Gilmer County’s five-year Joint Comprehensive Plan update has received final approval from commissioners.
“The big thing that it means is we can be a qualifying county,” said Gilmer County Chair Charlie Paris. “You don’t want to be an unqualified county.”
Having a plan opens up grants and various funding sources for the county. One of the most important ones for the county is the Community Development Block Grant which is mainly used for water and sewer projects, Paris said.
Every five years, the county chooses a stakeholder committee which puts together a plan for the county.
The stakeholder committee is aided by representatives of the Northwest Georgia Regional Commission.
Laurel Johnson chaired the committee for the county this go-around.
“I think it’s a good plan. We received a lot of information. Our goal was to give a plan to the local governments that was flexible to enable them to read the contingencies we have identified, as well as things that may pop-up in the future,” said Johnson in a previous interview. “It was almost like a college seminar on Gilmer County. We looked at geological, geographic, demographic and economic data for the county. In the plan, there’s a lot of proposals in regard to housing, transportation and water quality and various projects the local governments provided.”
The plan is part road map, part wish list for the community with some priorities coming from surveys.
Gilmer County received a lot of feedback via the surveys.
“We were very proud that we got such good public involvement with the survey. Gilmer County holds the record for number one and number two for most survey results,” Johnson said.
Amendments can be made to the plan as unforeseen events come about.
“It’s really the local residents coming together to have input on what direction we want to see with the county over the next five years,” Johnson said. “Our hope is it will be a useful document for cooperative action by the local governments and for setting their strategic plans for the future.”