Arcadia set to start comprehensive plan

The city of Arcadia is beginning the process of developing a new comprehensive plan with the goal of having it be a document that is used to help the city develop over the next two decades.

During a joint meeting between the city council and city plan commission, officials heard from representatives of Mississippi River Regional Planning Commission (MRRPC). The commission has already begun its research on the city, pulling data from public sources, such as the Census Bureau, Wisconsin Realtors Association and Department of Workforce Development. The next step will be to gather local input to help make the plan more specific to the needs of the community.

Jon Bigol, MRRPC executive director, said it is important to get feedback from neighboring governments, school officials and employers. One of the first steps, however, will be community outreach. Bigol said the company will create a survey to send out to community members, but they wanted help in creating the questions.

“We need city input to make sure we don’t miss something that is important to you; that you want to learn,” Bigol said. 

The survey will be collected electronically and will be anonymous, though some may be sent via e-mail. Bigol said the e-mail addresses won’t be saved for the survey, but the city may keep them for public communication purposes. Postcards can be sent out in the mail and public fliers with QR codes could be placed in public locations. Bigol said the company can also leave surveys at City Hall or in another public place so community members can fill out paper copies. The survey will also be available in Spanish. 

MRRPC planner Ken Harwood said surveys specific to businesses can also be created.

“If there are questions you want to ask, specific to those organizations, specific to economic development, we can put that in the survey,” Harwood said. 

Harwood said that the surveys and community meetings are important to the process.

“We really want to solicit that input from the community,” Harwood said. “But we also have a story to tell about a community and we want to tell that story.” 

Mayor John Kimmel asked if a person could fill out more than one survey. Harwood said nothing prevented them from doing so, but if they get the participation they hope for, it wouldn’t really impact the results. 

“Generally, we find people aren’t that excited about filling out surveys,” Bigol said. 

Bigol said the length of time the survey is available will depend on participation.

Kimmel also questioned the implementation of the plan.

“We’re going to be spending taxpayer dollars and investing time, we’re asking for community engagement… We don’t want it to be some study that gets put on a bookshelf,” Kimmel said. “It would be great to see how we can use it as a guiding document going forward to help with decision making.”

Harwood said the goal was to make the plan a “Living, breathing, working document” that officials could use. While the plan is required to be updated every 10 years, it will map out the next 20 years. 

Kimmel said he would like for the plan to show a flood plain map to show the impact of the work the city has done to improve flooding issues in the city. 

MRRPC will update the city plan commission monthly and the plan will eventually be before the full council for approval.