What's in Salisbury's future? Public sounds off at first meeting on Comprehensive Plan.

The city's proposed 2024 Comprehensive Plan drew public input during an open house Wednesday evening at the Salisbury Fire Department headquarters.

While the presentation was brief to allow ample time for the public to inspect the posters, some in the audience made their opinions heard regardless.

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The city's Department of Infrastructure began the information gathering portion of the process for the guiding document, which was last completed in 2010. Mead and Hunt, the company hired by the city to manage the process and present a final draft after the public has had ample time to provide input, led the meeting. They started with an overview of Salisbury itself, leading to some of the nearly 100 individuals present to voice their opinions on the costly construction projects and lack of affordable housing.

"The idea is that we have information about the existing conditions of the city and some preliminary goals," said Allysha Lorber of Mead and Hunt. "We want to know if they're ones you as (residents) agree with. If there's ones we didn't think of, we want you to write for us. We're all here because we want to hear what you have to say. We'll be talking about your goals for the city as well."

With many of the posters highlighting housing statistics, transportation conditions, demographics,and land use, the public pressed Lorber on questions focused on the expected population growth and the costly infrastructure needed to accommodate that.

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According to Lorber, the comprehensive plan is something each municipality in Maryland is required to update every 10 years to address future growth and planned development. The process started in Fall 2023 with basic information gathering on the city itself, Winter 2023 being the time for the plan's first open house, Spring 2024 as the time to draft land use scenarios, Summer 2024 for developing planning recommendations, and Fall 2024 for the preparation of a final draft to be approved by the city of Salisbury.

According to U.S. Census Bureau Data, Salisbury represents the fastest growing region in Maryland.

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While it was highlighted that it was the county seat and that many of the projects have gone into public recreation through parks and walkability in the downtown area, a staggering 26% of the population is living in economic poverty.

"(Salisbury) has patchy municipal boundary that confuses growth and service areas, older housing stock with more costly needs for maintenance and repairs, lack of affordable housing, and areas prone to nuisance flooding," the report presented in November 2023 stipulated.

Despite such challenges, Mead and Hunt added infill opportunities exist if they are redeveloped. That comes at the expense of changing zoning ordinance to provide more flexibility for new developments. Infrastructure costs could be offset with historic levels of federal funding for developments, the company noted.

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"This (overview) didn't include a parking plan or any information regarding special events coming to the city," said Holly Worthington, a real estate agent in Salisbury. "I feel they need to look at the flooding issue they have downtown. That need to happen before bringing in development. They need to look at environmental concerns similar to that and work with organizations like the Army Corps of Engineers to address that."

Worthington noted while much attention has been placed on downtown development, little has been put on similar concerns in the surrounding areas.

Other residents like Lynne Pollitt Bratten took issue with the survey itself, posting on the city's Facebook page that "the survey will not allow for extensive input. It is limiting and the questions are biased and leading."

Mayor Randy Taylor, for his part, reassured residents that this is still early in the process.

"This is the first public meeting on the topic, so it's going to be a process we're going to complete. We need to hear from residents to see where people come down on these ideas and plan from there. We're going to need more of these kinds of meeting in a different format to get a handle on much of these problems," said Taylor.

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This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: Salisbury Comprehensive Plan plotting future gets first public input