Planning board hears Imagine Pender update; public engagement showed strong support for conservation, agriculture

Good evening, Planning Board members. Leanne King, director at Clear and Associates, briefed the Pender County Planning Board on the Imagine Pender comprehensive plan update and the results of the plan’s second community engagement window.

King said the update is moving from Phase 4 to Phase 5 (plan adoption) after a public review draft and engagement period. “This final community engagement window I’m presenting tonight, really kind of completes the work of Phase 4, so that we can begin starting to have discussions about a public hearing draft of the plan,” King said.

Why it matters: the comprehensive land use plan sets long-term guidance for growth, conservation, infrastructure and service priorities countywide. The planning staff and consultant said the input gathered will shape the public hearing draft and the county’s recommendations to the Board of Commissioners.

What the board heard

King summarized outreach targeted from late spring through early summer: one online survey (April 28–June 6) and five in-person meetings across the county (Hampstead Annex Auditorium; Heide Trask High School cafeteria; Penderly Auditorium; Moores Creek Missionary Baptist Church; and the Board of Commissioners chambers in Burgaw). The consultant reported 271 survey responses and about 128 in-person attendees for that second window; cumulatively across the process the project has recorded more than 1,600 survey responses and over 300 in-person attendees—both higher than the prior 2018 Pender 2 update, the presentation said.

King said the engagement asked respondents about three vision themes in the draft plan: coordinating growth/preservation/infrastructure, supporting Pender County’s fiscal health and maintaining a high quality of life. "The vast majority of folks that participated had, you know, supported it or strongly supported it," King said of the vision statements. Reported support: roughly 70–80% for most vision themes, with about 10–17% neutral or not supportive depending on the theme.

Participants ranked priorities within the plan’s goals. The top priorities identified were sustainable and managed growth and supporting agricultural and working lands; environmental conservation and resilience and expanded economic opportunities were also highly ranked.

Feedback on the Future Land Use Map (FLUM) was more mixed. About 45% of respondents said they supported the FLUM guidance, roughly 29% were neutral and about 26% did not support it to some degree. King told the board that the map will be revised to reflect public comments, Steering Committee feedback and planning board input before a formal public hearing draft is presented.

Common themes from written comments included support for farmland and open-space protection, protection of flood-prone and ecologically sensitive areas, requests for more parks and recreational access, and concerns about stormwater/flooding and traffic as development occurs—particularly near Hampstead and NC 17. Several board members and staff asked how representative the outreach was; King and the consultant said exit-question responses showed demographic representation generally close to 2023 Census distributions in several age and race/ethnicity cohorts, and that about 53% of exit-question respondents were new to the process.

Coordination and next steps

King said the project team has been coordinating an early draft with the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management and expects to bring a public hearing draft and a summary of changes to the planning board at a future meeting; staff also planned to brief the Board of Commissioners on July 14. "We will be finalizing the report and posting that to the project website here shortly," King said. After the planning board sees the public hearing draft, the board will be asked to endorse it for the commissioners and the CAMA (Coastal Area Management Act) certification process will be incorporated as required.

Ending

The planning board asked procedural questions about how revisions will be tracked; King said the public hearing draft will include a tracked summary of changes from the public review draft. The board did not vote on adoption at this meeting; the public hearing draft and a request for endorsement will be scheduled for a later meeting and for hearings before the Board of Commissioners.