tonight is an introductory meeting to let the community know what's going on what we've been doing so far and what you might expect in the next few months so are we ready great thank you by way of introduction we have several people from our consulting team here when we break up after my comments we have displays around the room and we'll have various people expert in each of those areas to help answer questions or take your comments as we go to my left brad strator from lsl his specialty is transportation howard cone from the chesapeake group who's our market analyst craig gassman from mksk consultants in ohio he's our urban designer we have other people on the team who are not with us tonight and we have a number of townships oh i'm sorry kathleen duffy over there also from lsl and a number of staff people mike silvestri the township manager back here and zuk the township planning director and grant sharing also from the township planning staff and we have many steering committee members here okay great if you could just raise your hands and i'll explain the role of those folks in a minute but thank you for coming tonight so these are the people who really formed the core team working on this project the purpose of tonight's meeting as i said is to introduce you to the planning project to provide some background information we've been working now for roughly three months we started sometime in june and the initial phase of the project is just to collect information because we're all from outside the area we need to get to know this community well we've toured the community we've interviewed people we've done a number of things and what you'll see tonight essentially is the partial results of all those efforts we also want input from you regarding the challenges and the opportunities facing peters township the bottom line is this is your community not mine we don't want the comprehensive plan to be the consultant's plan it really needs to be your plan and so i'll explain a little more in a couple minutes but this is by no means the last opportunity you'll have to see what's going on and be involved but we wanted to do something very early on in the process to get you to participate and the last item there is to contemplate the desired vision the comprehensive plan really is a blueprint or a vision for the future what you want your community to be and it may be the community that it is today or maybe something different or maybe something that is essentially what we have but we want to improve in this area or that area or change this or that so we really need to pick your brain get your thoughts on what the ideal preferred community of peters township should be in the next ten twenty years so why are we doing a plan well number one it really is a blueprint for the future it is a policy guide it's a management tool it's something that we know that the township administration council planning commission use regularly to guide decisions on how to spend money where development should go what roads to improve and so on a means of identifying capital improvements roads drainage sidewalks pathways parks guides zoning decisions any zoning requests that comes into the township for new development is gonna be viewed in light of what the township comprehensive plan says what should the area be used for what kind of land use what kind of density what should it look like things like that are all in the comprehensive plan and last and probably least frankly is the fact that pennsylvania law requires that every ten years the township update the plan that's a stick to make sure it's done but it's certainly not the best reason for doing it and i suspect from what we know about peters township already the plan would be updated whether it was a requirement or not the last plan was done in two thousand and one much has been accomplished since then road improvements the community center park improvements some budgeting procedures lot of zoning amendments to the zoning regulations so much has been done since that plan was prepared so now it's time to take a fresh look at the community and figure out what the next work plan needs to look like in that plan and in the process of preparing that plan there were a number of issues identified by the community in meetings like this and in surveys and i've just put up a list of the major issues which interestingly enough is not all that different from many of the issues that you'll see here tonight that we've heard in the public involvement process that we've already undertaken so one of the things we're going to ask you is if you disagree with any of these things think they're no longer issues or think there's still issues and still important we want to know those things and certainly if there are other issues or challenges that weren't identified back in two thousand and one we need to know that as well the new plan will look at how the township has changed since two thousand and one certainly there's been a lot of growth a lot of new housing development a number of other changes that have occurred and so we want to take a look back and see what the community looked like ten eleven years ago compared to what it looks like now and analyze those patterns and those trends so little bit about our work plan what we intend to do and how we're going to get there there are several key elements to what we're doing one is a market study that is underway as we speak and howard is here if you have questions about that we wanna make sure that the recommendations that come out of this plan are realistic recommendations it's one thing to dream and to say oh wouldn't it be nice if we did this or had that but we want to look at market realities and make sure that the recommendations have some foundation in practicality or reality we're also gonna do some scenario building and that's going to happen before the end of the year where we gonna look at different growth and development options and evaluate what the implications are of those different options one certainly will be based on current zoning and current development patterns what are the impacts traffic impact on schools fiscal impact services required loss of open space things of that nature and then we'll define some other options with different characteristics and evaluate those as well just to get a sense of what really works and what's in the best interest of this community we're also gonna look at some very specific what we call character areas the comprehensive plan is sort of a bird'seye view of the township if you look at some of the maps over there we're looking township wide we're looking at existing land use we'll be looking at future land use but we want to get down to a street level if you will and identify areas that probably need some more detailed study we've talked about some of those like possibly the town center possibly picking a segment of route nineteen and maybe some others to come up with specific ideas about what might be done to improve conditions to make it more vibrant whatever the issues might be so that'll be a part of the plan as well then obviously a draft plan will be coming out we'll be providing information through the township website and other sources that i'll talk about in a minute so that you who are interested can keep track of what's going on and have information available to you as it's developed and then the last and certainly not the least is public engagement process this being part of that and i'm gonna talk about that in a little more detail in a minute the plan is to have the project finished next august fourteen month timeframe and we want the plan to be an action plan not just pretty pictures and nice maps but a real blueprint for what steps need to be taken to fulfill the plan and realize the vision that we've developed so in terms of engaging the public we doing a lot of things one is what we call targeted participation and we've already pretty much completed that part of it where we've done a number of oneonone interviews with key people in the community howard's done a number of interviews with local business people we've talked to a large property owners business owners citizens public officials county officials and also we've done a number of focus groups or small group discussions with a variety of groups again to pick their brains to get their insights about what's going on in the community what they like what they don't like what they'd like in the future and then community wide participation some of you here may have already participated in the resident survey that we did last month i think we closed it out about two weeks ago three weeks ago we had eight hundred and twenty households in the township participate in that survey which we were very impressed with that survey was available online i think it was available at the library and several other sources so that was one mechanism we used to get input from the community we've also established a project website some of you may have seen that and that's a good source of information to go to to keep up to date on what's going on with the project upcoming meetings draft materials that we're putting out open houses and workshops tonight being the first of those we'll also be doing an educational series where the township will be bringing in a number of guest speakers to talk about land use issues growth issues futurists to look at trends nationally just to help people understand what factors may be influencing this community and others what trends are going on across the country and then social media we've got a facebook page where we also provide information on the project and then we have the direct representation i mentioned the steering committee the planning commission and town council will be very actively involved in the project as we move forward so there are a lot of different levels and different activities within each level where we wanna give people a variety of means of being involved in the project just a few quick facts and you'll find others as well as these on some of the boards but the township was three thousand people in one thousand nine hundred and fifty and as of the two thousand and ten census it's twenty one thousand two hundred and thirteen so you can see by the graph there's been substantial growth every decade since one thousand nine hundred and fifty the age profile is very interesting because typically when we look at an age profile in communities we see more or less of a bell curve where the middle age groups are the most prevalent and here we have a spike in the age group basically eighteen and under and we have a spike in the age group of forty and above but those middle age groups are relatively underrepresented in peters township income when we look at comparable communities or comparable areas washington county southwest pennsylvania the state of pennsylvania and the country as a whole the median income is right around fifty thousand a year in peters township we double that amount so clearly this is an affluent community highly educated the number or percentage of people with college degrees or graduate degrees is substantially higher than what it is for those comparable areas that we've looked at so just some interesting facts and like i said there'll be some others on the boards so some things we've heard so far in all of the meetings we've conducted in the surveys we've done and so on as i said in the market survey we had eight hundred and twenty survey responses one thing we found is a likely need for offices in the township something that's probably not a great surprise to anyone there are a few employment opportunities in peters township and most of the businesses on the west end of the township state route nineteen and that has come up in a number of the groups we've talked to as a concern because of traffic and distance of route nineteen from where a lot of the people in the community live mobility often called transportation but we wanna start looking at transportation as more than moving cars and trucks making the community more walkable more bikeable looking at transit needs dealing with vehicular congestion two areas that are obvious are east mcmurray and state route nineteen and then some of the concepts that we'll be looking at complete streets access management and great streets and again the concept of making streets more than just a means of moving traffic housing some of the issues we've heard so far we need more housing to meet the growing population we have limited options for housing for the aging population people who wanna stay in peters township but wanna move out of a single family home or a large home and don't really have a lot of options to do that the high cost of housing and excessive lot sizes some people just think that the halfacre minimum lot size is probably not something that should be throughout the community you can see on the chart there we've done some rough projections and based on low population projections we'd need to add about a one hundred housing units per year and on the high end about one hundred and fifty housing units per year so there's a lot of potential demand the character of the community one area that's almost always mentioned is route nineteen as being less than the kind of character that is representative of peters township a lack of a sense of community you know we live here we've got twenty thousand plus people living here but there's a feeling that we really don't feel like a community or don't identify as a peters township community the identity of the town center we've actually had some people say well where is the town center for those of you that may fall into that category it's east mcmurray and valley brook road sameness that's been a comment we've heard that the community doesn't have a lot of diversity it's pretty much cookie cutter kind of look and usable open space we've got a number of developments that have open space in them but they're a little pieces here little pieces there and it's not really usable open space it's not open space that has a visual impact it makes the development better so there's been some comment about that as well then quality of life for certainly when we ask why did you move to peters township or why do you stay in peters township the number one and number two reasons are great schools and low taxes but then on the flip side we've heard there's a lack of activity for teenagers in the community there's some concern about that but again on the plus side we've got a great community center so tonight as i said we're here to listen to you to get your thoughts we invite you to look at the displays talk to the people we have comment cards at a number of the displays we'd like you to fill those out and the concept here is to make this an informal interactive but important meeting and so with that we will ask you to disperse and talk to us individually if you have questions thank you