedback on the draft Vision Statement and Guiding Principles, please visit PalmCoast.gov/imagine2050 and utilize the interactive project website. The feedback period will be open for several weeks.
