The public is invited to voice their opinion of the future of Jacksonville Tuesday.
A pair of community meetings are being offered at the Jacksonville Convention and Visitors Bureau tomorrow in an effort to get the public’s input ahead of the formation of a new comprehensive plan for the City of Jacksonville.
Community Development Director for the City of Jacksonville Brian Nyberg says the current comprehensive plan has run its course and the city is asking for the public’s help in setting the course for Jacksonville in the next 20 years.
“The meetings are open to the public to discuss the beginning of what will be our comprehensive plan. The [current] comprehensive plan turns twenty years old in 2022, and basically, every box was checked from that first comprehensive plan and we hope to do the same for the next twenty years.”
Nyberg says meetings with the same company that assisted the city with the current comprehensive plan will begin before the end of the year with the hope to begin working on the plan as soon as possible thereafter.
Nyberg says it’s very important to hear from the community on what they feel the greatest needs are in the Jacksonville area.
“Just input is what we want. We hope people will voice the way they want to move forward within the next twenty years. I hope people don’t think that we are not going to listen because we are. Somebody may have an idea that hasn’t been thought of before, something totally out of the box which would end up being a great idea. So I hope people will show up and voice their opinion on which way they want the city to go. The meetings are at noon and six o’clock East State Street.”
Most of the summer the public has been asked to complete the community needs survey to help gain input for the plan. Nyberg says some of that information will be discussed during the meetings.
“The Illinois Housing Development Authority will be down here. They have some data that we have been working on including the housing stock survey and the community needs surveys. We were hoping to get about five hundred responses from the community needs survey. It’s getting close to that and it’s still open. But that will be the discussion of the input the community has given on what they want to see moving forward.”
The meetings will be held at the Jacksonville Convention and Visitors Bureau located at 310 East State Street just across from the Jacksonville Area Museum.
The community needs survey is still open to participate and can be found on the city of Jacksonville’s website, JREDC website, Convention & Visitor’s Bureau website, and The Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce website.