Under West Virginia state law (§8A-3), municipalities are required to adopt a new comprehensive plan every 10 years. It’s hard to believe it has been seven years since the Town of Marlinton’s adopted its current Comprehensive Plan in August 2019. Such a plan outlines goals and priorities for the following decade. This provides a roadmap for future councils and provides plans already agreed upon by community members. Last fall, the current council began discuss-ing plans to begin an update. Since it took nearly three years to complete the current plan and knowing we are less than a year away from the next election cycle, it seems important that the current council begin the pro-cess again sooner than later.
The comprehensive plan process is a communitywide endeavor that involves many people, organizations and groups. While there is no one person or group responsible for the development of the comprehensive plan, there are some groups and individuals that took the lead in the development of the Town of Marlinton Comprehensive Plan.
The planning commission is tasked, by state code, with preparing a local government comprehensive plan. The planning commission is made up of volunteer citizens appointed by the governing body to serve in a largely advisory role. The Marlinton Planning Commission met numerous times over a 2.5-year period to gather information, analyze data, obtain input, and develop the plan for the town. During the planning process, the commission held open (16 or more) meetings and three-open houses, soliciting stakeholder surveys, invited local leaders to meetings, and made sure to discuss the comprehensive plan during open meetings for anyone to attend.
Members of the Town Council are the ones that decide whether to adopt the comprehensive plan and are the main body that is responsible for ensuring that the comprehensive plan is being implemented once it has been adopted. Implementation of any plan is where the real work begins and is the most important part. On the positive side, many of the goals of the current plan have either been completed or are in some manner of development. This is even more reason to appoint potential candidates to fill vacancies on The Planning Commission Board.
We will discuss the pro-cess further at the July regular meeting. The regular Au- gust meeting would be a good time to activate The Planning Commission to be-gin the process. None of this is possible without local participation. All interested citizens can add their names to a list at the office lobby window or apply online, via the Town’s Homepage.
BTW: The gazebo will not be delivered until Tuesday, June 30.
