By Megan Kelley
Editor
mkelley@mihomepaper.com
INDEPENDENCE TWP. — At its meeting on April 15, the Independence Township Board of Trustees officially adopted its new Opportunities 2035 Master Plan. The board voted 6-0 to adopt the plan. Treasurer Paul Brown was absent from the meeting.
Planning and Zoning Director Brian Oppmann provided some background on the project, which has taken several years and been overseen by multiple supervisors for the township.
“This provides the general statement of the township’s goals and objectives and a long range vision to define basically the future character and of the community. It helps the planning commission work with long range and short range decision making on rezoning and also the township board and other deliberations that they may have. It lays out priorities for future ordinance amendments or goals and objectives that we need to reach,” Oppmann said.
Last September, the board gave the green light for distribution of the plan to jurisdictions throughout Oakland County, which then had 63 days to submit any written comments regarding the plan to the township.
According to Oppmann, the township did receive comments back from Oakland County as well as some other subcommittees including the Safety Path committee, the planning commission, Parks and Recreation and the Open Space Committee.
“We basically did everything that people had given us comment on,” Oppmann said. “So, we made an extensive amount of changes to this over the course of the last year or so.”
Some plan highlights include an increase in office service designations with potential residential components, but ultimately, the plan is mostly a modernization of previous plans, Oppmann said.
This is just a modernization of previous plans, you know, our master planning has been very consistent in our sewer and water district, kind of serving as that growth boundary,” said Oppmann. “I think that this plan continues that trend where we’re trying to keep growth at the south end, basically south of Clarkston Road. That’s where we have utilities and ability to grow as a community, but the north end will still remain rural.”
The township is required to look into its master plan every five years to give consistent updates when necessary, this essential overhaul is one the township hopes can serve the community for a far more extensive period of time.
“I’d like to think that this is one of our last master plans that actually has any significant change to it because we’ve really been dialing it in so much as we’ve been going so that’s a good thing,” said Trustee Sam Moraco.
The full Opportunities 2035 Master Plan is available online at www.indtwp.com under the Government tab.