Work on the city’s Northwest Auburn Neighborhood Plan has been ongoing since the Auburn Planning Department hosted the first public meeting last August to determine the desires of the residents of a 1.4-square-mile area of the northwest part of town.
The department has held two educational sessions designed to inform residents of how the plan would affect them and two more public meetings since.
At the last public meeting in January, where the Planning Department presented its final recommendations based on community feedback, some residents complained the plan didn’t include the changes they wanted to see, while others criticized the department for what they viewed as excessive use of confusing planning jargon.
It was then that Forrest Cotten, Auburn planning director, called a “bit of a timeout” on the process.
“We’re not trying to push anything that you don’t want us to do,” Cotten said at the Jan. 31 meeting. “And if that takes however long you want it to take, it’s okay with the [Planning Department].”
Clemon Byrd, Ward 1 councilman, said at that meeting he was talking with local community leaders to hold smaller meetings with residents.
For now, Planning Department staff is focusing on a plan that addresses only the public improvements identified in the area of northwest Auburn encompassed within the plan.
“We’ve sort of put the land-use and zoning [portions of the plan] on hold,” Cotten said. “We’re going to go ahead and put together a draft plan document that moves forward with identifying a lot of the public improvements that we identified needed to be made.”
Residents at the public meetings raised concerns over lighting, sidewalks, street conditions and traffic infrastructure, such as stop lights and stop signs, in the area.
Cotten said the department will go ahead and try to get a plan dealing with the public improvements adopted by the city, with the understanding that the land-use and zoning changes will follow later.
Planning Department staff has not made any alterations to the land-use aspects of the plan, but Cotten said they would continue to work with Byrd and residents going forward.
For his part, Byrd said he is still working on putting together smaller educational meetings with residents of the northwest area. Byrd said he is collaborating with local church figures to compile the contact information of residents and stakeholders. Many residents at the public information meetings said they had not received adequate notice of the planning process.
Byrd said he hopes to have all the information gathered by mid-May to get the meeting notices sent out.
Smaller educational meetings will keep people from getting lost in the “shuffle” of a large crowd, Byrd said. According to the city, over 200 people attended the the first public meeting last August.
“I want them to know exactly what’s going on,” Byrd said.
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