Public role key in blueprint

20-year plan in works

LAFAYETTE — The effort to develop a plan for Lafayette’s growth over the next 20 years will draw heavily on input from residents in public forums and outreach sessions scheduled through the fall, planning consultants told the City-Parish Council on Tuesday.

“It’s about understanding the values and shared aspirations of this community,” said John Fernsler, with the Pennsylvania planning firm Wallace, Roberts & Todd.

The firm has been awarded a $1.2 million contract to develop Lafayette’s comprehensive plan.

Such plans address a wide-variety of issues, from where to build roads and fire stations and parks — and how to pay for that infrastructure — to how to revitalize neglected areas of the city and manage new development in rural areas of the parish.

The consulting team arrived in Lafayette this week to begin early work on the plan, touring the parish by bus and meeting with city-parish officials and community leaders.

The team plans to begin public forums next month and continue through the fall.

The desires of residents will be key in developing the plan, said Silvia Vargas, also with Wallace, Roberts & Todd.

“We are not here to dictate what the plan should look like or what the plan should be,” Vargas said.

She said that special efforts will be made to reach out to minorities, the elderly, younger residents and other groups who generally don’t attend the conventional public meetings that are the hallmark of most government projects.

Planners will use social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, and go to churches, schools or other community institutions to seek input from residents who are not attending the normal public forums, Fernsler said.

“If there are constituencies that are underrepresented, we will go to them,” he said.

City-Parish Councilman Kenneth Boudreaux, who represents a portion of north Lafayette, asked the consultants to make a special effort to reach out to the city’s black residents.

“Let’s truly find out who is not participating,” Boudreaux said. “If we are going to fix Lafayette, if we are going to be a great city as opposed to a good city only, it needs to be the community’s plan.”

Vargas presented a timeline to the council on Tuesday that calls for public meetings through October, followed by a planning development stage beginning in November and the presentation of the final plan by the summer of 2013.

The plan would need approval of the council.

The current planning effort builds on recommendations that have emerged out of an ongoing planning process dubbed Lafayette In a Century.

Work on the LINC plan began the 1990s, and various committees have developed a long list of recommendations, but few of those recommendations have been implemented.

City-Parish President Joey Durel has said a critical distinction between LINC and the current effort is the sharp focus on community input, which he hopes will result in recommendations that the community and the council will want to pursue.