Greenfield staff proposes online-first public engagement for comprehensive plan update

Mayor called a July 21 work session to review staff plans for updating Greenfield's comprehensive plan, and Brad, a city planner, outlined an online-first public engagement strategy. "It was about 9 years ago that we went through this process," Brad said, framing the update as a chance to test whether the city’s existing vision and guiding principles remain relevant.

Brad said the engagement approach pairs a short survey (the questionnaire asks participants for three strengths, three desired changes and three long-term challenges) with an interactive mapping tool that allows residents to mark assets, opportunities and proposed trails. He described the survey as intentionally concise to encourage participation and said staff will use AI-assisted tools to summarize open-ended responses. "What I would say is we put it out there for 2 months," Brad said, describing the planned engagement window.

Council members asked staff to preserve anonymity while collecting demographic filters and to consider how to reach underrepresented groups, including local businesses and households not on city sewer. Scott, the staff member coordinating follow-up work, told the council he will return with a more detailed schedule and recommended experts (engineer, attorney) if the council wants to pair the outreach with technical street- or zoning-work components. The presentation did not include any formal votes; staff expects to launch the outreach after minor refinements and council review.