By Clark Natalie

The effort to grow the city of Harris with new developments but still retain the small town, rural atmosphere was tackled on Wednesday night, Nov. 9.

It was a joint meeting of the Harris Planning Commission and City Council with City Planner Dean Johnson leading the members through the process.

Johnson was hired to help with the zoning ordinances, the Comprehensive Plan and planning the future growth of Harris.

Johnson stated at the beginning that he is not the expert on Harris, but the members of the groups and the citizens of Harris are.
Johnson has over 30 years in planning, half as a consultant. His favorite projects are dealing with small towns as opposed to larger municipalities.

The workshop was to show the members of the two entities how the process will work. It is a process involving many meetings and public hearings. It is important that the citizens of Harris have input into the process. A reasonable timeline would be 12 to 18 months.

Early on, a public hearing will be held for the citizens. They will be able to have input into what they think are the strengths of Harris, also the weaknesses, community growth concerns and growth desires. The growth will effect both the strengths and weaknesses.
In going through the issues, the Planning Commission and Council came to some consensus that the strengths of Harris were the land available for growth, low population density, and easy commute to work.

The weaknesses were bad road conditions, lack of retail stores and lack of industry.

The growth concerns were the burden growth will have on taxpayers, the increase in traffic and the loss of small town/rural atmosphere.

The growth desires were to retain the small town/rural atmosphere, expand sewer and water systems and to save the farmland and open spaces.

Johnson stressed that obtaining the growth desires will be up to the Planning Commission and City Council.
ìDo not allow just any development,î Johnson said.

Johnson went on to say that successful planning takes time. Each project has to be reviewed and studied. That takes time. It may be necessary to increase the time line any proposed development has to be to the city before it can be listed on the agenda of the Planning Commission.

The time line now is 10 days. This will probably be increased to two weeks. The city is going to have to say no to those proposals that are brought forward without sufficient time for the members to study them, Johnson told the group.

It was decided that by the next Planning Commission, Johnson will have prepared a zoning map based on the existing ordinances and comprehensive plan.

At the meeting last week, between all of the members there, at least three official maps were presented.

This new map presented by Johnson will be adopted as the one and only official zoning map.

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