West Newsmagazine 3-20-24

FACEBOOK.COM/WESTNEWSMAGAZINE
WESTNEWSMAGAZINE.COM
St. Louis County prepares strategy
to develop comprehensive plan
March 20, 2024
WEST NEWSMAGAZINE
I NEWS I 13
By LAURA BROWN
For the first time in 40 years, St. Louis
County government is developing a new
comprehensive plan in an effort to provide
a strategic framework for how the community
intends to grow and evolve over the
next 25 years.
Though the STLCO 2050: Comprehensive
Plan project is just in its beginning
phases, officials want all county residents
to weigh in on the regional issues important
to them through a survey that will be
released soon.
The county’s Director of Planning Jacob
Trimble is heading up the project. He said
personally he would like to look further
into what’s driving people and businesses
to relocate into and stay in the county, and
how to improve upon that. Trimble said
the county’s population hasn’t increased
much in the past several decades and he
hopes the comprehensive plan can address
that.
“We have every tool and every resource
at our disposal to be a vibrant, healthy and
desirable place to be, and we leverage
some of those tools really well,” Trimble
said. “But what I somewhat expect to
come out of this (comprehensive planning
process) is for residents to tell us in which
areas we are falling flat, and that these are
the areas where we think we could push the
needle forward. It’s a real opportunity for
the county government to dive deep into
what’s driving that plateaued population
and see what we need to be doing for the
next 25 years to change that trajectory for
ourselves.”
The comprehensive plan is expected to
be developed over the rest of 2024 and part
of 2025, and the county has partnered with
some outside organizations to help develop
and draft it: AECOM, Shockey Consulting,
Rise Community Development and H3
Studio have each been contracted to assist
in different aspects of the plan.
To begin the process the planning department
is working on a community survey to
collect input from county residents about
the issues important to them, ranging from
housing and transportation to economic
development issues.
“The survey will help create the foundation
for additional robust in-person and
online engagement with communities and
groups of folks,” Trimble said. “The survey
will create a statistically valid report as
to how the community is feeling about a
whole host of issues. For example, questions
about issues pertaining to sustainability
and resilience, like, how do you
feel about how we’re doing with managing
flash floods and river floods? How satisfied
are you with the amount of trees and open
spaces in your community? It’s going to
run the gamut of questions that residents
are asked.”
Trimble said officials will use the data
collected as the basis for the priorities and
content of the comprehensive plan. Then
they will go out into the community to
gather more information from all county
residents, those who live in unincorporated
St. Louis County and the municipalities as
well.
“We will be going out to community
events where people already will be, along
with having pop up events, and chatting
with people, and listening to what is important
to them,” Trimble said. “What do they
like about our community and what could
we be doing to reinvigorate and sustain
vibrancy in St. Louis County?”
Trimble said he hopes the comprehensive
plan can also strengthen the county’s
relationship with the many municipalities
and the residents and businesses spread
across the region while facilitating better
sharing of ideas to improve the entire
region. Perhaps even leading to more
partnerships.
“When we have this many municipalities,
sometimes you just never hear what
is happening in another place, so this is
an opportunity to start raising ideas that
can positively impact larger swaths of St.
Louis County, more than just unincorporated
St. Louis County or just a single
municipality,” Trimble said. “We want
to work together toward the shared goals
that we have as strong St. Louis County
because if portions of the county are not
doing well, it does impact all of us. You
may not see it every day in your day-today
life, but, like this population plateau
that we’ve been on here for a while, you
can see how it plays out in our municipalities.”
The county hopes to complete the new
comprehensive plan by July of next year.
Even then, Trimble said that’s just the
beginning.
“At its best, this is then a document that
isn’t just for the planning department,
this is a platform for St. Louis County,”
Trimble said. “Every decision it then
makes will look through the prism of this
plan and say, ‘How does this forward the
goals that we set in the comprehensive
plan? How do we turn our new tagline
of ‘Opportunity Central’ from tagline to
actual reality?”
The county has a website dedicated to the
comprehensive plan. For updates and more
information visit stlouiscounty2050.com.
1855 Hwy 109, Wildwood, MO 63038
passiglia@passiglia.com
636-458-9202