INTRODUCTION ––
The Dauphin County Comprehensive Plan – Growing Together, establishes an overall vision for the future of Dauphin County.
The Comprehensive Plan sets the direction and identifies the goals for the County’s community, environmental and economic initiatives. But, beyond stating the goals, this Comprehensive Plan seeks to be an “Implementable Plan” by outlining and establishing the methods, actions and accounting for progress toward meeting the goals.
The steering committee established for the Comprehensive Plan was able to identify three focus areas through a survey of Dauphin County residents:
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Community Development
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Environmental Protection/Enhancement, and
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Economic Development.
While the comprehensive plan has been organized under these major topics, they are clearly interrelated, with many of the key goals and action items found in several sections of the plan. In addition, many of the implementation partners assembled during the development of the plan have agreed to participate in committees organized under the three main topics, further reflecting the interrelated nature of the various plan elements.
These areas were further refined through a series of in-depth interviews with community “implementation partners” who are individuals or organizations regularly engaged in these three areas. These interviews focused on the needs to be addressed and ongoing and possible future actions to be pursued. The Comprehensive Plan is a compilation of the most practical and workable action items in sufficient depth and detail to clearly summarize the activities to be undertaken, responsible parties, and, where appropriate, estimated cost and means of financing.
In accordance with the Municipalities Planning Code (MPC), the draft plan was shared as part of the review process with Dauphin County’s 40 municipalities, authorities, public utilities and school districts, the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) Center for Local Government Services, and the adjoining counties. Additionally, a flyer with an announcement of the availability of the draft plan was distributed through the following venues:
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Tri-County Regional Planning Commission (TCRPC) website and social media (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn);
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Municipal buildings and other public locations;
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Sent directly to survey respondents who requested to be informed on the status of the plan;
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Emailed to approximately 2,000 non-profit organizations throughout Dauphin County;
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Dauphin County Department of Parks and Recreation email blast;
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All steering committee members and implementation partners were asked to distribute the flyer through their networks.
Click for flyer
Comments received through this process were reviewed and addressed in the final plan as appropriate.
The intent of this planning effort is that it acts more as a process as opposed to a static document. By adopting an online format as the basic means of relaying the findings, goals and ongoing activities associated with the Comprehensive Plan, the Commissioners hope to broaden public awareness and optimize opportunities for input.
While the primary documentation will be available online, hard copy versions of the Plan can be downloaded through the website or obtained through the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission.