Comprehensive Plans

What, exactly, is a comprehensive plan?

This is a question that comes up quite a bit. I'm a big believer in the importance of planning. Without proper planning, a community will have absolutely no common vision or course of action. simple put, a municipal plan gives a community an idea of what they want to be and how they are going to get there. It is a long-range document that is meant to guide a community for many years.

Plans are crafted over a long period of time, often a year or more. The most critical component of any comprehensive plan is that they have appropriate community feedback. Public outreach is critical; otherwise, a plan will not be reflective of a community's will, and thus bound for failure.

These plans are expensive, depending on the size of the community and the scope of the plan, they can often run into six figures. Fortunately, an ample amount of state and local grant sources are available to help municipalities deal with the costs of these plans. Larger cities, like Allentown and Bethlehem, also have their own planning department that helps to create these plans. For example, Allentown's comp plan is on the internet.

Smaller communities often band together to form a regional comprehensive plan. For example, Alburtis, Emmaus, Lower Macungie, Lower Milford, Macungie and Upper Milford banded together in 2004 to form the Southwestern Lehigh Comprehensive Plan. Hellertown, Lower Saucon and the Saucon Valley School Board have formed the Saucon Valley Partnership and are looking to have their comprehensive plan approved in the next few months.