Dewey on pace to finish comp plan on time
Story Location:
1 Dagsworthy Avenue
Dewey Beach, DE
United States
Attachments
A year into Dewey's state-mandated comprehensive plan review, a 43-page rough draft has been prepared, but it will still be months before the final draft is completed.
During a Nov. 19 town commissioner meeting with members of the comprehensive plan working group and the planning and zoning committee, a general concensus was reached that the next step was to turn the draft over to Chris Fazio, a planning consultant for the Newark-based Remington, Vernick & Beach Engineers, as soon as possible so he has time to review the document before a Jan. 7, 2017 meeting with the working group.
Fazio, who has worked with the town for the past decade, was hired to make sure the submitted plan meets all the state's basic requirements. He previously worked on an overhaul of planning code definitions that were passed in January 2016.
The state requires all municipalities to revise their comprehensive plans every 10 years. Once completed, the town submits the plan to the state; which vets it through Preliminary Land Use Service review. Once approved and signed by the governor, the comprehensive plan becomes enforceable under law.
Because Dewey has fewer than 2,000 year-round residents, the checklist of requirements for completing the plan is less than half of other Cape Region towns. The 10-year plan has to outline areas such as population growth, redevelopment potential, community character, land use, community development issues and infrastructure issues. The plan is not required to address policies and planning measures associated with making the outline a reality; that process is left in the hands of town officials.
Following the January meeting, Fazio will make changes to the draft and present them to the working group, who will then approve their final version of the plan and pass the document along to planning and zoning for review and possible changes before passing it off to town council.
As with the comprehensive plan work group meetings, public participation at the meetings is strongly encouraged by the state, said Mayor Dale Cooke.
Commissioner Diane Hanson strongly suggested the work be done before the 2017 summer season begins so property owners getting their homes ready in the spring can participate in the public hearings.
Moving forward, the working group will be without Chair David King, who stepped down after his year-long appointment as chair ended this month. To date, King has been the driving force behind the work that's been completed – he recruited the working group's diverse representation of the town, tasked group members with assignments over the past year and compiled information gathered into the draft.
In a Nov. 22 email, King said among the items that separate the 2007 plan from the 2017 plan's first draft are the identification of two threats and two opportunities for Dewey. The two threats include sea level rise and overcrowding in Dewey and surrounding areas. The two opportunities are an expansion of the town's commerce deep into the shoulder seasons and being at the forefront of coastal towns protecting the environment.
Cooke has tasked Elaine Bole, a south-end property owner and working group secretary, to see the comprehensive plan through to the end.
The goal now, said Cooke, is to bring the plan to fruition without any hangups from the town or the state.
The one area everyone agreed on that needed improvement was public participation.
Commissioner Gary Persinger has been a member of the working group since before being elected in September. He and Bole have been in charge of soliciting responses from visitors and property owners via online polls and mailed postcards. They estimated about 190 responses from property owners and 160 responses from visitors.
Bole said she would be ecstatic if 50 percent of the property owners responded to the survey. Right now, she said, it's at about 20 percent.
Using an email list of property owners compiled by the commissioners, the group agreed to send another round of the survey to property owners with an end of the year return deadline.
Persinger said the goal is to weed out two or three constant themes found in the survey and make sure those are included in the final draft of the comprehensive plan.
Dewey property owner David King recently stepped down as chair of the town’s comprehensive plan review committee. King, a 10-year member of the town’s planning commission and member of the working group that created the town’s 2007 comprehensive plan, is largely responsible for taking months of committee work and creating the 43-page first draft of the town’s 2017 comprehensive plan. Remaining committee members, town council and the planning commission will be working from this draft as the process is finished. The following is a brief explanation of the first draft prepared by King for the Cape Gazette:
I was asked to compare/contrast the current version of the draft 2017 Dewey Beach Comprehensive Development Plan to/with the town’s 2007 Plan. It is important to remember that the 2017 Plan is a work in progress. The referenced document is a first draft of a recommendation from the comprehensive development plan working group to the town commissioners. As it progresses through the process, it might be amended by the working group prior to recommendation to the planning commission, and it might, based on public input during its review, be amended by the planning commission prior to recommending to town commissioners. Ultimately, the town council has the final authority regarding this document. While they might amend it based on public input they receive in one or more public hearings, in their hands it goes from being a set of recommendations regarding the vision the town’s stakeholders’ have of the town’s future, to a strategic plan for action to achieve that future vision.
The 2007 Dewey Beach Comprehensive Development Plan took bold action in the face of the threat of loss of commercial activity in the Ruddertowne area; creating new resort business zoning districts and an overlay concept with relaxed bulk standards to encourage creative “town center” and “main street” type developments. And it took a small, first step in dealing with the threat of overcrowding by recommending a reduction in the size of new and expanded residences in the town’s north end.
However, the 2007 Plan is also rife with recommendations of minor importance. It enumerated 56 planning objectives and recommendations, of which fewer than half have been completed and many have not even been started upon. Most of these objectives and recommendations would be equally applicable for any small town. Few if any of these objectives and recommendations drive the town to any specific or desired future state. Perhaps that is the reason the town has patently ignored embracing them and/or acting on them.
The current draft for the 2017 plan, is essentially a first draft incorporating thoughts and discussions that have been prevalent within the working group over the past nine months. It provides a coherent set of visions and challenges for the town council to adopt and take up. The framing of the document is simple; it identifies four issues that will define the Town’s future. This is a strategic plan, for which the critical elements can be written down on a 3” x 5” note card; important because the required effort to succeed will be huge, and likely will fully engage the efforts of current and future town commissioners over the coming decade.
Two are threats to the continued existence of Dewey Beach and the awesome quality of life we all enjoy here: one from global climate change and the attendant rising of local sea levels; the other from overcrowding in Dewey and surrounding Sussex County. Two are opportunities for growth and expansion of our commerce and culture deep into the shoulder seasons: one from the transformation of the Rehoboth Bay shoreline, and the other from leading coastal Delaware in the concerted protection and improvement of the natural environment so important to all of us.
The recommended zoning changes associated with responses to these threats and opportunities build on the major zoning changes implemented in the 2007 plan – continuing the upzoning of areas west of Route 1 from Resort Residential, which only permits residential use development, to Resort Business-3, which permits commercial use, mixed use, and dedicated residential use development; to include the small area of the Rehoboth Bay shoreline between McKinley and Rodney avenues in the RB-3 district; further reduce house sizes town wide.
It is important for all stakeholders in this great town of Dewey Beach to become familiar with the current draft plan and the planning process, to understand how implementation of this or some amended version of this plan will affect you, your family, and your investment in Dewey, and to voice your concerns by writing or in person at the many public hearings that are required prior to final approval by the town commissioners and submission to the state for certification.
