Anniston officials say they will follow up on this latest comprehensive plan

May 12—Anniston city officials are about to begin the process of drafting a comprehensive plan for the city.

Their biggest obstacle may be the public's sense that the Model City makes lots of plans, with little follow-through.

"We've had so many things said but not many things done. That's on us," said City Councilwoman Ciara Smith at a planning event last week.

Smith was one of about 20 people who showed up at Longleaf Botanical Gardens last week for an initial meeting between the public and consultants from the Walker Collaborative, a Nashville-based company the city hired to create a comprehensive plan for the city.

A comprehensive plan is a document, usually created with input from local residents during town-hall-style meetings, that outlines a city's goals for the coming years. Such a plan can drive zoning decisions and other city plans.

State law requires that cities the size of Anniston and larger have such a plan, but city officials say Anniston hasn't gone through the full comprehensive planning process in a long time.

City economic development director Toby Bennington said Tuesday that public meetings on the plan are likely to begin in June.

Philip Walker, director of the Walker Collaborative, said his company is now working to create a survey of local residents, and later this year will host a five-day charette, an intensive planning session that will include members of the public.

Remember 'One City, One Vision'?

Anniston is not unfamiliar with that sort of process. Hundreds of people showed up to provide input for the One City, One Vision strategic plan released by the city in 2014. And residents of the city's west side are familiar with the West Anniston Master Plan, a plan that city, school and Anniston Housing Authority officials created to revitalize the neighborhoods that, during the segregation era, constituted Anniston's Black downtown.

At last week's planning meeting, Anniston resident Ethel Myles-Henderson pressed city officials on the fate of the West Anniston Master Plan. Would it be folded into the comprehensive plan, she asked, or would planners throw it away and start from scratch?

"I'm a little concerned that we start a plan, and then we start another plan. Where's the endgame?" she asked.

There were 51 goals outlined in the One City, One Vision plan in 2014, ranging from the massive (completion of the $156 million McClellan Veterans Memorial Parkway) to the seemingly mundane ("Develop a community cultural calendar").

Planners outlined 12 goals as top priorities. Some of those — creating more routes and signage for bicyclists and creating a strategic plan for downtown — are completed or underway.

The Parkway is complete, and the city last week opened an extension to Iron Mountain Road that connects the bypass to Alabama 21.

Anniston's school board plans to close Tenth Street Elementary School this year, arguably a step toward the plan's call to "become more efficient in the utilization of school facilities" for the city's declining number of students.

Other goals still linger. One City, One Vision calls for "an increase in entry-level pay for police officers" — a nod to the city's long-term difficulties in hanging on to the officers it hires. Chief Nick Bowles said he's not aware of any pay raise in recent years. The job now starts at about $17 per hour, Bowles said. He said recruiting is difficult everywhere.

"It's a national problem," Bowles said.

Delays for West Anniston Master Plan

The West Anniston Master Plan ran into a different set of problems. The 2014 plan was drafted largely as a blueprint for the 15th Street corridor and other parts of western Anniston, on the assumption that the Cooper Homes housing development was about to be demolished and replaced, and that Anniston Middle School would be moved to the old Cobb Elementary site. Neither of those things happened. Anniston's school board never approved the middle school move. Cooper Homes was demolished in 2018, but the discovery of industrial waste on the site has delayed rebuilding there. Even so, the city has arguably moved ahead with other aspects of the plan, such as street improvements for West 15th.

Walker, the planning consultant, said he has found it's often not easy to rate cities on their follow-through with past plans.

"Did they implement that plan? It's never a yes or no answer. It's always a matter of degrees," he said.

Even so, he said, cities do often complete more of their plans than residents realize.

"Joe Sixpack doesn't have the plan," he said. "He's not looking at it every day."

At last week's meeting, Walker said the comprehensive plan will include not just a list of goals but who's responsible for implementing them — with an eye toward revisiting the plan and assessing progress.

People in the audience asked how to hold those officials accountable for the plan, when policies change from council term to council term.

"That's a ballot-box issue," Mayor Jack Draper said.

Capitol & statewide reporter Tim Lockette: 256-294-4193. On Twitter @TLockette_Star.