City will ask citizens to help create plan to address flooding, other waterways issues

Monday, 26 July 2010 13:45

TweetThe city of Hampton is looking to the community for guidance as it drafts a comprehensive plan to address dredging, shoreline protection, tidal flooding and storm water management.  

The city will be launching a community-engagement process aimed at identifying citizens’ concerns and exploring Hampton's waterways management issues, including future protection needs and solutions to improve current conditions, and discussing the role of government entities, homeowners and other partners.

“When you live in a coastal community, you are going to have natural events that cause flooding. What you can do to minimize that and what's beyond your control as a government entity are some issues we need to address,” said City Manager Mary Bunting. “People need to understand those issues and decide as a community what role they want government to play and not to play.”

The community-wide engagement effort will include face-to-face meetings, audience polling, online surveys and the use of social media. It will be similar to the successful “I Value” campaign that Hampton used to expand citizen participation in the recent city budget cycle.

“The citizen-engagement piece is very important,” said Assistant City Manager Pete Peterson. “We’d like to engage the community – citizens, stakeholders and others who are very familiar with the waterways – and get them involved in a conversation about what their concerns are and what the issues are.”

The community-engagement process will include the creation of a steering committee of residents, business owners, technical experts and city officials to address broad plans and provide technical expertise, subcommittees to focus on specific issues of waterways management, and a community-wide outreach effort to allow residents to weigh in on issues and possible solutions.

“I hope that through this process, we'll all get better educated about what the problems really are and how our citizens are being affected and have been affected,” said Mayor Molly Ward.  

The citizen-engagement process will begin in August with the city appointing steering committee. The panel will begin meeting in September and work on developing plans for immediate and long-range implementation, ranging from one to five years or more. The committee will submit recommendations later this year or in early 2011.

Please continue checking the www.hampton.gov as well as the Hampton Chronicle at http://www.hamptoncommons.com/hampton-chronicle for upcoming news about the city's waterways management program.