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Citizens Oversight Group adopts final narratives for six master-plan elements
Summary
The Citizens Oversight Group reviewed and approved final narratives for six master-plan elements — environmental, planning, community services, transportation, open space & recreation, and economic development — completing the narrative phase and instructing staff to incorporate member edits and circulate a public survey for community input.
The Citizens Oversight Group voted to adopt final narratives for six elements of the city's master plan, concluding the group's review phase and directing staff to incorporate member edits into a final draft and a resident survey.
Planning Department staff described the economic development element as the sixth and final narrative, noting achievements over the last 10 years including an economic development guide, the creation of an economic-development manager position, enhanced online business resources and an inventory of vacant commercial land. Staff framed the town center as Wildwood's concentrated economic engine and emphasized business retention, infrastructure investments and targeted outreach as priorities.
"Our economic development engine is 2% of the overall size of the city of Wildwood," Planning Department staff said, explaining the town center's outsized role and why infrastructure investment there has been prioritized. Staff also flagged the need to monitor sales-tax changes at the state level, which fund roughly half of city operations.
Committee members offered edits and clarifications — for example, one member suggested including KPIs used by previous economic-development staff, another asked for a numeric acreage reference rather than "one-third," and a third suggested removing the phrase "in its opinion" from a sentence that assessed the approach's likely success. Staff agreed to incorporate the suggested wording and standardize formatting across elements.
Each element — environmental, planning, community services, transportation, open space & recreation, and economic development — was presented in turn, discussed briefly for wording and clarity, and approved (some by voice vote; others by motion and roll call where members requested it). The group approved edits to reflect concerns about town-center density, accessibility, trail connectivity, and inclusion of accessibility infrastructure in parks.
Staff said they will circulate a draft resident survey to committee members prior to the next meeting on July 15 and aimed to distribute the final survey to residents by late July.
Next steps: staff will fold the committee's edits into the final narrative drafts, produce a change-log of wording updates if requested, and present the resident survey for final action at the July 15 meeting.
