AUBURN — A webpage promoting the city’s new Comprehensive Plan process features some creative ways of getting resident feedback.

One is the “ideas wall,” where someone can post a virtual sticky note with a thought or concern for the future. The most recent note, posted on May 24, states, “We voted out the mayor who went crazy with development. The crazy Washington (Street) and bike path ideas need to go. Read the room!”

The next note says a covered pavilion for outdoor concerts would be “transformative.”

The notes are a good reflection of the variety of feedback officials are likely to see as they conduct a two-year process to update the Comprehensive Plan, the long-term planning document that drives a city’s land use and policymaking direction for at least a decade, affecting often-sticky issues such as housing development and transportation.

A community survey that will be distilled into an overarching vision for Auburn is available through June 20, and those involved are trying to spread the word to get as much feedback as possible.

While it’s often not an easy task to get broad community attention and excitement on such an effort, Auburn’s unique position as a city with tremendous assets along with its recent political tug-of-war over development mean the new plan is receiving heightened scrutiny.

And, city staff and the committee behind the effort don’t want to shy away from differing opinions.

“It’s probably not a very good process if you go through the public engagement and everybody agrees on everything,” said Mayor Jeff Harmon. “That means you haven’t got a wide enough participation.”

‘SPARK DIALOGUE’

David Hediger, director of planning and code enforcement, recorded an episode of the city’s “Absolutely Auburn” podcast Thursday about the comprehensive planning effort as officials try to spread the word about the survey.

Last month, Hediger told the council the different ways in which residents will be able to give feedback beyond the survey, including an interactive map where the public can submit locations that have “challenges or strengths.” In the future, there will be land use maps open for comments, where specific concerns regarding uses can be recorded.

At the time, he told the council that the “whole point” of engaging the public “is to spark dialogue, feedback, ideas.”

“If this process isn’t controversial and doesn’t get their attention, we’re probably doing something wrong,” he said.

This week, Hediger said he didn’t mean the city is looking to create controversy, but that right now is the opportunity for residents to weigh in on topics that can often become controversial in the future once specific projects or zoning changes are made.

“Changes are supposed to be based on the vision established through the (comprehensive) plan,” he said, and the goal now is to “stimulate thought and conversation on a community level.”

Harmon said one of the major focuses of doing a comprehensive plan review is “to engage people in the community and get opinions, and there’s always going to be divergent opinions.”

“Not everyone is going to agree, but it’s important to hear from residents and businesses what their vision is for Auburn so the committee can synthesize that down,” he said.

Current and former elected officials, however, have also disagreed on the reasons for moving forward with a new plan, and whether the plan needs a full rewrite at all.

‘RIGHTING THE WRONGS’

The process to get to this point has shown some lingering conflict between the direction of the new council and previous one, which under Mayor Jason Levesque had shepherded in ambitious and sometimes contentious zoning changes stemming from 2021 updates made to specific chapters of the comprehensive plan.

Among those who were critical of the 2021 updates and the process used to arrive at them, were Harmon and John Cleveland, who as chair of the Comprehensive Plan Committee is now leading the city’s process to create a new long-term vision.

The 2021 updates included land use and zoning recommendations to increase housing in Auburn at a time when officials were looking for solutions to skyrocketing housing costs. When the council began to move forward with broad zoning changes, Harmon and Cleveland were part of a galvanized group of residents who criticized the proposals and the process used to implement them.

Harmon then led a successful campaign for mayor on a promise to change the trajectory of the council, including the way it handled its push for housing growth.

When reached this week, Levesque said he’s fearful that the new plan will simply wipe away the work that was done around zoning because his name was attached to it. Levesque previously said that Harmon campaigned on “righting the wrongs” of the previous council’s tenure, and he believes the new comprehensive plan is part of that.

He called the new comprehensive plan process “politically driven” and said those leading the effort are “using it as an excuse to promote an anti-growth agenda.”

The council initially delayed appointments to the committee in October following concerns from Councilor Steve Milks over its membership.

Harmon said the new process is not designed to reverse the work of the previous council.

“There’s been no discussion about this process being focused on reversing or confirming things the prior council did,” he said. “Everybody has their opinion. As with most things, not everybody agrees on how public process is undertaken.”

Harmon also defended the committee appointments, stating that it’s a “broad-based” group from across the community who are taking the work seriously.

“They’re not spending any time or conversation on what’s happened in the past, good or bad,” he said.

Cleveland said the committee features people who worked on both the 2010 plan and 2021 updates, and has members from diverse backgrounds who have differing opinions.

“None of us have all the answers, and we learn by listening to others,” he said. “There’s no intention here to somehow do something radically different than we’ve done in the past, the idea is just to do good planning.”

‘A BAD ASSUMPTION’

Rather than embarking on a complete rewrite of the 2010 plan, the council in 2021 opted to pursue updates to three sections: recreation and open space, transportation and future land use and zoning.

Levesque said that at the time, the council was under the impression that the chapter updates, once approved, would serve as the city’s new plan for the next decade, taking Auburn through to about 2030.

However, according to the city and those involved in the new plan, the updates did not allow for a new “clock” to begin on a full rewrite, which means Auburn is now 13 years into its run with the 2010 plan that was implemented in 2012. The state strongly recommends municipalities update comprehensive plans every 10-15 years.

“The 2021 updates were very targeted, limited in public input, and did not include new inventory information that the state required for them to make a new finding of consistency,” the city’s website states.

Harmon said the state “has been clear” that the chapter updates were not enough to be considered a full review, calling the previous council’s interpretation “a bad assumption.”

Harmon said the public process used to arrive at the 2021 updates, which took place a year after the COVID-19 pandemic, was “much different” than what’s required for a full review, which features much more robust community engagement.

Hediger said that while he was not in Auburn at the time, his understanding is that the city hoped the update would be viewed by the state as a new plan with a new expiration date, “but the council decided not to wait for a full rewrite due to rapidly changing housing and transportation needs.”

He said a full rewrite would have delayed progress by at least a year or two, requiring new budgeting and a renewed inventory and analysis. He agrees that the updates in 2021 were needed “given the changes that were happening” in housing, but said the other sections of the plan are now more than a decade old.

Some of the subjects that were targeted in 2021 will be discussed again, he said, including Auburn’s vast agricultural zone and the age-old debate over how to balance the need for more housing with farming, recreation and conservation.

“We’re not looking to undo what was done four years ago, but there is more data out there, and it can be a more holistic view from across the community.”

‘READY TO DO THE WORK’

Cleveland said he was “honored and humbled” to be asked to chair the committee, but believes he’s qualified due to his years as a councilor and mayor in Auburn and years of work as a private consultant on comprehensive planning.

He agrees that the entirety of the 2010 plan is now dated.

“If we’re going to have good planning, we need to look at what’s happening now,” he said, adding that the 2021 chapters “will be well-considered moving forward.”

In the meantime, Cleveland said he’s focused on getting the word out about the survey and other ways residents can get involved.

He said the city has received roughly 300 survey responses so far, and that an outreach effort to Auburn Middle School and Edward Little High School students resulted in more than 500 responses.

He said they “made a particular effort” to reach out to young people, “because hopefully many of them will live their lives here, and we want to see what they want in their community that makes it special to them.”

Cleveland said the committee is shooting for a July 2026 timeline for getting the full plan to the City Council. Before that, it requires a Planning Board review. The council budgeted $220,000 for the plan, including the cost of hiring consultant Berry Dunn.

Dana Staples, a former councilor and current vice chair of the Comprehensive Plan Committee, also chaired the 2021 effort to update the plan.

Staples was the first person to comment on the “ideas wall,” which he admitted was mostly a test to make sure the feature worked. But his comment is something he talked about often as a councilor.

“Enhance zoning to allow for missing middle housing,” the post says.

“That work is going to be the most important piece of the (comprehensive) plan,” he said this week. “There’s probably some differing opinions on how to accomplish that, but I think you put a lot of people in a room and come up with a solution. I’m optimistic, and ready to do the work.”

Because Staples has worked on both recent efforts, he’s one of the only bridges between them. When asked about some of the political implications of the process, he said, “If people want to get together and do good work, I want to work with them.”

“If that’s Jason, great. If that’s Jeff, great,” he said. “I don’t want to spend a lot of time having political fights.”

Staples said he’s hoping the committee can soon begin having “substantive conversations about issues” once the survey results are in, and in the meantime, he’s trying to convince more people why they should care about the Comprehensive Plan in the first place.

“When I first started paying attention to politics, I kept hearing people point to the ‘Comp Plan’ in referencing decisions,” he said. “It’s just an important document. I don’t know how to drive that point home.”