The city of Palmetto is on track to planning its future 20 to 30 years on down the line. Last week the city held the first of four public meetings put on by Matt Cherry, an associate with Urban Collage. The urban design company is handling the comprehensive plan of the city, which encompasses about 7,600 total acres.

According to Cherry, this comprehensive plan is a way for the city to anticipate the type of growth that will come to Palmetto and to help city officials make policies in order to make sure they respond to that growth responsibly and sustainably. In the past 10 years, the city has almost doubled in size and currently has about 62 percent of undeveloped land that will be an asset for future development and conservation.

Under the Department of Community Affairs of the State of Georgia, all cities must complete an updated comprehensive plan every five years in order to obtain qualified local government status. Cherry added that it is also necessary for cities that have annexed large areas of the city. Palmetto recently annexed a large portion of land in the northwest corner for a possible Foxhall Village project.

Work began on the comprehensive plan a little more than two months ago and Cherry said they have divided it into two sections: a community assessment and a community agenda. The assessment is not the actual plan, but more so a gathering of demographic and geographical information on the city to show what is there in Palmetto. The agenda, which will happen in the latter part of this year, will be the concrete plan that Urban Collage will submit to the Department of Community Affairs for review.

A major piece of the comprehensive plan is defining the character areas of Palmetto, a piece which the stakeholders of the city will have a major part in determining. Character areas are areas in town that have a specific development theme. Cherry mentioned his company has already outlined five character areas, but that can change due to citizen input. The five tentatively defined character areas are: Main Street/historic downtown, Downtown North, Foxhall Village, Williams Road and Weldon Road Gateway.

Next for the comprehensive plan, Cherry and his associates will submit the information and will hold two more public hearings that will be more interactive for the community. At these meetings, citizen input will be paramount to the process. The tentative meeting dates will be Oct. 8 and Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. at the community center.