Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Strategic Planning topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Planning Next reports more than 1,000 participants in Gahanna strategic‑plan first round; Creekside, trails and connectivity top themes
Summary
Consultants from Planning Next told Gahanna City Council they met a goal to engage roughly 1,000 residents in the first round of the city's strategic plan process and summarized input highlighting Creekside, trails, walkability and preserving green space.
Planning Next reported to Gahanna City Council on March 3 that its first round of engagement for the city’s strategic plan drew more than 1,000 participants and produced recurring themes around Creekside redevelopment, trails and connectivity, high‑quality schools and preserving green space.
“Working with the steering committee, there is a citizen steering committee … we put forth a pretty lofty goal to engage a thousand people in this first round,” said Sarah Bongiorno, director with Planning Next. The consultant team said the first round included 86 small “meeting in a box” sessions, more than 400 online survey respondents producing more than 2,400 inputs, more than 1,200 unique inputs and over 900 mailed postcards.
Consultants said the most frequent positive comments were about people, community culture and parks, while future postcards emphasized a desire for a more vibrant, walkable Creekside with improved transit and connected trails. The presentation noted lower participation among residents aged 20–34 and slightly under‑representation of Black or African American and Hispanic/Latino respondents; planners said they will target those groups in round two, planned to include events in May and online promotion in April.
Planner Bailey Moreland described the three engagement activities used in the first phase — “love notes to Gahanna,” development‑comparisons that asked what made the city unique, and a “postcard from the future” exercise — and said the team is now converting public input into a draft plan framework to test with the steering committee and the public.
Council members asked clarifying questions about demographic charts and outreach. Councilmember McGregor asked for explanation of a specific bar on the Hispanic participation slide; planners demonstrated which set of bars showed census data versus participant data and said the city reached 3 percent participation by respondents identifying as Hispanic or Latino compared with a census benchmark of about 4 percent.
