Comprehensive plans are once in a decade projects that have residents of a community provide input in what they want their city or county to look like in the coming decade. When it comes to Tyrone, the town is approaching a part of the process in a unique fashion – they asked high school students to provide input on the town’s future.
Tyrone Mayor Eric Dial, Town Manager Kyle Hood and Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) representative Jared Lombard met with approximately 80 Sandy Creek High School students on March 19 to explore what the town can do to attract people in their 20s to have them return to Fayette County after their education is complete.
“We’re going through the comp plan process and we wanted to ask the young people what Tyrone and Fayette County should look like in the next 10 years so they will be more inclined to come back,” said Dial.
Dial said Tyrone adopted the most recent 10-year Comprehensive Plan eight years ago. That adoption came at the beginning of the Great Recession that had a significant impact of Tyrone and Fayette County.
Hood told students their input would serve as part of the public input process to develop the comp plan. He noted that changes in areas of metro Atlanta in recent years have witnessed the continued develop of areas such as Suwanee, Vinings and Serenbe.
As for including high school students in the process, Hood said such a move had not been done before. Including students in the process will “hopefully bring you back and we need to know what it will take to bring you back.”
Lombard during the hour-long meeting asked a number of questions to which the students keyed in a response.
One of those questions asked where students thought they would be living in 10 years. In their responses, 32 percent listed a regional city such as Atlanta or Dallas, 23 percent listed a smaller “quirky” city such as Austin or Denver, 15 percent said a large city such as New York or Los Angeles, 15 percent said the Atlanta suburbs, 3 percent said in “the country” and 11 percent said in another country.
Asked what would lead them to live in Tyrone 10 years from now, 12 percent said jobs, 12 percent said being close to friends and relatives, 2 percent said the Atlanta Braves, 14 percent said Tyrone would be the place they wanted to be after they leave work and 60 percent said moving back to Tyrone “is not going to happen.”
Responding to further examination of that question, students gave a variety of reasons such as the town’s lack of job diversity, an insufficient number of nice restaurants, limited recreational opportunities in the town, “we have a lot of jobs but no careers,” the lack of new buildings, the “town feels old,” the absence of young people and, as one students stated in a very polite manner and in regard to older residents, “let them have their town.”
Asked what type of living arrangement they would expect to have in 10 years, 29 percent said an apartment, 29 percent said a loft, 15 percent said a high-rise condo, 12 percent said a house, followed by a townhouse at 8 percent, a ranch at 5 percent and their parent’s basement at 2 percent.
Tyrone might be near the end of its state-required 10-year Comprehensive Plan, but changes in the local economy have led to a need to re-evaluate the plan and develop a new document.
Dial previously stated the belief that, with so many conditions changing locally since that time, the town is in need of an entirely new document. And unlike eight years ago, the new document will come at no cost due to recent changes in state law.
Tyrone held the first public meeting on Feb. 17 where residents had their say on a variety of issues they would like to see occur in the next 10 years. Once a second public meeting is completed, the top pressing issues and others identified will go back to stakeholders who will develop possible solutions to respond to the identified needs.
The Town Council will then take the proposed solutions to the public and ask if the solutions have public support. If supported, the council can adopt the plan which would be forwarded for review and final approval by ARC.
Current law requires that the various regional commissions, such as the ARC to which Fayette County belongs, provide comprehensive plans at no cost.
