Recently, the Regional Planning Agency held three meetings across the area to obtain input from citizens of Hamilton County on updating the Comprehensive Growth Plan. These meetings were very poorly publicized and as a result, were poorly attended. If this plan is to determine how and where we live, the citizens should have been properly notified.
In addition to better publicity, the structure of the meetings themselves should have been better designed to get the true ideas from the participants. Participants were asked to answer questions with vague information given to them and to choose between multiple choice answers, some of which were not answers you would want to choose. Answers given is this way could be interpreted any way the RPA wanted and could be completely different from the intent of the participants.
Participants were asked to decide what should be done with private property owned by people who were not present at the meeting. If the RPA wants to have credibility they must contact the property owners and make them aware that discussions are taking place that would restrict the uses of their property. If you own an acre or more of undeveloped land you should get the details on what changes the RPA is planning in the way of zoning, restrictions and new regulations.
The RPA states their goals are to create complete, connected, healthy and safe communities. Those are good goals but they do not go into detail as to just what that looks like. One thing that they are clear about is their support for mixed developments where apartments, townhouses, single family homes, shops and offices are all mixed together with open spaces shared with everyone. Some people would prefer that but some would not like it at all. When the RPA states they want to create more housing choices, mixed developments are what they are really talking about. Your housing choices would be inside a mixed development. Developments should not be restricted to mixed use only developments.
Trying to micromanage where and how everyone lives should not be the job of the RPA. People have been capable of making these choices for themselves for a long time and the free market seems to know what the people desire.
Nancy Patty
Hixson