The Owensboro Metropolitan Planning Commission is implementing minor changes to its comprehensive plan for the community, which will be in place for the next 5 years.
Melissa Evans, OMPC Associate Director, said state law requires the organization to update their comprehensive plan every 5 years. She said most changes apply to the goals and objectives of the commission.
Some changes being implemented were requested by the Daviess County Fiscal Court to encourage more development in the rural areas of the county.
The plan reads that the OMPC aims to “protect our rural areas from intrusion by incompatible urban activities by encouraging growth in the Urban Service Area and Rural Communities.”
Evans said the hope is to accomplish that effort by minimizing the impact on fragile lands such as flood plains and prime agricultural areas, and encouraging agricultural development such as ancillary and complementary industries on agricultural lands.
Aside from the rural updates, Evans said many changes being made address the tone of the wording in the plan.
“There was a kind of overall theme of creating a more positive wording in the document. So changing some words from ‘restrict things’ to ‘encourage them’ and reordering some numbers to create a more positive tone just overall in the document,” Evans said.
The plan was approved unanimously by the City Commission. It has already been passed by the City of Whitesville and Daviess County Fiscal Court.
