Alpine is working with consultants and calling on the public input as a master plan comes together for the community.

“We’ve had the representatives from Cushing Terrell in town this week, and we’ve had meetings with locals, agencies and citizens.” Mayor  Eric Green said in an interview at the end of August. “It’s a very important part of this master plan.”

Cushing Terrell is the consultant firm helping compile the plan.

The mayor added, “This is an important part of the process and I would say we’re about halfway through the master plan. All of the information we’re gathering right now feeds into the master plan.”

Nora Bland, Director of Planning for Cushing Terrell, noted the process for Alpine started early. “I’m going to start from the beginning and say that our task as the consultants here is to gather information,” she explained. “So there are two main data points that we’re pulling from.”

She continued, “One is from existing conditions and data. We’re gathering information about where the town is,  where it’s come from, and then what we hear from the community, so community input,” she said.

Bland referenced a recent Alpine survey as part of her report.

“We did a survey and we had 218 responses to the survey, which was incredible,” she said. “That’s impressive.” Bland emphasized. “We were asking some pretty broad level questions  because it’s the beginning of the process when  we held that survey.”

Making the second point, she said, “Now, what we’re doing is digging in deeper.  What we heard from the first round of community engagement is directly informing the questions we’re asking now.”

In addition to the survey, community “stakeholders’ were asked to participate in the planning process.

“We  invited folks like the land managers from the Bureau of Reclamation and other entities, reaching all the way out to the federal level.” It’s important that we hear their concerns in terms of their duties and managing the lands and the tourism that’s so important to the town and the town’s fiscal sustainability and the vitality of the town moving forward.”

She continued, “We’re also hearing from housing advocates and folks that are really involved in transportation planning and thinking about active mobility and connectivity  and things like that.”

Explaining the stakeholder meeting, she said, the “workshop today was kind of a little focus group with conversations around topics that really came out of that first round of community engagement as important to the community.”

Bland sought community further participation by asking residents to use the planning website in the coming weeks, alpine-master-plan.com.

Bland concluded, “There will always be an opportunity for residents and stakeholders to be engaged on that website. So throughout the whole process of this planning effort, people can go and tune in there.”

An Alpine Master Plan Open House will be held in the Fall.

Mayor Green added,  “I think the process going forward is really laid out well.  And again, like Nora said, there are so many opportunities for community members to have their voices heard, whether it’s from our website or future engagement opportunities.”

He added, “We’re very excited about where we stand in the process and where it’s leading us. And this is going to really have a say  in what the town of Alpine looks for the next 10, 15, 20 years  and hopefully put us on a course that leads us to success and what everyone foresees the town of Alpine can be in the future.”