A few months ago, we wrote an article that questioned the amount of influence developers have had in the creation of Suffolk’s 2045 Comprehensive Plan. We now know that they have extensive influence.
A recent update from the City regarding the 2045 Comprehensive Plan was published August 7, 2024, three weeks after the Planning Commission had already voted on it.
The new draft contained a change that the City explained in their email dated August 7, 2024:
Here is the a comparison of how the draft read when it went to Planning Commission on July 16th, and how it reads now:
A ‘number of property owners’ thought that this was so important that it had to be changed. This change relates to land development. These ‘property owners’ (developers), have so much sway that they were able to convince the Planning Department to change this AFTER the Planning Commission had already voted on it. Let that sink in.
Care4Suffolk, representing hundreds of citizens, expressed our shared concern about the missing Fiscal Impact Analysis (FIA), months before it went in front of the Planning Commission. The FIA was supposed to be completed before the draft was even written, and it would have helped us understand how this growth will impact our future tax burden. We had no influence; the Planning Department felt it wasn’t important to do, and the plan continued on. If we had been developers instead of teachers, social workers, farmers, etc., maybe we would have held more sway.