Biloxi residents are being invited to attend any of a series of upcoming workshops to give their input on the city’s update of its comprehensive plan.
Workshops will be held Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Biloxi Community Center on Howard Avenue in east Biloxi; Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at the Joppa Shrine Center on old Mississippi 67 in Woolmarket; and Thursday at 8:30 a.m. at the Donal Snyder Center on Pass Road in west Biloxi.
To encourage broad public participation, the workshops are being conducted on three different days, at different locations and at different times, but please note the agenda is the same for each workshop.
A comprehensive plan is a statement of goals, objectives, and strategies that establishes a municipality’s vision for the future and how it is to be implemented through planning policy, capital investments, and regulatory tools. A comprehensive plan addresses all aspects of the municipality, including land use, transportation, housing, recreation and open space, natural resources, public utilities, schools, health and safety, historic preservation, and economic development.
The city’s plan is being guided by Wallace Roberts and Todd, a planning firm that has done extensive work in Baltimore; Charleston County and Hilton Head, South Carolina; Coral Springs, Fla., East Hampton, NY, and other cities. This process will include numerous public hearings and outreach, and it will be followed up with an update of the city’s Land Development Ordinance, which will help facilitate goals identified in the comprehensive plan.
More online: The city’s web site now contains a section devoted to the update of the comprehensive plan, where visitors can learn more about the process; see the existing Vision 2020 plan, which drafted in 1996; and see a public notice about the upcoming hearings. To visit the Comprehensive Plan Update section of the city site, click here.
