Comprehensive plan tops discussion at Dixon council session

DIXON – City leaders attended a day-long retreat at Sauk Valley Community College on Tuesday, Oct. 10, to carve out a list of priorities and key goals.

Among the many priorities pitched by Mayor Glen Hughes and the City Council are updating the city’s comprehensive plan; analyzing the city’s housing stock, deciding how to grow it and incentivizing landlords to improve their rental properties; and directing funding toward arts and culture projects and events. Improvements to infrastructure including sidewalks, alleys and intersections also were discussed, as were funding streams to cover those costs.

At the top of the discussion, Hughes listed the city’s accomplishments and noted he wants to create a 20-year comprehensive plan, possibly bringing in a consultant to assist. Residential, commercial, industrial and recreational development; zoning regulations now in place; and whether annexation is needed are items the council should consider in its planning, he said.

He said the city has the people in place to do the groundwork and that a consultant could be hired and brought in later in the process to polish up the plan, tie the pieces together and look at feasiblities and timelines.

“I don’t think we need to bring the consultant in from Day 1,” he said.

But City Attorney Rob LeSage said the city should consider bringing a consultant on board at the beginning of the process to help city officials define where they want to go and how they want to get there.

“Respectfully, I would encourage the city of Dixon to have a consultant for the entirety of the process,” he said, adding that of the communities his firm represents and the cities where he is involved with economic development work, none have gone through the plan process without a consultant. “I think there are a lot of reasons why.”

“One of the key things that a consultant does is they have that experience of having gone through that process with many communities,” he said. “And for them to help guide the plan commission to make sure that they are having a well-rounded consideration of things that we haven’t even thought of. I think it’s really, really important.”

“You want to be able to use them to go down the various rabbit holes, you want to lean on their experience,” he said. “Just remember that planning document also has importance in the zoning process and the special-use process that we use.”

“You want to make sure that plan is done right,” he said.

Hughes said while he is not opposed to hiring a consultant, his initial thoughts were to look at the talent within the city and giving parameters to the Plan Commission to start the process.

“While we do have great people in this room, we don’t have lot of experience as a group with comprehensive plans,” LeSage responded. “Our comprehensive plan is very, very old and frankly it’s not a forward-looking document.”

City Manager Danny Langloss said city officials have a very clear vision on their quadrants and are executing that work. He agreed the amount of time it would take for city leaders to create a comprehensive plan on their own could be too much.

“As a staff, I don’t think there’s the bandwidth to do it,” he said.

Hughes agreed and said that hiring a consultant earlier in the process actually makes economic sense. Spending money to create a 20-year comprehensive plan would break down annually to a small investment with great worth, he said.

The council did not take action on the measure Tuesday.