County places comprehensive plan on hold
The Putnam County Plan Commission fell short of approving a revised version of the county comprehensive plan Thursday night due to members disagreeing on whether proposed walking trails should be included on one of the maps contained within the document.
The trails in question are on the state DNR's long-term plan for statewide walking paths that follow two abandoned railroad rights-of-way that run through Putnam and surrounding counties.
Board members seemed ready to vote on the plan when board member Joe Mann said he didn't want the proposed trails to appear on the maps because of local opposition to the trails, but other members said they thought DNR could put the trails in whether county residents wanted them or not.
For that reason, some members suggested the trails should stay on the map, not because they were approving of the trails, but that they would let property owners know the possibility of the trails exists.
With only seven of nine members present at the meeting, when the votes were called to approve the amendment, four people wanted to remove the trails and two did not.
Five votes were needed to approve it, so the vote failed and had to be tabled until next month.
Also, since the amendment failed, the entire plan had to be postponed for a vote until December, despite the membership stating that they were comfortable with sending it on to the commissioners with a favorable recommendation.
Provided the plan commission gives the new comp plan a favorable vote when it meets in December, it would then go to the county commissioners for their votes to either approve or disapprove the plan.
Board President Brian Gilmartin said the comp plan is one of two major tasks assigned to the plan commission to tackle.
The other is to revise the county's zoning map.
The process to revise and work through the comp plan has taken more than a year and Gilmartin projected it could take another year and a half to go through the zoning ordinance.
For more information or to view the comprehensive plan, call the county planner's office at 653-5272.