Fifth community

planning meeting

set for Jan. 8
By Scott Nicholson
nicholson@wataugademocrat.com

Boone residents will have an easy opportunity to help guide the county’s future this week.

Citizens Plan for Watauga, a long-term planning effort to address the county’s needs, will host a meeting Tuesday, Jan. 8 at 6 p.m. at Hardin Park Elementary School to hear community suggestions and concerns.

Although the meeting is in Boone, everyone is invited to attend the hour-long meeting and give input.

It’s the fifth community meeting in a series that began in December and is part of the long-term planning process for the county.

The first phase of the project involves collecting public input, including through surveys available on the county’s Web site at www.wataugacounty.org.

Questions cover environmental, scenic, growth and quality-of-life issues, and planners say public input will be an important foundation of the document.

Engineering consultant firm Martin-McGill is assisting with the project, and after the meetings are complete, the firm will make recommendations on putting together a new comprehensive or land-use plan to replace the current document, which was created in the early 1990s. The second phase of the plan will be the crafting and adopting of the document, which could take up to two years.

Additional meetings will be held Jan. 15 at Mabel Elementary School and Jan. 22 at Valle Crucis Elementary School, both beginning at 6 p.m.

All meetings will conform to weather cancellations of Watauga County Schools. If school is cancelled, there will be no night meeting.