The Portage County Regional Planning Commission’s designs on building a better City of Ravenna remain fluid. The PCRPC hosted an Open House to receive feedback from residents to update their living document last Wednesday evening at Ravenna High School.
“The word comprehensive means all-inclusive but it is a legal document,” PCRPC Director Todd Peetz told the audience. “If something is zoned or re-zoned, we would need to follow a comprehensive plan. Anytime there is a text amendment or map amendment you should look back to what the comprehensive plan to make sure if the city feels like it needs to change, we also need to do an amendment to our comprehensive plan to reflect that change.”
The goal of the comprehensive plan is to improve the city’s growth of economic development through the regional planning commission. The comprehensive plan also served as a guide to the city or area for newcomers.
The Open House was divided into seven different stations, each using a map to outline a specific topic to allow residents to make recommendations. Everyone could write their suggestions on a sticky note and post it to the map.
“We are looking for input in anything you say,” Peetz said in his address. “Why do you guys not have a park here? We need a park here. This park has great stuff here and we need a water park. I am not going to say the City is going to build you a water park because those are expensive but those are fair questions to ask. It is the same with transportation, this intersection is terrible, or this intersection is wonderful. We like to hear that kind of stuff.”
The PCRPC would look at those suggestions and make necessary changes to the comprehensive plan and would present some of those ideas to the Ravenna City Council, the NAACP and the school board.
Each attendee was given a survey to fill out and questions in the survey asked questions such as what they liked about Ravenna and what they did not like about Ravenna. Peetz added that the PCRPC planned to send the surveys to local businesses too and already had the postcards ready but just needed to meet with the steering committee to confirm the addresses.
In addition to providing surveys for residents and businesses, the PCRPC also offered them to high school students to gauge what they wanted to see change in Ravenna.
“Would they like to stay in Ravenna or do they plan on going to college, trade school, just plan on working right of school or just enlist?” Peetz noted. “They can enlist in the military to see what their options are. We are getting some feedback from the students which is great.”
Peetz added that another point of the PRCPC’s comprehensive plan was to create appropriate timelines for some of the projects. While there were plenty of great ideas to go around, there were a lot of steps required to get to certain objectives. The comprehensive plan could conclude which goals were attainable in the sort-term period and which ones needed further planning.
Some of the specific topics that Peetz touched on his opening remarks included the changes to federal law such as the State of Ohio’s recent approval of the recreational sale of marijuana.
“I never thought we would talk about this but the hot topic amongst Portage County is how do we allow marijuana as retail?” he pondered. “I never thought we would be having that conversation in my lifetime but here we are. We are talking about it.”
He also talked about the PCRPC’s plans to make the comprehensive plan a more interactive document so people could get excited about the community.
He said the PCRPC had discussed taking drone footage of community events and uploading it to their website.
“Instead of looking at talking heads, they can play it back and all you see are the parks, all you see is the school and all you see is the economic development setting and I think it is going to be really sharp,” he said.
Peetz took some brief questions from the audience and one audience member asked about what the plans were for the empty space and alley located by Guido’s restaurant. Peetz responded that the PCRPC was talking about potential parks and that area had the potential to become one.
The PCRPC planned to host another open forum to continue these discussions at Ravenna High School on April 17 beginning at 6 p.m.
“That will be a little bit longer meeting and more hands on. You will be given maps to draw and groups who are working together can talk about the issues,” he said.
