Maricopa County outlines public feedback and timeline for comprehensive plan update

Adam Cannon, planning and development staff for Maricopa County, told the Planning and Zoning Commission that the county has completed two rounds of public participation for its comprehensive-plan update and expects a draft plan by late summer or early fall.

Cannon said the update is state mandated once every 10 years and that the county’s plan was last adopted in 2016. “We were last here in January to update the commission on the comprehensive plan. So we came to update you on round 1 of our public participation. We're here today to give you an update on how that's going because we just held round 2 of our public participation,” he said.

The presentation summarized outreach methods—including five in-person meetings in each supervisor district plus a “grand” virtual meeting for each round—and online tools: a community survey, an idea wall and a virtual mapping tool. Cannon said the county held in-person meetings in Chandler, a Mesa-area unincorporated community, Anthem, Sun City and Levine and ran a virtual meeting for each outreach round.

Survey demographics and responses were shown to the commission. Cannon reported that 80% of respondents said they live in Maricopa County, about 65% said they own property in the county and 37% said they work in the county. On how long respondents had lived in unincorporated Maricopa County, the largest group reported living there more than 20 years. Cannon said the survey allowed multiple answers for some questions, producing totals over 100%.

Respondents ranked water availability as the single most important issue; Cannon said every respondent marked water as important. Protecting the natural environment and open-space amenities — notably trails — also scored highly; Cannon said trails were mentioned 35 times in verbatim comments the county counted. Other high-priority topics in the survey included housing affordability, fire and rescue services, and transportation-network improvements.

On housing concerns, staff said about half of respondents felt the county’s housing stock meets buyers’ needs, while the other half did not. Specific housing challenges cited included the availability of affordable single-family starter homes (75% of respondents cited this), concerns about density and demand for more “middle housing” options such as townhomes and duplexes.

Cannon summarized three broad themes the outreach produced: prosperity (managing growth to maintain character and prosperity), stewardship (protecting natural spaces and water resources) and opportunity (local affordable housing options and employment). He encouraged commissioners to take the online survey at framework2040.com and said the round-2 materials and results will remain open through late summer or early fall until the draft plan is produced.

Commissioners asked about demographic representation in the responses; staff said the results skew older — which they said both reflects participation patterns and the county’s unincorporated population — but that they are seeing responses from people ages 35–55 and have made targeted outreach to businesses and other local stakeholders to broaden participation.

Cannon closed by asking for commissioner questions and feedback on outreach and policy direction as staff prepares the draft plan.