Residents look at Selma’s comprehensive plan draft

Published 1:21 am Wednesday, November 4, 2009

SELMA — People came and went from the Performing Arts Center Tuesday, stopping for awhile to look at a variety of maps and drawings of what the city could become.

The maps, papers and lists are a draft of the city’s comprehensive community master plan.

Representatives from Goodwyn, Mills and Cawood, who put the plan together with the help of various citizen committees, stood nearby to talk about what could be.

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State law mandates community planning commissions to prepare and keep a comprehensive plan to develop the city. That’s what this will do.

“It’ll have lots of phases of implementation, but it’s really there to guide the city long term,” said Larry Watts, a representative from Goodwyn, Mills and Caywood.

And it depends on whose looking as to what gets emphasis right now.

Dr. Monica Newton, a city council member, spoke briefly to Watts about recreational development.

Newton has said she would like to see more walking and bicycling trails in the city.

Others looking over the plan were interested in historical development.

Others talked about retail and industrial development.

The plan includes something for all, according to Watts.

The next step: Watts and his team will take recommendations from those who looked at the plan Tuesday and assemble the comments.

They’ll later present it to the city planning commission, which will make comments and forward to the city council for adoption.

A copy of the draft of the plan is available at Selma City Hall.