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(ARCHIVE PHOTO | THE GRAHAM LEADER) The city of Graham will soon be surveying the community as part of a grant requirement from the Texas General Land Office Resilient Communities Program. The survey will be presented to a comprehensive planning committee.
As part of a grant requirement from the Texas General Land Office, the city of Graham will be surveying the community soon regarding its services as a step to create a comprehensive plan.
The city received a grant from the Texas General Land Office to engage in planning activities under the Resilient Communities Program.
The program promotes the development, adoption and implementation of modern and resilient building codes and flood damage presentation ordinances to ensure structures in the community can withstand future hazards.
“As part of the GLO Resilient Communities Program grant the city is required to conduct a community survey to gain information on the public’s desires and perceptions regarding city services, infrastructure and future development,” City Manager Eric Garretty said.
The anonymous survey will be available in a physical and online format for residents of the city. It will ask residents their opinion on topics such as public services, city development, availability and affordability of housing and will also provide short answer responses to suggest concerns.
Garretty said a key element of the program is updating the city’s comprehensive plan. A comprehensive plan is a growth and development plan for the city with elements such as an updated Master Parks Plan.
The Graham City Council approved Thursday, July 31 forming a comprehensive planning committee to provide input to the city council regarding development of the plan.
“When we last updated the comprehension plan, the city did establish a committee of residents so that residents would have a forum to provide input to the comprehensive plan. It’s not a requirement of the grant,” Garretty said.
Similar to a recently established and dissolved board for reviewing and amending the city charter, this board would be limited to this purpose and then dissolved. Garretty said it will take around 12-18 months to complete the work on the comprehensive plan.
“The city manager contacted community members and city staff who have interest and expertise in future city development and compiled an initial slate of persons who would be willing to serve on the committee,” Garretty said.
The slate of nominees for the committee adopted by the board were:
• Alex Heartfield (City Council Representative)
• Randall Dawson (City Public Works Representative)
• Jim Don Laurent (Emergency Management Representative)
• Jack Graham (GEIC Representative)
• Jordan Dies (Planning and Zoning Representative)
• Laura Taylor (Parks Board Representative)
• Cathy Partridge (Downtown Business Development Representative)
• David Proctor (Business and Industry Representative)
• Johnny Ford (Transportation Board Representative)
Ex-officio members of the committee will be Garretty along with Assistant City Manager Melinda Brown. The city manager said that he chose those in place on an existing board already working towards the goals of the comprehensive plan.
“The comprehensive plan covers a lot of things across the city. ...What we’ve done is we’ve really established functional committees that do a lot of things that relate to all those elements that go in the comprehensive plan. …A lot of these folks are already engaged in some of the issues in their committee that are going to come up in the comprehensive plan,” Garretty said.
Garretty said the survey could be used as a tool for the new established committee.
“We could then use the results of this (survey) to inform that committee that council just formed of what residents desires are as a result of the survey,” he said.
