Tom O’Bryant talks with Cleveland Council about new Land Use Map
(Cleveland)- Cleveland City officials got a chance to see a Future Land Use Map for the city Monday night as part of the efforts to update the zoning ordinances.
The city council held the first public hearing on updating the city’s comprehensive plan and during the meeting, Tom O’Bryant Economic Development and Planning Director displayed a draft map of the city with designated areas of planned use, such as business and industrial, residential, and historic.
The city’s planning and zoning board has been working on this map along with updating the zoning regulations. Updating the zoning regulations also requires that the city also has to update the future land use plans for the city.
O’Bryant said the draft map would be available for the public to review and ask questions and make suggestions. Citizens may review the map at city hall and officials will be posting it on the city’s website for the public to check out there as well.
O’Bryant said the city is required to hold two public hearings on this issue he said the second public hearing will be April 10th. Citizens will have an opportunity to make comments at that time as well.
COMMERCIALIZATION AND URBANIZATION of Cleveland and White County is on steroids. The following is some background. In 2021, during the pandemic emergency stress and duress, White County, and the cities of Cleveland and Helen developed, presented, and approved their Joint Comprehensive Plan while using the “consensus” process and with the use of written surveys. As the Joint Comprehensive Plan record shows, only 440 survey responses were received. Only 2% of the people in White County participated in the comprehensive planning process.
Question #5 on the written survey asked participants to pick two of the 7 prechosen economic development priorities that should be undertaken. The “Summary of Survey Results” show that only 20.94% of those survey participants considered “commercial development” to be within the two “top priority” concerns. “Commercial development” was in 5th place out of the 7 offered priorities. which are the results of more short-term rentals and increased traffic. Remember consensus is not a vote and consensus is not consent.