Planning board recommends the 2025–2035 comprehensive plan to council with minor edits

The Planning and Zoning Board voted on Jan. 28 to recommend the City Council adopt the draft Valley Center Comprehensive Plan covering 2025–2035, with a set of clarifying edits requested by board members and staff.

Foster Design Associates, the consultant team, presented the plan and highlighted key elements including a 10-year horizon, goals for downtown revitalization, housing variety, transportation, parks, and utilities. The plan draws on a public survey and steering committee input. Consultant and staff emphasized the plan’s role in guiding future zoning, subdivision design and capital investments.

Board members proposed several clarifying edits before forwarding the plan: add an explanatory note (asterisk or footnote) to an employment table that showed zero for active-duty military in the census-derived dataset (to explain that reserves and part-time service are not counted in that field), include larger, downloadable/full-size maps or appendices for existing- and future-land-use maps so readers can zoom and review the full mapping set, correct a map area so the southeast corner of the planning-area map is included, list both downtown banks in the downtown description, and remove typographic emphasis such as exclamation points in the text. The board’s motion instructed staff and the consultant to prepare a final resolution forwarding the plan to City Council with those changes; the board approved the motion by voice vote.

The board recommended the plan by resolution and directed staff to include full-scale maps as appendices or downloadable PDFs and to track the specific textual edits cited by members. The recommendation goes to City Council for consideration as an adopting ordinance/resolution.