Show All Answers

1. What is the sustainability plan?

The sustainability plan is a long-term communitywide plan that details how we will reduce our environmental impact, grow the economy, and improve the community in which we live. The purpose of this plan is to provide both a big picture vision of where the community is headed in specific goal areas and to identify specific steps that are needed to advance an individual goal. To provide a more complete picture, we are also highlighting big-picture successes our community has accomplished in the pursuit of these goals.

2. Why has Athens-Clarke created the sustainability plan?

The Mayor and Commission strategic goals and objectives directed staff to “Work with community environmental and transportation groups and Unified Government staff, to define the major components of a sustainability plan and identify benchmarks for success.” Much like how Bike/Pedestrian Master Plan will be very detailed in addressing transportation issues, the sustainability plan provides us with an opportunity to take a closer look at items critical to sustaining our environment.

3. How will the sustainability plan be different from other plans?

There are a couple of things that set this process apart from other ongoing efforts. They include:

• Timeline - To be bold in our visioning, many of our draft goals have a 2050 target date. This is substantially longer than other community planning efforts. The draft sustainability plan also includes a short-term actions list that describes what steps are needed over the next five years to make progress towards a given goal. Some of these actions are much more specific than those covered in other plans.
• Scope – As a result of the project charge, items related to transportation, infrastructure, and the environment are very detailed in the sustainability plan. While the comprehensive plan may address items related to the environment and agriculture, the sustainability plan is proposed to have six different chapters that work within this space. Alternatively, items like arts, culture, and education are not proposed to be standalone chapters in the draft sustainability plan.
• Framework – By documenting previous efforts and starting our development with subject stakeholders, we aim to provide context for each goal and its associated actions. By doing so, we hope to provide a more complete vision of where we are and where we are going. We believe this will be more targeted in our citizen engagement than if the process started with open ended questions like “what would you like to see…..”.

4. So what happens to all of the other plans?

They remain in effect and are important to guiding our community’s progress. Existing plans like the Greenway Network Plan and the Workforce Housing Study are guiding documents for the development of the sustainability plan.  Whenever possible, we have cross-referenced back to these plans. Ongoing plans like Envision Athens, the Bike/Pedestrian Master Plan, and the Downtown Health and Safety Study are more broadly referenced in the sustainability plan. We believe the greatest success is likely to be found where these plans have overlapping recommendations that emerge from their different approaches.

5. What has happened so far?

So far, Athens-Clarke County staff from 15 different departments have invested over 1,400 hours reviewing other plans, national best practices, and current progress within the community. They have used this information to draft 64 long-term goals and approximately 650 actions to be completed within the next five years. We now need additional ideas and input to make this plan more complete in its design.

6. What will the process look like to complete the plan?

The staff effort so far is just the first step. Because we work so closely with these subject areas, we recognize our community can't be successful in these areas without the contributions of our non-profits, businesses, volunteers, and citizens.

Through the spring and summer of 2018, we will engage with community stakeholders on the eleven subject areas. Following this input, we will compile and refine feedback to develop a plan that more broadly describes the contributions of stakeholders across the community. Ultimately, this compiled data will be converted to a narrative format and shared with the public for additional feedback and editing. It will take up to a year to complete this process.