By Bob Vlach
Woodford Sun Staff
Planning Director Steve Hunter informed members of the Comprehensive Plan subcommittee during a meeting on April 9 that Chapters II, III and IV of an update to the land-use document are pretty much finished. However, he also acknowledged that those chapters may need to be updated with more current data and that additional work may be needed before the updated chapters are rolled out to the community in the summer.
A series of community meetings, which Hunter said will be similar to the ones held when work on updating the Comp Plan began two years ago, will provide a forum for public feedback on the proposed updated chapters.
Hunter said residents want to talk about land use – “what’s going to go here … but we’re not there yet.” The Land Use Plan is Chapter V of the current Comp Plan, which includes zoning districts for residential, commercial and industrial uses. It also provides information about the Versailles and Midway urban service boundary areas and projections for land use needs.
Hunter reviewed Chapters II, III and IV for new committee members at their first meeting since receiving a unanimous vote in February by the full Versailles-Midway-Woodford County Planning Commission on committee assignments.
Karen Isberg (chair), Tim Middleton, Chris Sharp and Doug Curl are now serving on the Comp Plan Committee. Planning Commission Chair Whitney Stepp also attended the meeting.
Since work began on updating the Comprehensive Plan in 2023, three interns from the University of Kentucky have contributed to updating the chapters, adding new graphic designs, Hunter said. He noted Comp Plans are typically reviewed every five years, but that’s not a legal requirement.
He said the Comp Plan’s Goals and Objectives chapter was approved by the governing bodies in January and February 2024.
Chapter II includes census and demographic information, but Hunter pointed out that housing and economic data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic, so the information is much less reliable than other census data. Chapter IV has maps and information about streets, roads and proposed improvements, including a traffic study undertaken by the City of Versailles and an earlier study related to a proposed Northwest bypass that became a dead project, he said. That chapter also needs to be updated, he said, because of changes to the state’s six-year road plan.
Hunter told new members of the Comp Plan Committee that commissioners serving on that committee last year discussed and voiced support for adding chapters focused on housing and economic development, which was contributed by the Woodford County Economic Development Authority. He also noted there was debate in committee meetings about how paragraphs of the chapter on economic development were written, which led to some text revisions.
Work on a housing study is ongoing by the University of Kentucky, under a contract with the Planning Commission, and that will be in a new chapter in the updated Comp Plan, Hunter said.
Versailles Mayor Laura Dake, Midway Mayor Grayson Vandegrift and Woodford County Judge-Executive James Kay have participated in previous meetings of the Comp Plan subcommittee as non-voting ex officio members. They didn’t attend last week’s meeting, which was essentially an update for new committee members.
Hunter told Comp Plan committee members that their next meeting is likely to happen before proposed chapter updates are rolled out to the community this summer.