ALPENA — In order to update their comprehensive plans with the ideas and concerns of residents in mind, the City of Alpena, Alpena County, as well as Green, Ossineke and Wilson townships, have shared resources to have a survey created in which the results will be used to craft the next plan in each municipality.

Local governing bodies are required by the state to update master plans every five years. In the past, most of communities in the region did so independently. But, at the suggestion of the Northeast Michigan Council of Governments, leaders have decided to share costs and conduct the survey together.

Alpena City Planning Director Adam Poll said input from the public is critical. He said the more people take part in the survey, the better feel local government has for establishing goals in coming years.

“We want to know what the community wants,” Poll said. “What types of developments they want to see, what they think of our streets, parks, tourism, recreation or any number of things. It covers a lot of topics.”

Poll said the survey takes about 15 minutes to complete and is available on the city’s website and links to it should be found on social media. He said that, once the survey is done, the Alpena Planning Commission will begin reviewing the plan and will consider changes to it. Once the changes are made, the final draft will be done by NEMCOG and then approved by the Alpena Municipal Council, and each of the other municipalities.

There will also be several public hearings at which people can comment on the plan and correspondence can be sent in to local governing officials. Poll said partnering with the other governing units offers savings for the cost of the survey, but each municipality will pay NEMCOG for its individual plan update.

“We try to partner with our neighbors whenever possible and for this we just happened to be on the same schedule for the update, so it worked out,” Poll said. “It also allows us to reach out to more citizens to hear what they have to say.”

The City of Alpena will pay a little over $9,000 to NEMCOG to lead the project, collect data and craft the new plan before it is adopted.

Poll said the dates and times of the public hearings will be announced once they are scheduled and that the updated plan could be complete and adopted before winter is over.

The survey can be found online at surveymonkey.com/r/alpenasurvey2018.

Steve Schulwitz can be reached at sschulwitz@thealpenanews.com or 989-358-5689. Follow Steve on Twitter @ss_alpenanews.