Outstanding Plan

Winner: Marshfield Community Growth Plan

The Marshfield Community Growth Plan advances the art of planning through a series of Visoncasting exercises. The first focused on identifying alternatives for a new interchange on I-44. Rather than leading citizens through a pre-established set of questions, Visioncasting encouraged citizens to succinctly express their thoughts and concerns in 8 distinct topic areas. The responses were then collated into major categories that helped community leaders to formulate goals and objectives based on the needs and desires of property owners, businesses, and residents in the vicinity of the new interchange.

Visioncasting was so effective in identifying these goals and objectives, city leadership wanted to utilize an expanded version of this process for the Marshfield Growth Plan covering several more distinct topic areas with perspectives from a wider array of Marshfield citizens.

The Marshfield Community Growth Plan advances the science of planning through effective infrastructure planning in key drainage areas. The extension of sanitary sewer utilities often represent one of the most important, yet costly, expenditures for a municipal government. Due to these costs, effective planning for the placement of these facilities where long-term growth is most likely to occur is critical. Planning for sanitary sewer in Marshfield is especially challenging as the city is located n five separate drainage basins that converge at Webster County’s highest elevation. While this can be partially advantageous in building gravity-assisted sanitary sewer systems, the drawback is that numerous and costly lift stations ($250,000-$350,000 each) are often needed to pump wastewater to Marshfield’s treatment plant northeast of the city. To address this challenge, the Growth Plan provides policy makers with the available options that enable them to work toward providing sanitary sewer facilities in the areas where development will be cost-efficient, leads to the development that is sustainable, and enhances the quality of life for Marshfield’s current and future residents.

For many communities the biggest challenge in the comprehensive plan process is implementation. The Marshfield Community Growth Plan features an Implementation Plan matrix that identifies specific Action Items, targets anticipated completion date(s), and assigns a specific community partner responsible for completing the Action Item. In mid-2019, the City entered into an agreement with multiple community partners (RO Marshfield, the Marshfield Area Chamber of Commerce, the Marshfield Development League, and the Marshfield R-1 School District) to implement the Growth Plan Action Items. As part of this agreement, community partners will meet annually to assess whether an Action Item has been completed, determine whether course changes are needed over the coming year, and then reengage with the Growth Plan to achieve the next set of annual goals.

Runner up: NKC Bicycle Plan

The NKC Bicycle Master Plan, adopted on July 21, 2020, after a 2019 planning process, is a long-term guide for investments and actions by the City over the next twenty years. It provides high-level guidance to coordinate projects, programs, and initiatives that support safer streets, more inviting public spaces, and better access to NKC destinations for everyone to enjoy. 

The NKC Bicycle Master Plan is a great plan because it advances the science of planning – with a goal of serving everyone – the plan centers on level of traffic stress as the technical, objective criteria to determine how everyone can be served. Level of traffic stress brings together data about traffic speeds and volumes and quality of infrastructure to develop a recommended network that will be comfortable for everyone – then leverages that network to support other objective measurable goals around ridership and performance measures.

The NKC Bicycle Master Plan is a great plan because it advances the art of planning. While the planning process was about biking in NKC, it was foremost a celebration of the community and the elements that people love about it. Public engagement included temporary installation of bicycle lanes to help illustrate the plan’s recommendations.