The City of Cañon City recently was awarded a 2022 American Planning Association Colorado Merit Award in the category of General Planning Project from the APA Colorado Awards Committee and APA Colorado Board for the "Picture Cañon City 2040 - A Pathway To The Future" Comprehensive Plan and Unified Development Code Update Project.
City Planner Patrick Mulready poses for a 'selfie' with the City of Cañon City's Merit Award for the 'Picture Cañon City 2040 – A Pathway To The Future' Comprehensive Plan and Unified Development Code Update Project during the American Planning Association Colorado chapter's annual conference Thursday in Vail. (Patrick Mulready/Courtesy Photo)
This award was presented to City Planner Patrick Mulready during the Colorado Planning Conference Awards Ceremony on Thursday in Vail.
"This is an award for all of Cañon City to be proud of, not just me," Mulready said in a video that was presented during the Sept. 19 city council meeting where the council approved a proclamation recognizing the City of Cañon City as the recipient of this national, prestigious award. "I hope it's the first of many."
According to a press release from the City of Cañon City, 11 merit awards were given out of 23 submissions to this category. This is the first time the City of Cañon City has been professionally recognized for a City Planning achievement, which makes this award even more memorable, given that it coincides with the City's Sesquicentennial Anniversary.
Mayor Ashley Smith, during the Sept. 19 meeting, said the Comprehensive Plan truly is comprehensive.
"It is our one document that guides every decision or every goal that we make or want to move forward with," she said. "Every effort or every dollar spent, we refer to the Comprehensive Plan to make sure that it is going in the right way that the City of Cañon City and the people who have participated in this update have had a say in how that is done."
She has had conversations with state officials who could potentially give the city grant dollars who have said this updated plan has been key in them even having conversations for consideration and that this was needed for future funding for future grants.
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In the fall of 2019, Cañon City was awarded a $150,000 grant by the Colorado Department of Local Affairs to update the cty's Comprehensive Plan for the first time since 2001. The city initiated a competitive bid process in February 2020, to find a consultant to help the city with this incredible effort, and out of the eight submitted proposals, selected the firm of Houseal Lavigne to help with the process of updating the Comprehensive Plan.
An aggressive public outreach campaign was employed to inform the shape of both the Comprehensive Plan and the new Unified Development Code. This included surveys, interviews, open houses and a Design Charette workshop with real-time feedback from those attending in person or virtually.
According to the press release, jointly overseeing the effort were the city's planning commission and city council. By the end of calendar year 2020, not only had the effort amassed enormous amounts of public comment and feedback, but it also engaged in an extensive existing conditions analysis. The Comprehensive Plan was formally adopted June 21, 2021; and the new UDC was formally adopted on Aug. 16, 2021, with an effective date of Sept. 1, 2021, thus completing the project in only a year from the commencement of the work. The Comprehensive Plan and UDC were updated in an effort to make Cañon City's land development processes more user-friendly and workable.
"Oftentimes, plans of this sort make nice shelf ornaments," said Mayor Pro Tem John Hamrick, during the Sept. 19 council meeting. "They sit there and are not referred to, but in this plan, we have an action matrix. We actively review that, especially during our retreats, and see where we are in accomplishing the goals that we have set out for ourself. So we've got a plan and a way to carry it out and a way to check ourselves to see how we are progressing."
The Comprehensive Plan was dedicated to the memory of Councilman Jim Meisner, who died unexpectedly in 2021, for his leadership and support of this project.
"We wanted to make sure that we represented everybody who took part in that," said City Administrator Ryan Stevens. "Councilman Meisner was a big piece of that."
