By Jessica Mathews/News@whmi.com


A final open house is planned this Wednesday for the public and community stakeholders to weigh-in on Brighton Township’s 2019 Master Plan.

The Board of Trustees met virtually Monday night and voted 6-0 to accept staff recommendations regarding final meetings to review the 2019 master plan update. Although COVID-19 impacted the initial schedule, the process should be wrapped up by fall. Planner Kelly Mathews said they’re nearing the end of the update to the plan and the process kicked off last April. She said they’ve done triple the amount of input as in the past because typically there was only one open house and one set of focus group meetings on various topics. There was much more this time and Mathews said all three focus groups were able to get finished before COVID-19. More than 1200 emails were also received from surveys.

Mathews told the board there was only one public open house that did not get done as planned back in April. She recapped that the first open house looked at input into trails and areas for potential linkage and what types of components would be in various parks. The second centered on different park and pathway trail locations and asked the public and focus groups for input. She says they are now at the final input stage where the layouts of the various trails and parks are proposed. As for the future land use map, Matthews said the only change was related to the future land use of gravel pits. Instead of being a PUD or Planned Unit Development, it will be rural residential to ensure they don’t have some of the difficulties and rezonings people wanted to do in those areas in the future.

Mathews said they have about 50 signs up throughout the township and are hoping for a good turnout Wednesday. The open house will run from 3 to 8pm at the Brighton Fire Station located at 1580 South Old US-23. After final open house, a joint meeting of the Township Board and Planning Commission will be held August 6th to review the draft master plan. Any revisions from that meeting would be incorporated and the plan would then be sent to outside agencies August 10th. There is a 63-day review period before the plan goes back to the Planning Commission for a public hearing and then final board adoption in October.