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Comprehensive Plan Receives Mixed Reviews

VERMILLION- The Silver Region Comprehensive Plan was unveiled by County Administrators late Tuesday, in front of a large crowd at the County Courthouse.

Though the Comprehensive Plan offers residents two concrete choices, residents and business leaders alike feel these choices really provide none at all.

Residents airing their concerns and critiques at the County Courthouse Tuesday night felt the two options did not reflect the average citizen, but rather pandered to special interests. "FuturePlan" largely supports a stance toward growth that would disperse new development throughout the region. Alternatively, "SmartPlan," favors a more eco-friendly position and limits growth to existing urban areas.

The existing plan was developed in the late 1970s, when the region pulled out of a long economic recession with a boom in the silver market. The boom brought tremendous growth and development into a region that was on the brink of becoming a loosely-connected series of ghost towns. As a result, government officials introduced a long-range plan that would aim to diversify the economic base and stimulate the local economy by enticing manufacturing and service sector industries to the region.

Though government officials tout the new Comprehensive Plan as offering a set of development guidelines tailored to the current growth context of Silver County, environmentalists and community activists see this plan as "business as usual."

Abigail Fisher, lead community organizer for Silver Area Network for the Environment (SANE), urges people to voice their opinions about the new Comprehensive Plan and challenge conventional approaches toward growth. She argues that the choice that voters will make soon will "seal the fate of Silver County for the foreseeable future."

Though admittedly fatalistic in her thinking, Fisher truly believes that this choice is a monumental one for the region. "Widespread and unchecked growth and development put forth by the so-called FuturePlan," she says, "will come at the irreconcilable cost of both the environment and the region's character and history."

Business leaders and developers, however, disagree.

One anonymous supporter of FuturePlan retorts, "These fanatic environmentalists say that the region will go to hell in a handbasket if we continue to grow, but I know for certain that the region surely will go downhill if we do not grow, stay competitive, and plan for our economic future."