Community Growth Institute Comprehensive Plan Information

Updating the Becker Township Comprehensive Plan

The Community Growth Institute is working with Becker Township on updating the Comprehensive Plan, which is a guiding document for decisions made by the Township and those who are working with it. A comprehensive plan will answer three basic, but complicated, questions about a community:

Who are we?
Where do we want to go?
How are we going to get there?

The questions are simple, but the answers are always complex. We are using the following steps to answer these questions:

Who are we?

• Background Information – As planners, we have a unique way of analyzing a town and the elements that have gone into shaping it. As specialists in small towns and rural areas, Community Growth Institute has an even greater understanding of the dynamics shaping Rural America than other planning organizations. To help answer the question, we are going to research and analyze all aspects of your growth and development. This will give us a good, technical understanding of what has shaped, and what continues to impact, the community.

• Identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) – We’re smart enough to know that, no matter how great our technical analysis is, there is always more that can be learned by hearing from the members of the community. We will work with you to perform a SWOT analysis to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of your town. Your knowledge combined with our analysis creates the foundation of a solid plan.

Where do we want to go?

• Creation of Goals and Policies – With a solid understanding of the forces impacting the town, as well as what strengths we can build on and what challenges we need to confront, we will work together to set goals and create policies for the community. These are not specific actions (those come later), but broad statements of consensus that give us direction. They are aspirations that we are seeking to achieve or statements of policy that we feel are fundamental to the community. This is the most difficult part of the process but, if done successfully, makes the final plan very powerful.

How are we going to get there?

• Develop Implementation Strategies – Once goals and policies have been set, a successful plan outlines specific steps to be taken to achieve the desired results. We will work with the community to brainstorm, analyze and prioritize actions steps that can be taken to implement the plan.

• Future Land Use Exercise – The Future Land Use map is a powerful document that forms the basis for future zoning and land use decisions. Members of the community, with our assistance, will transform the goals, policies and strategies created in the process into physical representations on a map.

• Public Hearing and Adoption – Before a plan can be adopted, we must hold a formal public hearing. It is also proper to distribute the plan to neighboring jurisdictions so they may comment. We will coordinate this to ensure that all of the legal steps for plan adoption are correctly followed.

• Implementation – Once the plan is adopted, we need to turn our attention towards maintaining and implementing the plan. With the time, energy and resources being invested in a planning process, it is critical that, upon adoption of the plan, we commit to building on the effort, incrementally over time. This approach, which we call the Five-Year Planning Cycle, is the most effective way for a small town, on a limited budget, to Dream, Plan, Do and Grow successfully over the long-term.