The city of Harrisburg river walk along the Susquehanna River is an example of an urban forest, or greenspace.
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Community group works to engage residents around Harrisburg’s comprehensive plan
The city council is scheduled to discuss the plan over the next few weeks.
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Alanna Elder/WITF
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The city of Harrisburg river walk along the Susquehanna River is an example of an urban forest, or greenspace.
(Harrisburg) — Harrisburg City Council is scheduled to discuss the city’s comprehensive plan this month and next. It is a long-awaited update to a plan created in the mid-1970s and a rough outline of how the city wants to approach issues like housing and economic development in coming years and decades.
Last September, the Harrisburg Planning Commission presented the 246-page document in two public work sessions.
“I called in for both of those, and even as a technical professional, I was like, two sessions is not enough,” said Winnie Okello, a civil engineer who co-founded a group to demystify the plan for the public.
Harrisburg Comprehensive Plan Community Working Group has been holding weekly lunch sessions over videoconference and Facebook Live to explain the plan in detail and help people submit comments.
“We’re simply holding space for folks to be able to come together around a core vision of, we want Harrisburg to be a thriving city for everyone, especially those who are currently underrepresented and marginalized in the decision-making process,” she said.
That means reducing as many barriers as possible, Okello added, like posting the most recent version of the plan online and allowing people to ask questions in real time. One caveat of the working group, she noted, is that it can only reach people with access to the internet.
Three city council members, Dave Madsen, Westburn Majors and Danielle Bowers have joined the sessions, which usually have around two dozen people watching live and more than 500 views after the fact.
During the most recent sessions, the focus turned to several housing bills the council is considering, since housing tops the working group’s surveys of topics people care most about.
The plan, for example, lists goals like “Create a program to promote vacant and distressed properties to investors” and “Amend the Zoning Code to allow mixed-value housing options to occur in all neighborhoods.” It also directs the city to support homeownership so that “50% of all housing units are owner-occupied by 2030.”
As chair of the Community and Economic Development Committee, Madsen will lead the council’s upcoming discussions on the plan.
The required 45-day comment period on the plan ended Dec. 4, but the council will continue to accept input as it considers the document over the next three weeks.
Basir Vincent, another of the working group’s founders, said the next few weeks could be the last chance for residents to influence the final product.
“The next three working sessions are going to be, hey community, do you have any questions? And if no one says anything or if those questions are kind of all over the place, they’ll just keep moving forward,” he said.
The original public listening strategy behind the plan dates back to 2016.
The plan has a controversial history and is the focus of a lawsuit against the city, after Mayor Eric Papenfuse removed the original consultant from the project several years ago. One of the mayor’s complaints was that the earlier draft was too rigid.
But for Vincent, the latest version is generally lacking in details and performance metrics.
“On the surface the words are right, but the plan isn’t built in a way where we can hold our representatives accountable for the execution, which is essentially how the government process should work,” he said.
Although the working group’s purpose is to help residents navigate whatever pieces of the plan matter most to them, Vincent and Okello have priorities of their own. For Okello, that’s mobility – making the city more connected and transportation more sustainable. For Vincent, it’s fostering career opportunities for residents, or local “pipelines” into various fields.
Both are board members of the organization Harrisburg Young Professionals of Color and drew strategies from that network’s outreach around Bill 8, which created a police advisory board.
The working group plans to continue its work while offering its model to others who are trying to build connections between residents and their local government.
“It’s this in-between to try to revert politics to what it should be,” Vincent said.
The first city council discussion is Feb. 17, with future meetings scheduled for Feb. 24 and March 10.
A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.
