PLAIN - Sauk County officials met Wednesday night to discuss the results of a community survey and preview a new Web site opened in the spirit of soliciting more comment about development in the county.
The Sauk County Comprehensive Planning Steering Committee met in Plain's Kraemer Library and Community Center to look through about 35 pages of comments — about 25 percent of the responses from an electronic survey sent to 303 select community members.
About 50 responses were also received online through a version of the survey on Sauk County's Web site.
Brian Simmert, a county planner, said he hoped more online responses would increase now that the Web site — www.saukplan.org — has been launched. Free billboard space around the county and about 500 posters will be used to spread word about the new site.
"This is the starting point," said Mark Steward, county planning and zoning director. "This will get us off and running to see where our county-wide leadership thinks we should be looking."
The Web site allows users to enter an online forum, register under a screen name, and comment about any number of major topics facing the county. New information about the county's comprehensive plan will be sent to the Web site continually.
The survey, created with the assistance of Sauk County's University of Wisconsin - Extension office, is a preliminary step until a more detailed survey is created. The survey asked three questions and allowed for an open-ended question.
"I particularly liked the part where people listed additional comments," committee member Carolyn
Members like Gene Robkin noted more specificity is needed in the comments received, and more personal responses need to be elicited from future surveys.
By the end of December, steering committee members are to pick from about 29 general topics common in the survey and online responses, in order to highlight 10 issues they could focus on specifically and define in a simple report.
Dave Tremble, a county planner, said the next step would then be to present these issues to the public online and in the form of meetings so a strategy on how to tackle those issues could be developed.
That was no easy task for the steering committee. For about an hour, members considered a list of topics, trying to fit them under pre-established values the committee has identified. The group then tried categorizing the 29 topics under more general topics.
All work on a comprehensive plan so far is a result of about 20 municipalities in Sauk County applying for a Comprehensive Planning Grant through the Wisconsin Department of Administration. In January 2003 a $288,000 grant was awarded, and work began on planning for the future of Sauk County development by 2010.
