Don't Rush the Comprehensive Plan

The leadership team of Chapel Hill 2020 discussed the timeline issue yesterday afternoon. Apparently the conversation was quite passionate and the group is divided with strong opposition to extending from  co-chairs George and Rosemary. I'm a bit surprised since they have always said they had an open mind and were committed to getting it done right. I have yet to hear a clear articulation of why this comprehensive plan should be created in less than a year. 

I have heard some people raise valid concerns about sustaining people interest for a multi-year process, but I think that points to changes that may be needed in the process. For example, what if the stakeholders only met monthly rather than every 2-3 weeks? What if we let the community lead the process more and didn't lean so heavily on the staff to run things? If you would like to explore these questions rather than rushing to complete, please sign on to our letter asking for more time.

Here's the editorial that Jeff Miles and I wrote about this last week, it's in the Chapel Hill News today and a similar version was a WCHL commentary on Monday.

Don't Rush Chapel Hill 2020

By Jeff Miles and Ruby Sinreich

Both of us have been enthusiastic participants in the revision of Chapel Hill’s comprehensive plan since it began in September. As the community heads into the second half of the Chapel Hill 2020 process, we ask: Is this where we intended to be four months before the plan is complete? So far there have been five theme group meetings, amounting to 10 hours of discussion for each topic. But to what end? We haven’t yet articulated a concrete vision upon which to build meaningful goals and objectives.

The enthusiasm of the staff and leaders of Chapel Hill 2020 has been impressive, but it has not translated into a large amount of diverse participation nor especially coherent planning. There have been a variety of ways for people to give input, but many of the opportunities thus far have felt rushed or have suffered from a lack of clear structure or leadership.

The best solution we have come up with to improve both participation and the process is time. As we noted above, the Town currently plans to have the new comprehensive plan complete in time for adoption of the annual budget in May. This will be after spending less than 8 months at work from thinking about themes, to articulating some kind of meaningful goals or priorities (we’re still not clear on the outcomes). Other communities including Durham, Ann Arbor, Mich., Charlottesville, Va. and Fort Collins, Colo. have spent between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half years developing their comprehensive plans. And Austin’s 17-month visioning phase alone was recognized as a national best practice by the Alliance for Innovation for its sustained community engagement (see it at imagineaustin.net).

We believe that the process should be lengthened, and that a thorough plan cannot be completed before February 2013 at the soonest. We need more time to learn about each other and our community, and to explore the common values that should form the foundation of the plan. In addition, the next Chapel Hill 2020 meeting should take a break from process and give people an opportunity to discuss and give the Town feedback about the process itself. If it takes a few weeks or months to make some adjustments to make our participation and deliberation more effective, it will be well worth it.

Chapel Hillians are sometimes derided for our desire to talk about issues at length. This seems like a prime opportunity to use that skill to our advantage. This is long-range planning. Let’s take the time to get it right - we won’t get a second chance.