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With no petitions before them Monday night, the Warsaw Plan Commission continued discussion on updating the city’s comprehensive plan.
The board was first presented with the plan at their meeting Oct. 13. Not updated in about 10 years, the city wants to revisit and revise the plan in 2026.
City Planner Justin Taylor told the Plan Commission Monday, “At this point, we’re looking at doing some exploration of the comp plan in 2026, with a subcommittee, no more than four members from the Plan Commission can be on that, but we do want to do some work with the strategic plan as well as the city council. But the comp plan would quickly follow after that work.”
The Plan Commission is a nine-member board, with five members making a quorum.
City engineer Aaron Ott said, “The question that I’ve come away with, that I’m interested in ... the question we were left with (last month) was trying to decide the best path for updating this and whether we form committees or whether we get any consultant help. The public commenting and public involvement side of it is what I’m interested in understanding because that seems like that’s probably the most critical piece of this and how would that work with what we’re talking about possibly doing to update the plan.”
Taylor said that will depend on where the subcommittee falls on the method and how broad of an update to the plan will be done.
“And then we need to determine what that engagement will look like. There is always public engagement with these processes so we’ll have public meetings of some kind, but the method kind of depends on how big of a revision we’re doing,” Taylor stated.
Another thing Ott said had caught his interest was the sub-area plan of it.
“The rest of it all looks pretty much what I would understand the comprehensive plan probably is. But the sub-area plan digs a little deeper into specific projects or ideas and I’m wondering if seemingly what that could entail as it moves forward,” he said.
Taylor said some of the things in there, like the grade separation, have been in the comprehensive plan for many, many years and might be good for a subcommittee to look at.
Commission member Michelle Boxell said she found the comprehensive plan very helpful and was looking forward to the conversation on it.
“It encourages me when I see that we have so many good things planned and a lot of the thought and input from the community has gone into it, and I think it’s reflected in the plan, so I think it’s a good starting place,” she said. “... It was a far more interesting read than I thought it was going to be.”
Jeff Owens, Commission member, asked Taylor, “How does this guide the city planning department on a day-to-day basis? And, for the most part, we’re not out there actually developing items or properties. So how does this dovetail into when people approach the office and want to do something? How does this work?”
Taylor compared the comprehensive plan to “a scaffolding that is a legally reinforcing document for our zoning ordinance. The state basically requires us to have this as a legal backup for zoning requirements for development. So we need to have one for that reason.”
He said the plan is a document that helps the city grow in a responsible way.
“Day to day, we use it for BZA meetings. We use it for all kinds of planning decisions. We use it for public infrastructure projects, so there’s a lot wrapped up in this document that helps us guide annexation, future plans, infrastructure, so it is a very important document for the growth of the city,” Taylor stated.
The comprehensive plan also helps the city “establish the character of neighborhoods in certain districts, as far as architectural ways that things develop. So it is very vital,” he continued.
Dave Baumgartner, Commission member, asked if “blueprint” was too strong of a word for the plan. Taylor said he was thinking scaffolding or skeleton, but blueprint was a great word.
“This one has functioned for 10 years. There’s a need to dust it off and re-evaluate all the projects in it, but it does reinforce a lot of things legally and day to day,” Taylor said.
Common Councilman Juergen Voss said he agreed it was time to get the plan updated, but he wasn’t sure if a consultant needed to be hired.
“We pretty well know what we’d like to see,” he said.
As Voss is a member of the Common Council, Taylor told him he’d have an opportunity to weigh in as how the comprehensive plan was reviewed and updated.
Dan Stevens, Commission member, said the city’s website could be one way to get community involvement on the comprehensive plan. Boxell added other modern methods - like QR Codes - could also target the younger generations to get involved.
“Technology has changed things,” Baumgartner said.
Boxell said younger people aren’t necessarily doing the same things as the older generations, like websites.
“We can investigate that and see how best to engage them and how do they want to be engaged. What’s easier for them,” she said.
“And do they want to be engaged,” Voss said. “That’s a big question, too.”
In other business, the Plan Commission approved the “Amendment to the Declaratory Resolution and the Economic Development Plan for the Consolidated Northern and Central Economic Development Area.”
Taylor explained, “The Plan Commission saw one of these last year, in May, so every once in a while we see these resolutions that we are presented from the Economic Development Commission. What they are doing, in plain English, is that they want to add a property to their acquisitions list so that they can move forward with the possible acquisition of that property.”
The property is the parking lot on the southeast corner of Indiana and Main streets across from the Old Jail Museum. It currently is owned by the Shirley Polk Revocable Trust.
Taylor said the amendment will go back before the Redevelopment Commission for their final approval. There are short- and long-term plans for the property by the city.
The Plan Commission also approved the 2026 calendar. Meetings will be held Jan. 12, Feb. 9, March 9, April 13, May 11, June 8, July 13, Aug. 10, Sept. 14, Oct. 12, Nov. 9 and Dec. 14.
