By Belle Nelson

The time has come for Kyle to revisit, revise, and update the city’s comprehensive plan.

State laws mandate an update to a city’s comprehensive plan every five years. The city is currently in the process of preparing for these potential changes to the original legislation, which was last updated in 2010.

According to Kyle Community Development Director Howard Koontz, the city’s comprehensive plan is a legal document that “provides a direction rather than a destination.”

Much of the data that comprises the plan is strictly logistical. The data within the plan concerns what the different parts of the city, as far as infrastructure, can support.

This can range from information about sewage capacity, to the projected number of students within Hays CISD over next 20 years.

The city takes time to compile this information and then presents it to the public.  

The other part of a comprehensive plan is subjective information pulled from the community itself.

It will be up to the community to see what resources or limitations each area of the city has. Citizens will also make decisions about how the city will progress as far as development. 

The comprehensive plan is an opportunity for community members to voice where they want commercial or residential areas to be. In addition, the plan allows citizens to gauge how fast they want the community to grow.

The comprehensive plan is not a way of administering rules to the community. Instead, it’s a way citizens can make guidelines for themselves. The execution of updating Kyle’s current comprehensive plan will take some time, according to Koontz. He said the city is still collecting logistical data, and starting to assign tasks to city employees.  

After all of the data is collected, the city will hold two to six open meetings, depending on the depth of the plan. According to Koontz, Kyle citizens will be encouraged to participate in those discussions.  

After the city has a clear picture of what community wants to move forward, there will still be a period of orchestrating the actual document itself.