Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Maricopa County Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. It is November 20th, 2025 at 9:31. We'll begin with a roll call, please. Commissioner Dan Zeiss, Commissioner Finter, Commissioner Hernandez here, Commissioner Lawrence, Commissioner Leighton here. Chairman Limblum here. Vice Chair Milhaven here. Commissioner Rock Wallik. Commissioner Toma,

Commissioner Whitney here. Thank you.

Thank you. This meeting has been noticed in accordance with open meeting law ARS 38-431. Agendas will be available within 24 hours of each meeting in the Maricopa County Planning and Development Office and are also available on the Planning and Development website. one week prior to the meeting at ww.mmaricopa.gov/planning. With respect to the zipper meeting process, items will be considered in the order they appear on the agenda unless otherwise agreed to by the commission. Anyone wishing to speak shall notify staff via email or raise your hand within the go webinar. The amount of time allowed for speaking shall be at the discretion of the commission chair. Staff will provide the chairman with the names of persons who have registered and noted desire to comment and those registered participants who have raised their hand. The chairman will call on each named participant one at a time. So with that I guess we will get to our agenda.

Thank you uh chair uh vice chair Milhaven uh and commissioners Adam canon planning and development. Uh today we're here for the zoning infrastructure policy procedure and ordinance review committee meeting and our uh topic of the day is to uh just give you an update on the Maricopa County comprehensive plan and we're really excited to share that. I have our consultant from Michael Baker International, Matt Kisico, here uh that will assist with any questions that the commission has uh as well as uh any answers I can provide uh at the end of the presentation. But we're really excited to just share with you uh how much further along in plan development we we've gotten um and uh the public participation and the response we've gotten feedback so far. So with that, uh I just wanted to uh our uh agenda for the presentation is just to give you an update on the project schedule. Um to uh go over the public outreach to also go over uh proposed uh goals and policies uh in your packet. Uh we received a a near uh finalish uh copy of the goals and policies uh before we go to the 60-day uh review draft for the comprehensive plan that goes out to the public uh and then uh talk about the next steps in the development of the plan where we're going from here. So if you see on your screen uh you have uh a kind of timeline of where we've been with this. So, we started with phase one looking at visioning uh what the plan would be. Uh we started with an initial outreach surge that had five in-person meetings uh one grand virtual meeting. Uh we convened a uh uh technical advisory committee uh

including several agencies of uh regional significance um and ex with regional expertise uh because the comprehensive plan uh throughout the county is just that it is it is a large plan covering the entire county and we needed that expertise uh to advise us on the direction of the plan. We uh then went and looked at where we want to go with the plan. That's phase two. Um we had a second outreach surge where we at that time we were proposing some of the content that would uh eventually comprise some of the goals and policies and we were uh presenting that to uh members of the public. We held another outreach surge that had five in-person dis district uh meetings as well as another grand virtual meeting and several TAC meetings uh in that time frame. And right now you you see on the screen we have a progress to date arrow that shows uh what steps we're taking next. Um we're about to unveil uh the draft plan to the public. We expect that to be early in the beginning of next year and then from there um we'll be bringing it to the commission and then eventually to the board uh following commission termination. So uh we're really excited about the the uh feedback we've gotten from the public and just the level of participation comprehensive planning participation. And anybody who's been involved in that knows how it can be difficult to really engage the public on on some of these uh particular particularly broad topics, broad visioning, broad goals and policies. Um we are very pleased uh about the outreach that we've done to

the community. Uh all in all, we've held 13 uh public meetings uh throughout all five supervisor districts in seven different locations. three of those being grand countywide virtual meetings. We uh had 25 participants and we've held five technical advisory committee meetings thus far. Our online uh digital uh engagement activities saw a great deal of participation. Our mapping activity got 154 responses in person and virtual. We had 2,47 completed surveys uh between surge outreach surges one and two, 577 ideal wall posts and comments and uh 9 thou over 9,000 visits to the website uh with uh 6,474 unique visitors and uh a total of over 3,000 participants in the virtual engagement activities. and we're really pleased with uh the response we got in regard to that. What we gleaned from the public outreach um were uh six particular topics that our residents want to see the comprehensive plan focus on. Uh chief among them is uh supporting uh the improvement of safety coverage and response times. That refers to law enforcement. We had a lot of response related to safety. Um, we had a lot of response related to preserving the natural and rural landscape. Uh, expanding access to recreational lands and opportunities, encouraging high quality development. So, people really placed an emphasis on uh the quality of the development coming into their communities as well. Also

protecting the regional water supply. Water is a a significant issue of statewide importance and our residents are concerned about that as well as continuing the business in uh environment for economic opportunities. So economic development throughout the county uh expanding uh that growth that we've been seeing uh for the last uh couple of decades. So moving on from there, uh that feedback that we got from the public helped us develop the goals and policies for the plan. So uh on your screen, um there's a general feedback loop or strategy uh for how we develop the proposed goals and proposed policies. Uh most of the development of the goals and policies came from the feedback from the public and the stakeholders that have been involved with the plan. We made sure to uh develop those policies in line with state statute uh and uh removed uh completed or outdated policies. So if something had there's sometimes there's references to particular organizations that may not exist in the policies anymore, we looked at those and got rid of those. Um or we've completed that particular policy uh over the last comprehensive planning period. So we looked at areas uh uh where we could streamline those as well and we organized those um under different elements and with goal statements the goals with goal statements uh to give more information about the goal we were trying to achieve. Um we're pleased uh about the number of comments we received on our goals and policies from our technical advisory committee. uh we had 55 total from our member agencies. Uh that process of commenting is not over yet. Uh we may receive more feedback from the technical advisory

committee and the stakeholder agencies. But uh we're pleased because we were able to address or implement at least 84% of those comments into uh the comprehensive plan draft document uh which again will be putting forth to the public after the new year. So, in your packets, you all receive a copy of the goals and policies uh docu a draft of the goals and policies document that'll be included in the plan. And uh the goals and policies document is organized under sever several elements. The vast majority of which are required uh under state law. uh the first and most important of which is land use which looks at the patterns and grow of growth and development over the next 10 years in the county. Uh we develop goals and policies for each one of these elements um and uh as well as some umbrella policies associated with those uh particular elements as well. We also cover transportation uh looking at uh current existing transportation patterns and future projects uh anticipated projects and how we plan for that in the future. We also look at the environment. Uh one of the things that came out of the public participation was that uh residents uh were focused on protecting those natural resources that we do have in Maricopa County. And so uh one of the areas that we've beefed up in terms of our goals and policies particular includes uh the section on environment uh which addresses uh environmental quality and uh hazards. We also focus on economic growth. Economic growth is not a statemandated element. Um but it is something that uh

is important to Maricopa County and important to our residents and we are really interested in cultivating uh an environment where growth flourishes. Uh we during our uh public participation process, we looked at the kinds of industries that Maricopa County should pri prioritize when thinking about future growth. uh the largest of those industries uh happen to be healthcare related ind industries and technology related industries. So the public sees just what everybody else is seeing in terms of the direction of how Arizona and Maropa County's economy is going to grow in the future and they're focused on that and thinking about it as well. And then uh we also have a section on growth areas which ties into land use. uh growth areas is where we look at the areas within the county where we're anticipating future growth. Now, from a countywide broad perspective, it functions differently from an area plan. And we're really pleased because uh our consultants uh really got into the nitty-gritty and developed a model for how we look at future growth within the county. In particular, how uh the a rural and urban framework basically, hence the name framework 20 240. They really put a a an exclamation point on on that title. And so uh what our consultants done is put together basically a model uh for how uh when we bring uh recommendations associated with land use decisions to the commission. uh how we're going to look at when someone proposes urban development. Um we're going to look be looking at this framework that our consultant developed

uh to show us areas where urban growth may be occurring even though the area may be designated rural for example. And so that policy is still in development. Um, Matt, did you want to share a couple of details about that as well? Yeah, thank thank you.

Thank you, Adam. Uh, I guess I would just clarify or add to that opening comment that really what we're wanting to do is look at that interface between the urban and rural environment across the county. And we recognize that that changes from one area of the county to the next. And so in order to uh memorialize that and make it more of a defined process, we use this framework to help the county start to, as Adam mentioned, when we look at areas across the county, this tool will help us ensure that there's urban services for urban development. And so this gives a more uh methodical way to go about it as opposed to a haphazard, if you will, uh approach. Um, and so what uh this does is take some of the existing policies that the county already has and put it into a flow diagram so that the public can understand how those decisions are made and then how the process proceeds. So it's really taking things that the county's already been doing, already had in policy and incorporating it to a more defined framework.

Thank you, Matt. An additional element includes open space. Again, that's another area including uh environment that I'm pleased to say based on the public feedback, we really beefed up some of the goals and policies associated with open space planning. Uh particularly one of the things we were seeing and and at the last zipper meeting, we uh talked about this a little bit is that the value that our residents place on natural environments and in particular trails. And so we've made that a part of our goals and policies and and added more uh description to that uh to really honor what the public has come forward with in terms of their feedback. Also, we looked at water resources. Now, water resources is a mandated element uh under state law. Um, at the same time, Maricopa County has little influence on on uh water uh supply or conservation. We can certainly encourage it and do what we can as a county. However, water policy is uh typically controlled by the state. The other piece of that is that Maricopa County isn't a water provider either. So, uh while we can encourage uh protection of the water supply, encourage conservation, encourage the state to come up uh with uh solutions to some of the challenges that they're seeing statewide with water. Um at the same time, our residents are concerned about it. So, we we wanted to make sure we address that as thoroughly as we could consider the limitations that the county has in in regards to that type of policy. We also address energy. Um map on the screen shows a map of uh the

energy generation facilities throughout the county. Um including uh significant amounts of solar energy development that have occurred over the last couple of decades. Uh we uh energy is an important issue. the county supports generally an all of the above strategy uh to meet energy demand needs for the future years, but we also appreciate the amount of alternative energy development that we're seeing within the county and we still are supporters of that as well. And then lastly, um we look at cost of development. one of the things that we were seeing from uh the public feedback as they were looking uh to trust Maricopa County. So we uh in terms of the financial reporting, we received a lot of feedback about transparency. So we added a goal that addressed that. Um we look at cost of development because we want to ensure that development pays for itself basically. And so while it's not a very large section, there are certain policies in there in particular about how Maricopa County uh how it sees development and how that development pays for itself for the future. And then in terms of next steps, we have uh a 60-day public review draft period coming up that's going to begin in January. Um we're going to kick off that period with a final grand virtual meeting. Uh and then we may hold another agency meeting uh uh during that 60-day period to get some more comments and feedback uh from uh our technical advisory committee. uh anything else that they're seeing before we come to the commission um for final

consideration of the plan and that's going to be in uh spring of next year. So with that um I'm happy to answer any questions that the commission may have. Thank you. Any comments or questions?

Yes, you did a great job. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Is there any other business? No other business then we are adjourned. Thank you gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen.