Comprehensive planning in Pike and Wayne counties

By TOM KANE

MILFORD & HONESDALE, PA — Pike and Wayne Counties are at different stages of developing a comprehensive plans for the county.

Pike’s comprehensive plan is moving out of committee and ready for “requests for proposals” (RFP) which will be sent out to planning consultants by the end of the year, according to Director of Planning Michael Mrozinski.

“We need to update the old plan since so much growth has happened in the county,” Mrozinski said.

Once a consultant has been selected, the completion of the plan should take about 18 months, he said.

The county received a grant of $50,000 from the state, which it will match to pay for the plan.

“The plan, when finished, will make recommendations for the future growth of the county in a whole range of civic and municipal areas like the needs of youths, the needs of businesses, improvements to our infrastructure, what facilities and services will be needed for our people—in other words, what’s going to be needed to improve the growth and health of the county,” Mrozinski said.

In Wayne, the planning department has begun a preliminary survey of land use in the county, according to Ed Coar, Director of Wayne County Planning Department.

“We’re concentrating first on agriculture land use,” Coar said. “We need to see how much farms have changed. We’ll then move on to land use in general. The information we get would be used in a comprehensive plan.”

“It’s an important project that has to be done every ten years, like the census,” said Wayne Commissioner Mark Graziadio. “The state wants to know and we want to know.”

Graziadio said that it was important for the municipalities to do a comprehensive plan as well as the county.