The Town of Mount Pleasant is launching a major public involvement and outreach initiative to encourage and promote engagement in the preparation of the Town’s 2018 Comprehensive Plan. Throughout the next year, there will be multiple opportunities for Mount Pleasant Planning Area’s residents and businesses to participate and share feedback and ideas about the future of the Town. This space will be our main avenue to communicate Comprehensive Plan updates and status on a regular basis. 
 

What’s a Comprehensive Plan?

A Comprehensive Plan is a local government’s guide for decision making. It is created by studying the existing conditions of the Town, debating preferred future alternatives and priorities, and identifying practical implementation strategies to help the Town reach its preferred future goals. There are nine required “elements” that every Comprehensive Plan must address – population, housing, economic development, community facilities, natural resources, cultural resources, land use, transportation, and priority investments. Thus, the Comprehensive Plan touches land development decisions, capital projects, and many other governmental decisions that might impact the future health of the Town. In South Carolina, communities are required to prepare new Comprehensive Plans every 10 years. Considering the tremendous growth that the area has experienced over the past several years, Town Council decided to move the process up a year, to help town government identify and address its greatest needs. 

What’s going on now 

The Plan Forum held its first meeting in the Town’s Emergency Operations Center at Town Hall on September 19. This meeting was described as a Listening and Learning workshop, where Forum members could learn about the process, and begin to share their perspectives on the Town. 

After basic introductions to each other, and the process, the Forum heard a presentation on the Forces and Trends that are evident in the Mount Pleasant community.  This included information on population, housing, education, employment, natural and cultural resources and traffic. In order to understand the context of the current Comprehensive Planning process, the Forum was also given a brief history of the 2014 Comprehensive Plan, and the various action items that the Town has undertaken since its’ adoption.

The Plan Forum members then divided into small groups for work sessions and discussion.  In these small groups, they first discussed the various things they love about Mount Pleasant, then defined Mount Pleasant’s challenges. After reporting back to the larger group, the groups turned their attention to a map of the town, with instructions to identify areas of strength, areas of opportunity, and traffic/transportation hotspots in Mount Pleasant. Again, this information was reported back to the group as a whole. The information from these various exercises was recorded, and will become a part of the supporting documentation for the Comprehensive Plan. These documents are posted on this website in the left navigation tab for the 9/19/17 Plan Forum meeting.  (Updated September 21, 2017)