Title
Proposed City of Gainesville, FL - Comprehensive Plan Scope of Work (B)
This item involves requesting City Commission input and approval regarding the proposed City of Gainesville, FL - Comprehensive Plan Scope of Work.
Explanation
Per direction of the City Commission, staff recently corresponded with the State of Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) to indicate that the City had evaluated its Comprehensive Plan and determined that no amendments are necessary to reflect changes in State of Florida applicable requirements.
Instead, staff would update the Comprehensive Plan in a more substantive manner consistent with City Commission direction with no obligation to meet any existing State of Florida statutory timelines.
Since sending this correspondence to the State of Florida, staff has drafted a proposed Scope of Work for City Commission consideration that attempts to: 1) set out the parameters of the Update to the Comprehensive Plan; 2) provides a structure to ensure a maximum level of civic engagement in this important community endeavor; and, finally, 3) stresses a few underlying themes that need to be motivate the direction of the overall Update efforts.
This Scope of Work is intended to be incorporated into a future solicitation for professional services so that staff can partner on this effort with a private planning consultant. The scope contemplates creating opportunities for the primary consultant to hire locally based civic engagement sub-consultants such as non-profits and other community based organizations to create opportunities for participatory planning and to conduct focused engagement with diverse communities.
Some additional specifics of the proposed Scope of Work are as follows:
1. The Plan Update has a 10 year planning horizon through 2030
2. There is a heavy emphasis on public outreach/citizen engagement and so the structure contemplates an internal City (GG, GRU, CA) team, an outside agency technical team, and a citizen/stakeholder team…the latter is tasked along with the Consultant to pro-actively design the engagement strategy before executing on it to ensure we get appropriate input into the process from the get go (go slow, to go fast).
3. The Update of the Comprehensive Plan will emphasize alignment with the Strategic Framework/Plan (the (4) pillars as well as other in progress City planning efforts) and to important community concerns regarding inclusiveness, affordability and livability in this time of transformation to the built environment.
4. There will be a strong underlying data/analytics foundation for the effort
5. The result of the Update will tie into City branding generally (with some creative license afforded) and examples used as models such as Boston, Asheville, Denver and Minneapolis
6. On mechanics, the effort is split up into tasks with emphasis on interaction with various groups throughout the process (with Respondent generally taking the lead with Project Manager/staff support when warranted) and the components of the plan and the deliverables.
7. The Plan Board and City Commission will be engaged throughout the process in digestible intervals either as separate bodies or jointly so eventual adoption will have emphasized consistent and timely interaction.
8. In an effort to be transparent the Respondent should keep an electric record of the working draft of the Plan Update document and supporting materials and then its evolution to the Final Draft so citizens can get to everything during the course of the effort.
9. The substance of the Plan Update in terms of form, components and deliverables is on pgs. 10-12
10. The Respondent will be asked to provide an Implementation strategy (called out as a deliverable) to ensure that we have some action coming out of this effort with respect to Comp. Plan Update and its alignment with Strategic Plan so we can set up some milestones (maybe some internal employee benchmarks) moving forward so this is an active final product.
Two final issues, first, in terms of a timeline, staff intends to pursue a solicitation process as soon as possible (preferably in October) and then will seek to bring aboard a planning consultant in early 2020 so that we can hit the ground running in the new year; and second, it is likely that in terms of the local citizen engagement process that staff will seek an entity within the community that can assist in structuring this crucial aspect of the effort.
Fiscal Note
Staff has budgeted existing funds to support the proposed scope. Additional funding may be allocated within existing budgets if needed to respond to bids.
Recommendation
The City Commission: 1) hear a presentation from staff; 2) direct the staff as deemed appropriate regarding the proposed Scope of Work for the Update of the City of Gainesville Comprehensive Plan.