by: Catherine Lemel
(Photo courtesy of planning.transylvania.org)
A community thrives on the ability to form plans for years to come. Transylvania is making sure the members of the community have input on what is going to happen and what the communities goals are for the next ten years.
After a meeting on April 28th, the Transylvania County Planning board put up a survey for community input for the 2025 Comprehensive Plan for Transylvania County. Many of the questions dealt with what people wanted to see changed in the future. The survey was a mixture of short answer and pre-prepared answers. It allowed community members express their main concerns in their own words as well as allowed for a place to rate things, that were already on the list, in order of importance. This way, the community is telling the government the most important thing to them and what needs to be fixed the most.
Transylvania County Planning Board Chairman, Wayne Hennie said, “The Planning Board and planning staff spent a great deal of time developing the questions.” He said that they received support from the County Dr. Dan Moore, Head of the Psychology Department at Brevard College, on the actual asking of the questions as well as help from the county commissioners and manager.
Hennie said that they used many outlets to get the word out about the survey including, creating a promotion video, advertising in local papers, social media posts, hosting community input meetings and much more. With all of this advertisement, the goal is to get “approximately ten percent of the county’s census population of 33,090(2010 US Census data)” to take the survey.
Hennie also pointed out that youth especially need to fill out the survey because they will be the most affected by it in the future. He said, “The reality is that many of the citizens completing the survey and helping the Planning Board and the County Commissioners, will not be here. So, we need to know what youth and students would like Transylvania County to look like in 10 years.”
Here is the link to the survey.