On the consultant team guiding a discussion on the update to the town's general plan.

Les would you please share your presentation?

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, commissioners.

Uh, principal planner Les Johnson for the town.

Uh thank you for your time.

Uh, first of all, this afternoon.

We really appreciate uh you being here and the opportunity for us to dialogue with you uh in regards to our our general plan update process.

I know we have a we've had a lot on our dockets, uh our agendas here lately, so this is really time that we've carved out just to kind of loosen the ties, if you will, and informally have a chance to dialogue and interact with one another.

So uh for tonight we really want to again uh I'm gonna go back over what we talked about last time and that was regarded to the feedback that we've received to date uh and uh what uh what we're uh hearing from the community.

Uh really we're here tonight to to be able to get feedback from you.

So we'll have two segments to do that.

We gave you some homework, so we're gonna be talking about that feedback regarding at least the free the three questions we asked you, and then we're gonna uh roll up our sleeves and dive into the goals, the draft goals and policies.

Um and during the goals and policy section, uh Robbie from Michael Baker National will will help facilitate that portion of it, and then we'll follow up with some conclude here tonight with the or this afternoon with uh some next steps and letting you know what's happening next.

So, first of all, as a matter of background again, you know, we're we're well into our process for updating the general plan.

We're in the enriched stage.

There's been a lot of uh outreach with the community.

We continue to do that on a uh on a fairly uh uh ri uh engaged schedule, if you will.

Um, a lot of uh speaking opportunities, and the whole goal here is just to educate our community on the fact that we're updating our general plan and encourage uh participation at every uh every opportunity.

Uh and so far uh that effort has uh uh entailed some in-person virtual outreach opportunities.

Uh we've established a website.

Hopefully you've seen that.

Uh there's an opportunity to engage within that website.

We've uh done a lot of social media engagement.

Our communications team, a shout out to them.

They've been just spot on, but trying to get the word out at every opportunity regarding the update process.

We've had two uh uh community workshops to date, a number of citizen focus group meetings, those are ongoing.

Uh we uh have been speaking at public events every time every opportunity we have.

We'll be at the pancake breakfast here a week from Saturday.

Uh just hoping again to get that word out.

And then of course, uh we've uh been speaking to committees and commissions here in the town.

We just spoke this morning at the Economic Development Committee.

So we're always uh doing whatever we can to get that word

out.

Well,

we've been hearing so far what what the community is saying that they just really uh love, if you will, is obviously the people in our community, uh, the community as a whole, just uh there's just a real a lot of pride when we uh talk with folks about Queen Creek.

They're proud to be residents of of our community.

Uh they love our public events and the fact that throughout the year there's a variety of public activities and events occurring.

Uh our parks and open space is uh that we continue to not just stay uh I guess stagnant, if you will, but we're always expanding and adding to our parks and open space opportunities throughout the community.

So as we grow, they're growing.

We got a lot of positive feedback about that.

Our trail system, uh, what we have established and the plans in the future.

There's a lot of positive about that.

Schools, uh uh Sarah and I had an opportunity at one of the public outreach events that was a family-oriented, a lot of the kids were coming up, and the first thing they said was how much they love their schools.

So there's a lot of school pride in in our community.

Uh

people love our agitamin areas and the opportunity to to uh embrace uh the events and functions that are occurring at those aggregatement spots.

And again, even though we've been growing rapidly, there still is that small town feel, and and people are are are hanging on to that and and love the fact that there still is that op uh that feel within our community.

Uh from the standpoint of what people want going forward or what they desire to see going forward, uh continued supporting those aggregatment areas, uh make sure that we're maintaining and protecting those rural land uses that we have within our community that really do emphasize that small town feel on the rural field of an agricultural feel of portions of our community, uh, to continue to focus on improving our roadway system from a safety standpoint, uh focusing on those congestion points and uh just finding those ways to uh improve upon the connectivity that we have throughout the community as well as uh with uh connecting to our neighboring communities.

Uh from the standpoint of what people want going forward or what they desire to see going forward, uh continued supporting those aggregate areas, uh, make sure that we're maintaining and protecting those rural land uses that we have within our community that really do emphasize that small town feel on the rural field of an agricultural feel of portions of our community, uh, to continue to focus on improving our roadway system from a safety standpoint, uh focusing on those congestion points and uh just finding those ways to uh improve upon the connectivity that we have throughout the community as well as uh with uh connecting to our neighboring communities uh continue to build out parks uh and uh continuing to stay uh uh consistent with growth as it comes to uh establishing new parks in our community, that we uh connect our trail system, that we get that loop system uh completed that's been on the books for a while, but also making sure that there's the ability to connect to that loop system and other trails throughout the community uh uh to create unique destinations, so not just our aggregatement areas, but what other uh unique destinations can we continue to create that are uh a draw to the community, but also our uh uh locations that are our residents want to be a part of and and uh their families to be a part of uh to to continue to support and expand our local restaurants and businesses.

We have a lot of corporate businesses in the community, but that we've heard a lot of people say we really want to see the smaller mom-pop type businesses established and supported in our community.

Uh to expand our public facilities, um, even though it's out of our purview, a lot of comments about our post office and the fact that it's undersized and overutilized, and that there's a need to expand that, but also even some comments regarding our library and making sure that even though the county manages that library, that we are staying uh from a size standpoint and scale standpoint, we're staying proportionate to the community as it grows going forward, that we're prioritizing office development, something that a few years ago was kind of a uh a dying uh area of of development was uh on the office side, but we've heard from a lot of folks saying, gosh, we really wish there were opportunities for small offices uh to be established in the community.

So that we've heard a lot about that.

Um and then just that desire or opportunities to gather, those third place locations that people can find that excuse to gather up with friends and family outside of you know their their homes in their neighborhoods, but where other locations uh can they establish the opportunity not establish, but to have that opportunity to to gather.

And this is just a uh a graphic summarizing uh what I was what we just I just mentioned to

you.

So now we're gonna step into uh hopefully I'm gonna be quiet and you guys will talk here.

Uh we got a few questions for you.

We did ask this first one uh last time, but we hit you cold.

So we've given you a couple weeks here to think about it.